Have you received an invitation to participate in a proSapient paid consultation opportunity? Are you unsure what this opportunity is, or if it’s even legitimate? Learn what to expect if you work with this rapidly growing expert network in our comprehensive proSapient review.
What is proSapient?
ProSapient is an expert network, which are recruiting firms that specialize in custom sourcing subject matter experts (SMB) for short-term consulting projects. Expert networks cater to institutional investors (management consulting firms, private equity, hedge funds, mutual funds, etc.) doing market research or performing due diligence on a company or subset of companies in preparation for an investment. The industry has grown rapidly in recent years, with more than 100 expert network companies now generating close to $2 billion in annual revenue. Expert networks are a great way to capitalize on your industry experience, even after you leave! Expert network opportunities generally take the form of a 1-hour phone consultation between the subject matter expert and the client.
ProSapient is one of several up-and-coming expert networks that are capitalizing on new technologies such as machine learning, artificial intelligence, and robotic process automation. London-based proSapient offers the typical product mix such as surveys, and 1:1 expert consultations, but also offers a multi-vendor platform for clients in it’s bid to be a software-as-a-service (SaaS) for expert networks. ProSapient raised $10M in Series A funding in 2021 after achieving 100% year-over-year revenue growth. It plans to use the funds for a larger expansion into the United States as it seeks to offer a more technology-driven approach than industry stalwarts GLG, Guidepoint and AlphaSights.
Is proSapient fake or a scam?
ProSapient is a legitimate, newer company in the large but secretive expert network industry — it is not a scam.
As with any interaction with strangers on the Internet, it is always a good practice to confirm the identity of the person you are interacting with. They should email you from a prosapient.com address and/or have prosapient listed as their current employer on LinkedIn. proSapeint (nor any other legitimate expert network) will ever ask you to pay them to participate in a project. They will need your payment information, such as your bank account or PayPal ID (as well as a social security number for U.S. residents) to send you payment following completion of a call or survey; you can delay providing this information until after you’ve completed the project.
As a rapidly growing business, the company has gone through some growing pains, and there are a smattering of online complaints about slow payments and associates who don’t always seem respectful of consultant’s time. proSapient has been responsive to many of these complaints and over 90% of the online ratings it receives is positive.
What to expect if you consult with proSapient
ProSapient associates are tasked with sourcing experts for client projects, so if they reach out to via LinkedIn or email, they’ve already identified you as someone who may be a good fit. Why? It’s likely that you are a senior level industry professional with experience with a company, product, or industry their client is looking to learn more about. Here’s a breakdown of the basic eligibility criteria for project participation:
- You are at least 6 months and no more than 3 years out of a job where you were a senior executive (Director level or higher) at a company their client is trying to learn more about.
- You currently (or formerly) work for a competitor of a company the client is looking to learn more about.
- You currently or formerly were a customer of a product or company the client is looking to learn more about.
Now that you’ve been identified as a candidate for proSapient paid consultation, the associate will want you to register for their site and participate in a short vetting call to make sure you’re a fit before proposing your profile to the client for review. The vetting call will consist of some pretty general questions in order to judge your knowledge and confidence level in discussing various topics of interest to the client. This vetting process does not take the place of the client call and you can keep your answers high-level.
During the vetting process, you’ll be asked to provide a list of convenient times when you could participate in a client call, generally over the next week or two. Providing as flexible a schedule as you reasonably can will greatly increase. your chances of being assigned to the project. If the client does choose you for the project, you’ll generally receive a calendar invitation for the client call within a day or two of the vetting conversation.
Even if you don’t get chosen for this project, by completing their compliance procedure, you will be registered in their system and likely vetted for future projects, as networks tend to source in-network before custom sourcing for out-of-network experts. Most expert network consultants only land about 1 out of 3 or 4 projects that they apply for, so don’t get discouraged if you aren’t selected for the first few that you respond to.
ProSapient Consulting Rates
How much should I ask for? How much can I ask for?
You may have read articles online about how some experts make thousands of dollars a call. While that is true, the higher you price yourself, the more likely you are going to get priced out of a client interaction. The experts who can charge $1500 a call are usually very high-profile professionals with very recent experience in a niche industry.
In general, if you have been contacted for participation in a 1-hour 1:1 phone or video consult, you can expect to be offered a $100 – $200 if you are a Director level or below, or $200 – $350 for above a Director level. While you can absolutely negotiate your rate (or set the stage by letting the associate know your price floor), if you ask for a proSapient consulting rate above $500 per hour, you risk your profile not being seen by the client, or a client balking at your rate and going with a cheaper expert. You can always renegotiate your rate for subsequent projects you are contacted for, especially if you find that you are getting inundated by project participation requests.
The rate you actually receive for participation in a client call will be determined by the amount of time both you and the client are in the call. It’s in your best interest to keep the conversation going (with more insights, tidbits, analysis, or small talk), as an extra 10-15 minutes can bump up your rate, but conversely, any call that is more than 5 minutes under the 1 hour mark can be penalized with less pay.
How to ace your proSapient consulting call
Most client calls are centered on a particular company, industry, or product. The client is not expecting you to prepare a presentation or deliverable for the call; they are looking to rapidly download industry knowledge via your many years of experience. You can expect that clients have done their own basic research, reviewed publicly available information, and perhaps heard a management presentation. They have come prepared with specific questions to confirm or clarify aspects of the business. You can see some examples of expert consultation use cases on their website.
If the call is centered on a particular company, the client will want to know how the target company compares to its’ competitors, product and feature differentiation, pricing strategy, quality of management, etc. These types of calls will often resolve around your former employer or a major vendor that you worked with frequently, with emphasis on the key factors influencing your decisions.
Alternatively, if the call will be centered on a particular issue or problem they have been tasked to solve. The client may be looking to develop a marketing strategy, solve chronic operational issues, or restructure an organization. These types of calls will often center your approach to an issue, your impressions of various products, factors that influence budget and purchase decisions, or to provide feedback on potential new products or solutions.
You should have an easy time answering the questions during the call- after all, the client wants to learn about an area via your experience. Even so, you may not have all the answers, or know figures off the top of your heads. You can always be honest and say you don’t know, and you should never make up answers. Clients often have multiple calls on the same subject and if it becomes apparent that you lied, you may be blacklisted.
It’s important to note that you will never be asked to share non-public or proprietary information during a client call, and doing so would be illegal. One of the key responsibilities of expert networks is to ensure that improper information isn’t exchanged on a client call, with both parties bound by strict compliance standards (which you will receive prior to the call).
proSapient will generally record and transcribe consulting calls for further use by the client, particularly for internal compliance reviews; you will not be provided with a copy. These recordings are not published or publicly shared, and are not available to other proSapient clients. (Some expert networks, such as Tegus and Stream Research Group make recordings available to all clients as part of a content library.)
What’s Next?
ProSpaient offers payment via PayPal or ACH direct deposit, and you can expect payment within 45 days of the completion of the call.
Now that you’re a part of the network, you will periodically be contacted for participation in new projects, especially as you build a history of completing successful client calls.
Expert networks are a great way to capitalize on your experience. If you haven’t been contacted by an associate from ProSapient, you can still register to be added to their network by contacting them here.
It’s interesting work that’s also probably one of the easiest, most convenient, and most lucrative side hustles you’ll ever find, so I started exploring how I could proactively land more frequent and higher paying assignments. Many of my strategies worked quite well, and I’ve now completed well over 200 expert network consulting calls, dozens of paid surveys and a few small projects. I’ve helped quite a few friends and colleagues get started as well, and along the way have learned quite a bit about the large, lucrative and very opaque expert network industry – which I’ve also shared with publications like Forbes and Spears. (I’m also a moderator of the Expert Networks subreddit – a great place to ask additional questions!)
So I started this site to share what I’ve learned as a little bit of an expert on expert networks, to help others get started or more involved. To help peel the onion, I’ve reached out to some of the associates I’ve worked with at top firms and other in-demand experts to provide a peek behind the curtain and actionable advice.
I hope you find this site useful, and would love to hear your feedback and suggestions!
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