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assignments for you, they will have an excellent idea of what fee could be obtained for your consulting work and insurance for it. Check to see if your institution has such a company and see what terms they offer. The services they provide and increased fee negotiated may more than cover any commission that they charge. There is often confusion between the terms marketing and selling. In our Guide, marketing is used to mean the process of promoting your services to the marketplace generally, while selling will mean the process of securing a specific sale with a specific client. The boundary between the two is often marked by a prospective client enquiring about a possible project. When describing your services generally to a prospective client you are engaged in marketing, but when the client says 'we need some assistance with...' or 'it sounds like you might be able to help us with...', you have entered a sales process. Of course, if you receive an explicit request to tender for a project then you are immediately into selling. However, even this is almost certainly the result of some previous marketing. It is difficult to over-emphasise the importance of marketing in consultancy. The main constraint on most consulting businesses is their ability to make the market aware of what they have to offer. This is particularly challenging for you because your skills are probably capable of being applied to a wide range of needs, and are therefore difficult to target. Moreover, market awareness is particularly important in a consultancy business since it is generally needs-driven as clients only commission work when they have a need, and it is desirable that your name is already familiar to them when that need arises. When promoting your services, you will be fighting the pre-conceived notion that you are more interested in ideas than in applications and that you treat consultancy as a hobby. Common stereotyping of a research consultant boffin type head-in-the-clouds not interested in anything or anyone outside of your field or circle a stranger to deadlines 10 Marketing Section 3