I want more marketing……said no consulting business leader ever. It’s not more marketing that you want, it’s more clients. Or, more specifically, more of the right clients. In this blog article I’m…
How to write a great case study [+ Case Study Template]
What’s the purpose of a case study?Let’s start with what it isn’t – to make a sale. Why not? Because you don’t sell consultancy without having an in-depth discussion with…
How to write a consulting proposal [+Free Template]
It’s great when you get the opportunity to submit a consulting proposal. It’s the culmination of all of your marketing and sales efforts right up until that point. Despite proposals being…
Are you marketing like 5 year olds playing football?
What’s the biggest problem in marketing today?No, it’s not that everything has gone digital.And it’s not the end of 3rd party cookies.It’s also not the skills shortage and rising staff…
Why prospects aren’t calling you
Marketing isn’t always easy! What’s more, there are so many different marketing channels and tactics, and so much conflicting advice on what you should do, that it’s no wonder many people…
The 10 big mistakes you’re probably making with Linkedin
Linkedin is the indisputable champion of B2B social media platforms. With 260 million active users you can’t fail to get the attention of your ideal prospects. And, since Coronavirus forced people…
Book review: The Irresistible Consultant’s Guide to Winning Clients
According to David A. Fields:In typical product sales, once you capture a buyer’s attention you’re near the end of the buying process. But in consulting, capturing a prospects attention is…
I’ve spent 18 months testing different social media channels – here’s what I found out…
In this blog post I’m going to set out to answer the following question: As a B2B consulting business should you be on social media, and if so, which one(s)?Let’s start…
Book review: How Clients Buy
At least, that’s the view of Doug Fletcher and Tom McMakin in their book, How Clients Buy: A Practical Guide to Business Development for Consulting and Professional Services And, as they point…
Stop thinking you can do it all on your own! (How to grow a team)
The first challenge for any professional services business is to work out how to consistently attract clients, and convert opportunities into sales. Once you’ve got that figured out, you’re straight into…
Pricing Tool: Price High or Low
Pricing your services is one of the most critical yet challenging tasks that you need to undertake to make sure your consulting business is successful. Over on the blog there are…
Your business won’t survive without you… and it’s all your fault!
IntroductionWhen starting a consulting business the first challenge to overcome is to implement effective marketing and sales to create leads and close high-revenue, high-profit opportunities. The alternative is to just…
The 5 Self-Sabotaging Behaviours Limiting The Success of Your Consulting Business
I work with many consulting business owners across the globe, and I’ve worked as an employed consultant selling and delivering consulting engagements across the UK, Europe, North America, the Far…
How to curate content on Linkedin like a pro
Content curation is where you share other people’s content on social media platforms. The problem is, nearly everybody does a bad job of it! Why? because they think the mere act of…
How to come up with ideas for content on Linkedin
If you’re using Linkedin to build your brand and reputation as an authority (and you should be!), then you need to be posting on there regularly. At a very minimum, that…
Are you making the mistake of using Bro-Marketing tactics in your B2B consulting business?
Just What is Bro-Marketing?Before we get into why you should stop using these tactics, let us first start with defining just what bro-marketing is. This is important as you may be…
Does your website add revenue to your consulting business?
Or is it simply draining it away?The first website I had for my consulting business cost me over £5,000 and it didn’t even have my company name on the homepage! Now,…
The 10 Most Common Mistakes Consultants Make
In the more than twenty years that I’ve been a consultant I’ve made my fair share of mistakes! One of them quite catastrophic! Many of them were avoidable if only I’d been…
The 4 Consulting Fee Types: Which ones to use and when
Determining how much to charge a client is no easy task!Not only do you need to come up with the fee in the first place, but you don’t want to…
52 Ways to Market Your Consulting Business
Most consulting business owners say to me that their number one challenge is getting more clients.And to get more clients means you need to get noticed. You need to get…
Markup vs. Margin: Which one wins?
There’s often confusion around these two terms – Markup and Margin – so this brief article explains the difference, why it matters, and what the mathematical formulas are that you…
Why working in a consulting business doesn’t prepare you to run your own consulting firm
If you were an adult in the early 2000’s you very likely had a Nokia mobile phone. I know I did, including the banana one made famous in the Matrix!What’s the…
How to introduce recurring revenue services [+Free Guide]
Revenue is the lifeblood of every consulting business. Without revenue there will be no business! And most consulting businesses generate revenue through the delivery of projects for clients. This is perfectly fine…
How to design your consulting business [+Free Guide: Consulting Business Blueprint]
It’s not what you know!When most consulting businesses are started, it’s usually not by people who are experts in starting and running businesses. Usually, it’s people who are expert consultants…
The 5-Step Consulting Sales Process [+ Free Guide]
Selling High-Value Consulting ServicesYou need to win big-ticket projects for your B2B consulting business.Why? Because you simply don’t have the time or capacity to do anything else! If you want to build…
5 ways to get consulting clients NOW!
In our global survey of consulting business owners, 47% stated that their number one challenge was getting new clients. The second and third biggest problems were ‘effective marketing’ and ‘closing the…
10 ways to respond when the client says your price is too high
It happens to the best of us. You submit your proposal. You wait anxiously. Then you hear from the client…You’re too expensive.The reality is this happens much less than people think, and if…
Why you’re more likely to lose a sale by underpricing than you are by over-pricing
Good news!the client said.You’re our preferred bidder.Awesome, I thought.We’ve just got a couple of queries…the client said:Firstly, are you ok with travelling abroad?Secondly, we think you’re too cheap!Whoa, just hold…
Entrepreneurialism is a rollercoaster, just gotta ride it
Firstly, I should declare that I’m not a necessarily Ronan Keating fan
Keep hold of the ball! Why you must control the sales process
A consultant emailed me the other day and asked the following question:After a pitch, if a period of time has gone by and you haven’t gotten an answer from the…
12 ways you can screw up your sales presentation
You can’t have a consulting business without making some sales. But so many consultants get the sales presentation wrong! I’ve been in many consulting sales presentations as part of a big…
How I wasted thousands cold calling (and how you can avoid doing the same…)
Get cold calling!My business coach said to me. In fact, he was the second business coach to say that. So I did. And… …I was terrible. It didn’t take me long to realise that…
Are you lying about your Win Ratio? (And how to calculate it properly)
Let’s be honest, we all like a positive message. And we all like to think positively about what we’re achieving in business, especially when it comes to sales. The trouble is,…
7 invoicing tips to improve cash flow (And why getting paid in advance can cause problems!)
Making a sale, but then going bankrupt before you’ve delivered the project, is a fool’s errand! Of course, a significant challenge in running any consulting business is cash flow. If you’re not…
Why 10X goals are killing you! And why you’ll never be satisfied.
I’m a huge advocate of goal setting.I’ve been setting goals for the past 5 years, ever since reading about goal setting in Bob Etherington’s book – Cold Calling for Chickens. And…
5 things I wish I’d known before starting my own consulting business
I’d been employed as a consultant for almost 20 years before I started my own firm.I’d been involved in the sales process; I’d done a ton of delivery; I’d grown…
Specialist or Generalist – What’s right for your consulting business?
Consultants and consulting businesses owners often agonise over whether they should be a specialist or generalist consultancy. They worry that if they become a specialist – if they target a…
The comprehensive guide to exhibiting your consulting business
There are over 50 different ways in which you can market your consulting business. A very effective channel can be business exhibitions. They’re a great way to generate leads. Unfortunately, when I…
How many products and services should your consulting business offer?
And what happens if you don’t limit the number of services that you offer.The very first challenge you face when running a consulting business is to determine what your niche…
So you want to earn a million a year as a consultant? Let’s do the maths…
I’ve heard the promises so many times:Start a consulting business and you can easily earn a million a year!Well, maybe. I mean, you can earn a million a year by consulting,…