One of the most common scenarios that consultancy firms experience is what I call the sales roller coaster. That is where the firm goes from being busy with client delivery work for a while, maybe a month or two, and then goes through a subsequent period of having not enough work and needing to find new clients or projects. The main reason this occurs is that when the firm is experiencing a shortage of work, the focus shifts to finding more work.
However, the activities involved in finding new clients or projects are labour intensive and typically not the favourite type of work that consultants enjoy. It does get results though, which means that when the need arises, these activities, typically networking oriented, are the fall back strategy that consultants use. But when they succeed in generating new work, the focus shifts to getting the work done and happily, the networking activities are dropped in favour of doing the client delivery work that is either more enjoyable or more likely to generate more income in the short term.
This common approach is what keeps growth for the firm limited and commonly, even though over the months, sales results are up and down like a roller coaster ride, the annual results somehow tend to be about the same as the last few years. Growth hits a plateau that seems the limit to how high the firm can go.
The only way to break through this plateau and avoid the sales roller coaster syndrome is to develop a consistent marketing outreach system that operates continuously in the background without requiring the time and involvement of the consultants who are focused on client delivery work. If you only ever operate with a short term focus and continue to create the roller coaster ride by continually shifting focus to marketing or delivery when the need arises, nothing will change.
In this podcast episode, I reveal how to change the roller coaster scenario and avoid the ups and downs in work loads and short term revenue, by building a system that provides consistency and predictability in client acquisition and provides the platform for growth beyond the revenue plateau you may be experiencing.
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