Grow Your Independent Consulting Business

Every consultant has experienced this scenario: you’re making excellent progress with a potential client and have secured a verbal consulting agreement, only for the project to stall when it comes to final signatures. All of a sudden, you don’t hear back from the stakeholder. Emails and calls go unanswered, and you start to spiral. We know it can take time to finalize agreements at the corporate l...

You are an independent consultant. You solve problems for a living. So, of course, you can make anything work. However, allowing your automatic response to be "yes" is a pitfall that drastically impacts your consulting business operations, bottom line, and overall growth. Today's episode dives into the pitfalls of a “make-it-work” consulting business model. I discuss what it is, why...

You want to offer consulting retainers. But, you’re not sure where to start. You’re nervous that retainer clients will call you day and night, and you’ll end up scrambling to support their needs.  On the other side, you worry the retainer clients won't engage you enough and they'll question the value you're providing. On top of it, you’re not sure how to sell a retainer. You’re not...

Escaping a time-based pricing model is a common goal for independent consultants. Not only does hourly billing limit a client's perception of your value to their company, but it can also tempt you to overwork. Many independent consultants want to transition away from time-based billing but need help figuring out how to do it. In today's episode, I share a simple, 5-step process to adopt...

CRM (customer relationship management) tools help you maximize your time, stay consistent with your business development activities, and balance supply and demand to keep your pipeline constantly flowing. So many independent consultants have questions about how to use and implement a CRM so they manage their business development processes effectively and efficiently. Today’s episode is designed to...

Your network is one of the most powerful assets in your business. And we all have relationships in our network that we’ve neglected. It doesn’t matter why you’ve let communication lapse with someone, it’s powerful to reinvigorate those neglected relationships. You never know where a connection in your network might lead. I know it can be uncomfortable to reach out to people you have let slide off...

In this episode, I dive into the critical topic of pricing and how to leverage value-based questioning to transform your consulting sales process, allowing you to command higher fees and showcase your professional skill set. Discover the simple yet impactful micro-adjustments you can make to your sales meetings to maximize their impact and increase your earning potential.  By implementing these st...

Consistent lead generation is essential to building a sustainable independent consultant business. It’s easy to understand why business development is vital, so why do independent consultants commonly push this task to the back burner?  We overlook lead generation because…  We overcomplicate the process It's uncomfortable We don't have a straightforward process to make lead generation ea...

As an independent consultant, getting ghosted by a client feels like the worst thing that could possibly happen. You spend time and resources on discovery, research, and proposals that amount to nothing. You thought you had the deal in the bag. What happened? It’s time to conduct a retrospective. Today’s episode is about leveraging retrospectives to unlock continuous improvement so your independen...

As an independent consultant, I can safely assume you’re responsive and professional.  You provide timely responses to client requests. And, sometimes this responsiveness can backfire. It backfires when we give the potential client what they ask for without questioning it, especially when it comes to writing and sending over consulting proposals. It is crucial that proposals aren’t written too ear...

It’s common for independent consultants to put client testimonials on the back burner. You know you want to capture testimonials and case studies. You put them on your to-do list but they don’t become a priority. Without a standard operating procedure, there will never be a “good” time to ask a client for a testimonial. It gets pushed off and pushed off, and suddenly, it’s been too long, or the fe...

Generating a steady stream of new consulting opportunities is crucial to building a successful independent consulting business. Often we rely on marketplaces, networking, and past employers to generate leads. When you master the ability to land new clients independently, opportunities are endless. Today, I share the best strategy for getting your foot in the door with new consulting clients. Where...

In this episode, I reveal the pricing mistake almost every independent consultant makes while growing their business. When pricing out a consulting proposal, it’s common to think about what a client will be willing to pay and focus on how to hit that number. Most consultants are overly influenced by their assumptions about the client’s acceptance when it comes to pricing.  And, as a result, they f...

I am excited to introduce Jon Younger Ph. D. on this episode. Jon is a thought leader in the consulting space as a long-term consultant, author, and expert in the Future of Work. Today Jon joins me in discussing the evolution of work for consultants. We look at both sides of the consulting equation. First, Jon talks about the four stages of freelancing and consulting and what success looks like in...

In this episode, I share a tool to help you solve problems or blocks that you’re having in your consulting business. This tool helps you unlock strategies you’ve hidden in the back of your brain and will eliminate the hesitation and resistance that have prevented you from implementing those strategies. This tool helps you to see where you might be going through the motions but not actually creatin...

You’ve landed a speaking gig, but now what?  You want to make sure your speaking engagement creates leads for your consulting business. It’s important to carefully plan how you’re going to convert the audience members into leads for your consulting business, so you make the most out of the opportunity.  This episode is part two of the series focused on leveraging speaking engagements to build your...

One of the most effective methods of filling and maintaining a consistent consulting pipeline is speaking. Yet, many independent consultants overlook or avoid speaking. You might be thinking, “I’m not ready to be a public speaker” or “I don’t like public speaking.” Or, you might be thinking you need a portfolio, speaker’s reel, and other assets that feel time-consuming and challenging to create. O...

Setting up consulting retainers with your clients is a great way to create more predictability and repeatability in your business.  Whether you want to center your business around retainers or you want this to be another service offering in your portfolio, it will help you end the “feast-or-famine” cycle. In this episode, I'm going to walk you through the three steps to make this happen for y...

Does running your independent consulting business feel heavy, unsustainable, or dull ? This is a normal part of doing business. If you want longevity in your consulting business, it’s important to build up the skills to r ecognize and shorten these cycles when your business feels hard or unsustainable. In this episode, I share how to recognize and diagnose the root causes of your business feeling...

A goal I hear so often from my independent consultant business owner clients is, “I want to be making more than I would have been making had I stayed in corporate.” For you, that could translate to making ~$500k in your independent consultant business. You might be far away from $500k, you might be past it, or you might be in a spot where a lot of consultants are, somewhere in the $200k and $300k...

We’d all love to close 100% of the consulting engagements in our pipeline. Wouldn’t it feel so liberating if every one of your prospects signed a contract for a lucrative consulting project? The reality is that you won’t win every consulting opportunity. In this episode you’ll hear why losing consulting deals is not a problem. In fact, if you're not losing deals, it's highly likely that...

Ultimately, your goal in a discovery meeting is to fully understand your consulting prospect’s challenges and goals so you can recommend a compelling set of solutions.  In this episode, I  share a framework you can use to make your discovery meetings more valuable. Listen in as I share  what a discovery meeting is (and what it isn't),  the goals of a discovery meeting,  what your mindset need...

Today we’re talking about making more money in your consulting business. One of the ways that you can make more money is by selling follow-on consulting work. Selling follow-on work is an area of opportunity for most independent consultants because most of us don’t have an intentional process to sell work to our existing clients. Having a strategic plan to sell, qualify, and sell follow-on work ca...

Most independent consultants either avoid or overcomplicate value propositions because value propositions can feel confusing, complicated, or impossible to get right. Without a clear and compelling value proposition, you can be leaving a lot of money on the table and also making your consulting business harder than it needs to be. I'm excited to share some tangible next steps for you to conti...

Today we're talking about doubling your consulting revenue.  A fear that most consultants have about doubling their revenue is that by pursuing this goal, they’ll double everything else: their stress level, workload, and more. This doesn't have to be the case. In today's episode, I’ll help you understand the four steps to make more money with more fulfillment, more impact, more stra...