Image consulting is a surprisingly wide and varied field offering many extremely useful services to improve a client’s visual, verbal, and nonverbal communication skills. Image consultants can help with personal image, shopping and wardrobe, professional and online presence, etiquette, speaking skills, and more. The services help clients develop their personal brand, improve their lifestyle and reach their goals. Many consultants are highly successful, ensuring their clients are offered a variety of services or a program to fit their needs for many years. They are like image coaches.

Understanding what distinguishes a highly successful consultant from the rest will allow you to focus on your career as an image consultant – and seek the best training to offer a more robust experience to your clients.

Looking and Acting the Part

The most successful image consultants appeal to a wide variety of potential clients and several target markets. The successful consultant’s appearance will be one that many people can relate to and identify with largely because you are your best advertisement in the image world. Since image consulting deals with the practical aspects of appearance, behavior, and communication, a consultant should herself look, act, speak, and behave in a way that demonstrates she walks the talk! An image consultant must look pleasant, fashionable, and current but not over the top! She must also project energy, creativity, and new ideas. A client has to feel and think: I like the way she looks, acts, and speaks, and I trust her judgment.

Problem-Solving Skills

You need excellent training and strong problem-solving skills to pass that knowledge on to your clients. Remember, they are reaching out to you and are depending on your expertise.

It’s not just about having problem-solving skills, either. You’ll need to know how to assess the problems, as many clients and businesses know that they need help but are unaware of the tools and skills to fix them.

Your ability to be quick and think outside the box will help you achieve higher success.

Communication Skills

Communication and articulation go hand-in-hand. These skills are important for consultants because they’re also important for your clients. And often, it’s about practice, practice, practice.

When you fail to communicate effectively, those around you have to guess what you mean to say, and the information could come across as confusing and hard to understand.

You’ll want to be able to speak clearly and confidently and convey complex issues such as color and body line analysis in simple ways. If you let a client know that the finished result will enhance her style personality, color harmonies, body shape, and proportions, she will appreciate the benefits of appearance coaching.

Authenticity

An image consultant must be open-minded and take all problems in her stride as she deals with any issue that affects and influences not only appearance but also personality, well-being, self-confidence, and self-esteem. If necessary, she could share any issue she has had personally, but more importantly, the steps she took to overcome the challenge successfully.

We have all seen TV programs depicting image consultants throwing away clothes with little explanation. That’s rarely how it works in real life! We base our critiques on a well-known image, personality, art, and design principles. Before we go into a wardrobe, we usually have completed the basics: color, style, and body analysis.

It’s also important that an image consultant is comfortable with critiquing and has mastered a diplomatic style. That means letting a client know kindly yet honestly when an aspect of her image needs a different approach or suggesting that she consider this or that new solution based on the technical information already explained. Most clients are paying for this advice and deem it totally necessary. In fact, they will ask you outright.

Ability to Prioritize

The most successful consultants are the ones who can prioritize from the most to least important tasks regularly. As you browse your to-do list, do you know which ones should be finished first? Are you capable of achieving the best business outcomes?

Much of your ability to prioritize will also help with productivity. If you’re constantly working but getting very little done, it may be time to focus on your priorities more.

Insight into Your Business Clients

As a consultant, you must research any organization or business you are working with. A potential client will be interested in your background, especially if it is similar to theirs; the more you can offer insight into a particular industry, the easier it will be to establish yourself as an expert. Additionally, you’ll be able to differentiate yourself from other consultants simply because of your ability to understand the client on a deeper level.

However, the more experience you gain in all fields, coupled with your willingness to learn about the client, the more attractive you become as a consultant.

Leadership Skills

Leadership skills are often inherent. Some people are natural-born leaders. If this describes you, you might also be good at entrepreneurship, marketing, and sales. However, if you’re not a leader in the traditional sense, you can still use all your skills and certainly be a motivating and inspiring influence for your clients. Many clients like their image consultant to lead them by being gentle and empathetic. The image world is full of people with many personalities, and an “ideal” personality hasn’t seemed to emerge in the industry. However, it helps to love growing and developing people, to enjoy teaching and coaching, and to derive enormous satisfaction in enhancing another’s skills and self-confidence.

Analytical Thinking

While working as a consultant, you desire to make it to the top tier – to be more successful. You can get there when you can be more critical, interested in client feedback, and analytical. This is because you can break problems up to make them easier to manage. You’ll also be able to present more innovative solutions.

When you can be creative and offer practical solutions, your clients will be more open to your ideas. Present your findings in easy-to-understand language. As you become more practical in your approach, you empower your clients to enhance their own image.

Strong Work Ethic

Work ethic is another distinguishing factor of a successful consultant. Most entrepreneurs work long hours, experience stress, and have what seems like a never-ending workload.

Your ability to manage long hours without affecting your personal life or business contacts will allow you to grow. Then, one day, you may get an assistant to help you manage the workload. Until then, you must work hard for the success you want, and yet image consultants just adore what they do, and to most, it never feels like work. It’s a total joy to help people become confident and successful.

Flexibility

Flexibility is another way to differentiate the successful from the non-successful. You must meet a client at their level, which sometimes means checking your ego at the door. You may engage with clients immediately and earn their trust. Respectfully state your educational rationale to support your opinions while listening to their views.

When you’re flexible about your opinions and take the time to learn from your clients, finding a strategy that works for both of you can make it easier. Especially when you deal with passionate clients, your flexibility will be what helps to establish your credibility. Not all clients will love every idea of yours – and the flexibility you have to move forward will make it easier to hold onto your client base.

Start Your Training

Consulting skills are developed over time – and what you learn on blogs and through various social content is just the tip of the iceberg. By seeking image consulting instruction, it’s possible to take your career as an image consultant to the next level.

Fill out the form to learn more about what London Image Institute offers.