Paula, good fortune in your upcoming new career ! !
Don't forget one of the golden rules of being a consultant: LISTEN to your client ! ! Probably more contracts and oportunities have been lost because the consultant did not fully listen to or fully understand the potential client, the needs and reasons why he/she wants the involvement of a consultant. The singular acknowledgement that they are looking for assisstance lends one to assume they are not competent to complete the task at hand. However, they may well be able to do just that, and only need assisstance from time to time when they are not quite sure how to proceed in a given area.
I, too, am keeping my day job for now. Final stages of working for a client in our small southern town conducting training and limited time on site for the T/S 16949 standard. Two others begining discussions, one in oil and gas exploration and the other in general manufacturing. I have had a tough time trying to put a price on my services, also. I finally came up with a fee schedule that is very reasonable and well under any competators within five states (I know a lot of them). Not trying to take food off their plates, still a lot of work here, but priced low enough to get my feet wet and in the door for some of our more high profile companies (name recognition helps the future) that are committed to success.
One thing for sure, is that it seems that fees are sliding down from where they were only a year or so ago. Fewer transitions and registrations, for sure, but also a lot of companies have been using (really using for improvment) their system and now want to transition to the new standard using as much of what they have learned from practice - something like the pride of doing things well. Many organizations do actually have well developed talents and have in fact been very successful at their transition experience.
The quality field has pretty much been a robust employment position over the past ten or so years, too, and a lot of people working on a well developed implementation project for an organization in the last couple of years seem to have been hired out from under their bosses and these folks (at times) do quite well working on a new progran for someone else.
It also looks like a good portion of organizations have not transitoned to the 9K:2K standard, probably due to their historically lack of true committment by senior management and their not wanting to really improve their operations. Although it seems strange, I have actually been to a site where the Man Rep and the Plant Mgr stated just that...don't want to improve (they didn't elect to transition to 9K:2K).
So there is no wonder that the fees for ISO consultants are slipping, less work to do. However, a number of people in the business are cutting back on the number of clients they will even consider if they feel there is not enough true committment from the senior management team. Most say it just ain't worth all the hair and teeth pulling and they would rather work for an organization that really is open to ideas for improving their processes, products/services, and customer relations ( read:
business posture ).
Good luck in the future, maybe our paths will cross one day
