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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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 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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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,…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
Firstly, I should declare that I’m not a necessarily Ronan Keating fan
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…
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…
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…
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,…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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,…
