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Seven Steps to Start a Consulting Business

Chart Your Course

According to MBO Partners, a support service for independent consultants, boomers are a fast growing sector of the independent workforce. In its 2012 Independent Workforce Index, MBO Partners estimates that boomers account for around a third of all independent consultants. Marketing, Marketing. Set Up Shop.

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Planning Doesn’t Have to Be the Enemy of Agile

Harvard Business Review

Management by Objectives (MBO) became the height of corporate fashion in the late 1950s. Later, MBO evolved into strategic planning. Planners have traditionally been obsessed with gathering hard data on their industry, markets, competitors. The capacity and willingness of managers to plan developed throughout the century.

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The Freelance Economy Still Runs on Word of Mouth

Harvard Business Review

But we’re not quite there yet, according to a new survey conducted for MBO Partners, which provides back-office services to independent workers — which it dubs “solopreneurs.” They ranked sales and marketing sixth. Overall, there are now an estimated 17.9 million estimate, derived from an online poll of 2,017 people, is up from 17.7

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Where Are All the Self-Employed Workers?

Harvard Business Review

A survey conducted for the past three years on behalf of MBO Partners , a provider of support services for independent workers, counts temp workers, on-call workers, and those on fixed-term contracts as “independent workers.” Given that the actual research commissioned by MBO says that there are now about 17.7

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How PwC and The Washington Post Are Finding and Hiring External Talent

Harvard Business Review

Independent workers also benefit from exposure to more opportunities and less need to spend time networking and marketing their services. For example, Tech Americas USA, a business process outsourcing firm, uses Work Market’s freelancer management system to find, hire, and help manage contract workers.

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There’s No One System for Paying Your Global Sales Force

Harvard Business Review

One of the big challenges for the people leading global sales organizations is figuring out the right way to set pay for for salespeople who work in vastly different countries and markets. Each country has its own market dynamics, business culture, laws, and availability of data for measuring performance.