From the Ground Up

Through her consulting business, Passwall Solutions, Janice Marquardt helps operations leaders, particularly in the manufacturing industry, to reduce costs while building their supply chain value. She left the corporate world after fifteen years of experience with supply chain and procurement in the utility and manufacturing industries, including more than three years as a top executive supply chain leader.

She decided to take all of her experience and start a consulting business, but as she put it, “I had no one in my life who had done consulting.” While she was very good at networking and making connections, she wasn’t sure how to turn her expertise into a thriving business. So she went looking for help, and that brought her to Consulting Success.

Learning the Basics

Janice was drawn to Consulting Success because they offered one-on-one coaching, and she knew she needed someone to guide her and hold her accountable. As it turned out, the coaching was especially helpful, but she also got tremendous value from the discussions and shared ideas in our group forum.

Janice was at the very beginning of building her consulting business, and she didn’t have any clients yet. She was just laying the foundation. Consulting Success helped her lay that foundation well. Through Consulting Success, she says, “I learned all of the basics of building a consulting business, from creating magnetic messaging and clarifying your offer to writing a proposal and putting together ‘good, better, best’ packages. It was all new to me and extremely valuable.”

Winning Her First Client

She started her business in October, joined Consulting Success in November, and won her first lucrative client contract in December. As she explains, “Thanks to the level of support I received from the program, I was able to put together a proposal extremely quickly. I met with the client on Tuesday morning. I had a proposal in their hands on Wednesday afternoon. And then I had a contract signed on Friday.”

Through our forum, she was able to get advice and specific feedback about her proposal, which helped her to improve her proposal and pricing. More than that, she says, “Because of Consulting Success, I understood how to walk into that conversation and ask the right questions.”

To anyone thinking about getting involved with Consulting Success, she says, “What they can do is provide a really good support system. You still have to put in the work, but they will help you move a lot faster, clarify what you sell, and write better proposals. I’ve found it to be very helpful.”