The Growth Hub
The Consulting Business Growth Hub
You've arrived at the Growth Hub. Its a subsection of our blog (Insights) where we've put together all of our articles and resources relevant to the key topics of:
Look through the content in the sections below to find the articles and resources that you need most right now.
Starting your consulting business
The articles below provide advice and guidance on starting and running a B2B consulting business. Start with the Featured Post at the top, or dive straight into a topic in the list below that best matches your immediate needs.
Growing your consulting business
The articles below provide advice and guidance on growing a B2B consulting business. Start with the Featured Post at the top, or dive straight into a topic in the list below that best matches your immediate needs.
Books on business leadership and growth
The below are some great books on consulting and more general business leadership and growth.
Growth: Building a Successful Consultancy in the Digital Age
In 2022 Professor Joe O'Mahoney, published his book on growing and selling a consulting business.
It's a great book if growth is your mission, and a future exit is your vision. You should read it all, of course, but you can jump to page 98 to see references to The B2B Marketer and the Pyramid of Trust model.
Built to Sell
John Warrillow's books on building a business with the intent to sell make for great reading.
In this first book Warrillow focuses on how to build a business that can thrive without you - something I've written about before.
The Automatic Customer
Warrillow realised his first book - Built to Sell - didn't tackle the challenge of creating recurring revenue. Something that's crucial to increasing business value.
In this book he does and there are some important lessons to learn. Some of which influenced my own guide to recurring revenue services in a consultancy.
The Hard Thing About Hard Things
Coming not from the world of consulting, but business building in general, this is one of my all time favourites. When you're going through the struggle of running a business, Ben Horowitz essentially puts his arms around you in this book and lets you know you're not alone!
Managing the Professional Services Firm
It's an oldie - published nearly 20 years ago - but still one of my favourite books on managing and leading a consulting firm.
I've ran many a book clubs at consultancies, and this is one of the first I start with, and one of Maister's best.
Art's Principles
Art Gensler started his architecture firm and grew it to be the world's largest!
This book covers every aspect of running a professional services firm, and the principles by which Art did so. Well worth a read.
The E-Myth Revisited
If you're running a small business of any kind, you owe it to yourself to read this book - it is essential!
I had the pleasure of seeing Gerber talk when he was in the UK a few years back. A fascinating individual with bounds of energy despite being in his 80's! (I believe multiple marriages and subsequent divorces kept him needing to work!).
Starting, running and growing a successful B2B consulting business
There's no end of business gurus and coaches telling people that it's easy to start, run and grow a successful consulting business. Trouble is, starting, running and growing a profitable consulting business is not as easy as people like to make out.
This is due, in part, to the fact that these 'gurus' are confused! They refer to 'coaches and consultants' as though they're the same thing. They're not!
Where their confusion really comes to the fore, is that they believe the same processes that they use to sell coaching services to small business owners, are just as effective when selling B2B consulting services to corporates. They're not!
I mean sure, people buy from people and all that. But the processes are very different with corporates. I can assure that you won't sell consulting services to corporates over Facebook messenger! And you're very unlikely to win a consulting engagement by connecting to people on Linkedin, then immediately following up with a pitch for your services.
Running a successful consulting business can be a challenge!
At The B2B Marketer we know what it takes to start, run and grow a successful consulting business. One that needs to market and sell its consulting services to mid-sized and large businesses. On this website you'll find lots of information and guidance that's steeped in practical, real-world implementation. Much of it is free, and there are also self-study training programmes available for you to invest in.
If you've broken the 7-figure barrier, we also provide consulting services focusing on:
- Marketing Assessment - reviewing what you're currently doing against proven best practice.
- Marketing Strategy - determining the most appropriate approach and marketing channels for your unique situation.
- Fractional CMO - leading your marketing efforts for you, starting with the above two services, followed by finding the right partners to deliver your marketing, bridging the gap between your internal teams and your external partners, and overseeing the on-going effectiveness, course correcting as needed.
Where to next?
There are two further hubs on this website dedicated to helping you through the challenges of running a consulting business - namely, Growth and Marketing. You can access those hubs via the buttons below.