Are you interested consulting careers? We’re looking for dynamic individuals to become Consulting Associates, i.e. who are ready to be mentored as consultants, and work with our team as part of Tenato. This is a long-term career opportunity that is flexible as a work from home opportunity from almost any locatiom.

As a very quick overview, if you’ve got only 10 seconds to spend reading this, here’s the fast version: We want to find people who have had a minimum of 5 years in a business-to-business (outside) sales-type role, who also have a marketing, business or communications-related degree, solid writing skills, and energetic personalities! If these qualifiers are easily in your wheelhouse, read on.

The Role of a Strategic Marketing Consultant

To fill this role, we can break down the skill sets into three, and I’m going to tackle it this way: 

1. the Marketing Element
2. the Strategist Element
3. the Consultant Element

The Marketing Element

Are you a marketing-oriented person? Marketing is a skill set that drives revenue into a business, and to capture this we’ll divide it into two parts: sales skills and marketing skills.

Sales Skills

Good marketers understand that their primary role in a business is to drive top-line revenue, i.e. sales. 

If business were a sport, marketers would be the offence – they get the shots on the net, either scoring the points directly themselves, or by setting up the opportunity so the salespeople can tap it in and close the deal. This is in contrast, for example, to functions like accounting, IT, operations and finance which are more defensive – about finding efficiencies and cutting costs.

There are countless reasons why selling skills are absolutely necessary to be a strong consultant in our business. Sales experience yields a combination of interpersonal skills, persuasive skills and motivational drive, which create crucial benefits to the consultant for many reasons:

• Assures the ability to drive in the kind of business that best suits your experience
• Underlays overall confidence in account management (price negotiation, pitches)
• Ensures good interviewing skills for market research
• Helps open critical doors for clients unable to do this themselves
• Allows clients’ salespeople to appreciate/respect your skills when providing sales training
• Legitimizes your skills to business owner/entrepreneurial clients who also sell
• Creates a can-do attitude of service to win new business
• Develops creative problem solving when difficult situations arise

Marketing Skills

In addition to the selling skills above, ideally you would also bring marketing skills and knowledge. If you have training in these areas, it says you are serious about marketing as a career, and we would consider you at a more senior level:

• Elements of a marketing plan and budget, and how to build one
• How to create sales forecasts
• How to determine what kinds of market research are needed to answer a client’s objectives
• How to write a proposal, a marketing plan, and a research report
• How to develop creative visual themes for advertising campaigns
• How to develop effective slogans, taglines and names for brands
• Steps of developing a website
• How to choose traditional or digital marketing avenues and when/why
• Publicity and Social media Content development – having built your online network and social profiles.
• Persuasive writing/copywriting training

The Strategist Element

To be a good strategist, you need to have a very thorough understanding of the way a business works, because the marketing strategy is what drives the business forward. While we can train you on this, we expect you to have demonstrated an interest in understanding these areas either through having schooled yourself in business, or by having owned or run a business yourself at the executive level.

These skills will be necessary to enable you to have a credible business conversation with a client, for example:

• What is an income statement vs. a balance sheet and why do they matter?
• What is Cost of Goods Sold?
• What is Net Profit?
• What is a margin vs. a markup?
• What are fixed vs. variable costs?
• What is depreciation?
• How to use an Excel Spreadsheet
• Knowledge of well-known businesses, and the strategies that created success/failure for them, e.g.3M, Chrysler, Kodak, Google, Facebook….
• Many of the latest business books/theories – e.g. “Power of Why”, “E-Myth”, “Blue Ocean Strategy,” etc.

The Consultant Element

The final element is the consulting element. For this, a warm personality with some strong life experience is infinitely helpful. For example:

• You’ve handled and overcome significant challenges in your life, giving you a humble and compassionate demeanor
• You know what it’s like to fully support yourself independently
• You consistently do what you promise you will do
• You are willing to pitch in to do whatever clients may need of you
• You really want to make this your long-term career
• You are full of creative ideas and ways to solve problems
• You are skilled in writing for business: emails, social media posts, blogs
• You are a life-long learner who is always enhancing your skillsets

How it Works

Our consultants receive a share of the revenue they generate as part of the team delivering the work. While this is not the same as a guaranteed salary, we do help you get started by providing your first 1 – 2 accounts, and then work with you to help you bring in other clients that are well-suited to your background. The good news is, this means you can set your own hours and schedule and dial yourself from part to full time, as your life allows.

• We provide:
  • Ongoing training across market research, strategy, sales, and various elements of execution marketing (e.g. how to develop slogans, names, headlines, creative concepts)
  • Templates for the entire business – e.g. research instruments, research reports, proposals, strategy sessions,  marketing plans, budgets
  • Portrait, branding, and marketing to bring in new leads (some will be assigned to you to get you trained in the beginning).

• You provide
  • Ongoing sales efforts to bring in accounts to which you would be well-suited as their consultant. Expectation is at least 3 self-generated accounts per year.
  • Assistance in pricing/developing/pitching proposals
  • Attending team meetings once a week.
  • Once per month – a blog written by you.

Next Steps

If this role sounds like something you would be well-suited for, we would love to hear from you. Please send a resume and cover letter telling us why you believe you would be well suited to this role, attention Jacqueline Drew, our CEO and Principal, directly, at jdrew (at) tenato.com.

We look forward to hearing from you!