How to accelerate the growth of your consulting firm [2021]?

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How to Accelerate the Growth of Your Consulting Firm

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he consulting firms operate in a highly competitive environment and the role of management teams is to set a course and a positioning that will promote the growth of the firm. Beyond this strategy, it is necessary to exploit the right marketing and sales channels, which are constantly evolving, in order to support the growth of the company. Here are 3 major steps needed to accelerate your consulting practice.[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row type=”in_container” full_screen_row_position=”middle” scene_position=”center” text_color=”dark” text_align =”left” overlay_strength=”0.3″ shape_divider_position=”bottom” bg_image_animation=”none”][vc_column column_padding=”no-extra-padding” column_padding_position=”all” background_color_opacity=”1″ background_hover_color_opacity=”1″ column_link_target=”_self ” column_shadow=”none” column_border_radius=”none” width=”1/1″ tablet_width_inherit=”default” tablet_text_alignment=”default” phone_text_alignment=”default” column_border_width=”none” column_border_style=”solid” bg_image_animation=”none”][ vc_column_text] 1. Expand marketing
Writing and deploying a marketing strategy adapted to your business is becoming more important every day. The way in which potential clients report their difficulties and the commercial approach usually implemented by consulting firms are increasingly diverging.

Historically, the marketing approach of consulting firms essentially consisted of increasing the visibility of the firm with sponsorship, participating in events to seek potential clients and exchanging business cards by regularly following up on the contacts created. However, current buyers of services and particularly consulting, do much more online research on their issues than before, and only contact consulting firms much later in their reflection process.

Hive, a research company in the professional services sector, showed in a study that the majority of clients of consulting companies do their research online, by reading blog articles, publications or listening to experts talk about their problems.

This is where consulting firms can assert themselves as experts in their fields, highlight their positioning and increase their reputation. Be the expert that prospective clients find on Google, publish articles and analyses, educate the market on the issues you understand. After a few months, you will have gained this reputation and will be invited to speak in public, which will allow you to consolidate your position.[/vc_column_text][vc_column_text] 2. Create an effective lead generation engine

Outbound : Deploy outbound and inbound marketing channels, and measure the performance of each:

Regular email contacts : you will proactively and regularly get in touch with your contacts. Every opportunity is good for them to keep your firm in mind. An event linked to their sector, an innovation that may interest them or an event in which they could participate, any opportunity to engage in an exchange with them is a good one to take.

Writing a white paper : You can also write a white paper or an e-book on subjects that your firm has particular expertise in. It is a truly effective tool for engaging a new contact and making your skills credible compared to your competitors. A white paper requires spending time on research and writing, but it is a very profitable investment because it gives you the content needed to justify contacting more prospects: providing value through the content you distribute a much more effective than an exchange of business cards. Finally, the white paper can be distributed for 1 to 3 years depending on the subject, so you will easily pay for it.

Inbound : make prospects come to you naturally

Content creation : a very powerful channel, but be careful, not with just any content! It is imperative to produce quality content, with information that provides maximum value to your prospects, otherwise it will eventually bring traffic to your site, but will have no effect on your sales. Some associates are reluctant to share content because they view their knowledge as a competitive advantage that should be kept secret. Don't be afraid to share your knowledge, as important as it is, making it available in an article will only increase your credibility and interest, and represent just a sample of everything you can contribute. The blog article will not allow the customer to resolve their problem alone thanks to your content, but they will know that your firm is an expert in this area.

Add this content to a section of your commercial site, to allow the reader to then read your value proposition, see your customers... Little by little, your content will bring traffic to your site and your visibility will increase. By optimizing your SEO, you will quickly increase visits to your site and give yourself a greater chance of being contacted.

Retain visitors : Don't let visitors leave your site, or finish reading your content without creating next engagement. It is not necessarily to push them to contact you, but for example to subscribe to your newsletter. By subscribing, they will provide you with information that will allow you to integrate them into your CRM and better monitor them. A simple content visitor becomes a followed contact, who will regularly receive information that is useful to them. You can be sure that when a need arises, they will think of you first.[/vc_column_text][vc_column_text] 3. Organize the team
Like any other company, turnover can only grow with the right level of focus on business activity. Of course the associates are at the origin of most commercial results, but having at least one sales manager allows you to better concentrate efforts, to test new markets, and not to limit yourself to the network of associates.

Creating this manager position also makes it possible to bring the rigor necessary for commercial success: cleaning contact databases, updating them, segmenting contacts and qualifying them (differentiating them between prospects or simple contacts), determining what is the right time to “touch” these contacts, prepare proposals… There is no shortage of work, and without rigorous monitoring of opportunities, some will be wasted, contacts re-launched too late, and growth will not be as rapid as expected.

Finally, you need to make sure that all this marketing and sales work is profitable. It is therefore necessary to have a solution that allows you to track the time spent by your employees on each project, whether internal or commercial activity on well-defined opportunities. Measuring the performance of your business activities is as important as implementing them.

These business approaches are proven to work, and marketing continues to evolve rapidly with new channels constantly opening up and technology that increasingly optimizes your marketing. We will share this with you in future posts, and don't hesitate to let us know what you would like to have more details on![/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row]