4 min read · Written by Grant Rayner on 26 Jul 2023
Share by emailCrafting your services as an independent security professional means navigating around your limitations and leveraging your strengths to their fullest potential. A solo practitioner’s most significant limitation? Time. Therefore, you’ll need to focus your time and energy on services that will be both impactful and profitable.
In this article, I’ll explore how you can create an ‘ideal’ service, starting with the most crucial component—demand.
You could design a stellar service, but without a client need, you’ll find yourself unable to sell it. How do you identify the demand? You can start by relying on your professional experience. Even better, just ask your potential clients.
There may be times when the demand for a service isn’t yet apparent—your service caters to a need that hasn’t been identified. This anticipatory approach means you might have to educate your clients about why they need your service. It’s a bold strategy, but one that helps push the industry forward. To mitigate risk, you can consider offering such services alongside existing ones that cater to current demands.
Given your role as an independent security professional, consider the types of services you can efficiently deliver as an individual. Some services, like event security, may require a team, while others—like assessments, training, or exercises—can be readily delivered by an individual.
While subcontracting some parts of a service may an option, keep in mind that clients are likely prefer your personal touch. After all, you’re selling our unique experience and perspective. If you use subcontractors, there’s also the risk of losing your Intellectual Property (IP). As an independent security professional, protecting your IP is critical for your business’s long-term success.
As I mentioned in an earlier article, your biggest competitor might be your client opting to do the work themselves. Focus on services that are best delivered by an external party, like audits, inspections, and training and exercises.
Differentiation is key in a competitive landscape. As s start point, try to develop a service that isn’t offered by your competitors. If you’re unable to do that, design a service that is offered by your competitors but take a unique approach that provides additional value.
As a business of one, you must come up with your own way of doing things. That’s your competitive advantage.
As an independent professional, your personal brand will play a significant role in attracting and retaining clients. Therefore, design services that leverage your unique expertise and personality. This could mean integrating your unique insights into the service, or structuring the service delivery in a way that allows clients to directly interact with you and benefit from your personal expertise. Training is the perfect example of such a service.
Remember, your goal is not just to offer a service; it’s to offer a service that is unmistakably “you.” That’s something no competitor can replicate. Some individuals have a natural talent for training and can infuse their training with their unique personality. While a competitor could potentially run training on the same topic, they may not be able to deliver it with the same energy and insights as you do.
As an independent security professional, your time is one of your most valuable resources, and it is finite. Therefore, it is important to design services that can be scaled up without demanding a corresponding increase in your time or effort. Automation, outsourcing, and partnerships can all play a role in achieving this goal. For instance, if part of your service involves performing security assessments or audits, you could consider developing a software application or partnering with a software developer to automate the initial stages of the audit process.
One of the best ways to scale services is to develop them into products.
Let’s focus on that next.
Productisation is the key to revenue growth and to diversified revenue streams.
I’ll be providing more details on productisation in future articles. For now, a key factor to consider when designing services is whether the service, or parts of the service, can be converted into products. Training, for example, can be readily converted into products and offered online.
Staying relevant in the rapidly evolving field of security is critical to your long-term success. Your services should align with current industry trends, best practices, and standards. Clients are more likely to invest in a service that is up-to-date and can help them stay compliant with relevant regulations or industry norms.
If you incorporate international standards into your services, be sure to follow the progress of these standards. You can also keep an eye out for emerging standards and purchase drafts to enable you to review the standard and share preliminary findings with your clients.
As you continue to provide your service, you will accumulate experience, feedback, and possibly new skills. Design your service in a way that allows for continuous improvement and refinement. This not only helps improve the quality and efficiency of the service over time, but also demonstrates to your clients that you are committed to providing them with the best possible solutions.
For instance, if you plan to conduct training workshops, make sure to use questionnaires at the end of each session to gather feedback. Analyse the feedback and determine if there are any opportunities to improve certain aspects of the workshop. Share this feedback with your client and explain how you intend to integrate that feedback to improve the quality of your training. This approach shows that you are adaptable and always willing to enhance the quality of your services.
As many of you know, client acquisition is one of the greatest challenges in business. This challenge is particularly difficult for independent security professionals, who do not have the benefit of a sales team. Spending the effort to acquire a new client only to deliver a single service and part ways is not the optimum approach. Instead, your objective should be to win business with a client and then provide services for the client for many years.
Accordingly, avoid designing services that are just a one-off transaction. Instead, consider the types of services that clients will need year after year. Good examples of such services are training and exercises, and inspections and audits.
Aside from reducing your ongoing sales efforts, you’ll also be able to establish a reliable and ongoing revenue stream.
As you start to develop your services as an independent security professional, it’s important to consider what services your clients actually need, what you can confidently deliver as an individual, and what can be scaled. Make your services unique by leveraging your strengths and incorporating your personality into your work. Always focus on the long-term by developing products that help achieve recurring revenue. Your goal is to provide services to the same clients year after year, continually improving upon those services as you go.