Are you focusing on the right kind of sales to grow your consulting practice?

In this article, we wanted to share an answer to one of the questions about sales in consulting.

Question: Should the goal be to double our sales or increase our sales by 50% or even 10%. What is the right percentage?

We asked Michael, and this is what he said:

Answer: Respectfully, I think this is the wrong question to ask. You have to focus on the right types of sales. The simplest way to explain this is to imagine what would happen to your body if you ate cheeseburgers for 12 months. You would probably not like the outcome. Your body, life, routines, and more will need to adjust to accommodate your new diet. In the same way, your consulting practice will contort itself to deliver the types of projects you are selling and delivering. 

So it’s less about getting a sales number and more about getting the right types of sales.

I was once asked to help another office. They were in love with strategy work. They would try to sell projects that were extremely heavy on analytics, and the projects lasted from 2 weeks to 2 months. You can imagine how stressed those partners were. They had to constantly find clients and close new projects every few weeks just to keep their staff busy. They had to meet new clients all the time since the same client rarely wanted back-to-back strategy-type engagements.

The staffing of consultants was hard because projects did not start on time, while many did not end on time due to overlap. This led to consultants working on more than one project and not being ready on time. The training was difficult to do, and the certainty of cash flows was hard to project for the office. The office struggled to grow. The structure, staffing, morale, and culture of that office were the outcome of the projects they pursued.

It was all negative. They were making the wrong kinds of sales.

It’s not that the existing team lacked access or clients. They knew the local business leaders well. The problem is that their model of what they wanted to sell never allowed them to grow.

Offices need stability. Practices need stability. Consultants need stability.

Growth is risky, and it’s a bet on the future.

If you choose a sales model and project type that is inherently unstable, it’s very hard to grow. With stable cash flows, an office can make a big investment for the future. This is a challenge, especially for boutique firms, but also for larger firms. An office finds it easier to sell smaller analyses or diagnostic pieces, but it soon gets trapped into a cycle of being so fatigued on delivering these projects and selling more of them to cover their costs that they cannot step back and analyze their business model.

The building block of a consulting practice is selling the right kinds of projects that provide an anchor for growth. Some projects cannot allow for this. Our goal in the Consulting Sales Rainmaker mentoring program is to teach the approach we use, have used, and continue to use with our executive coaching clients. It’s about getting the right kinds of sales where the client tells you what the problem is and ranks it for you.”

We are taking applications for the Consulting Sales Rainmaker coaching program, led by Michael & me.

Join Michael & me in a deliberately small group, up to 6 clients per group, where we work with each client in a meaningful way at every session, guiding you step by step to become a rainmaker within your firm.

What would your practice look like with the right kind of sales? We are taking a small group only. Applications close soon. Learn more here and apply: [email protected].

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