Skills to grow your reputation and revenue
Three stages to growing your business and landing the work you would love to do
Over the past few weeks we have been exploring our consulting skills competency framework which sets out the 5 key skill areas you need to develop as a consultant.
Here we will dive into the area we call Grow. These are the skills you need to build your reputation and grow revenue. This includes creating a business development mindset and toolkit, growing your network, managing your pipeline, developing proposals, and having successful sales conversations.
Ultimately, it’s about getting the projects that you want to do with the clients that you want to work with.
There are three main parts to this:
Attracting new prospects,
Building trust with them over time,
Converting to a sale when the time is right.
Let’s explore each of those in turn.
Attracting new prospects
In today’s world, the key words here are Visible Authority. You need to be building personal brand and reputation by demonstrating expertise, experience, and competency. Think of your personal brand as self-packaging. It can be summed up as the way other people perceive you and their experience of having a relationship with you.
For consultants, the opportunity to build personal brand and attract new prospects is likely to be greatest on LinkedIn. It does require some focused effort but most consultants don't do it, so the opportunity to stand out is huge.
These are the principles we follow at Honeycomb for personal brand building.
Our new leads come primarily from recommendations or through LinkedIn, where we share our frameworks and tools, run free webinars and workshops, and take time to engage with others. If you want to see that in action, have a look at the LinkedIn pages of our MDs, Deri (click here) and Colin (click here).
Building trust over time
The second stage is essentially just consulting.
You need to be advising the client on the problems that they've got and the best way to solve them. Some of those solutions may be things that you can help with, but don't worry about that yet. This is about giving to them, putting yourself in their shoes, and being centred on what it is that they might need.
As your relationship develops, remain mindful of what it takes to build trustworthiness and work on improving your ‘scores’ in these four areas.
1. Credibility - do you know your subject matter?
2. Reliability - do you deliver what you say you will?
3. Intimacy - do you make people feel safe and secure?
4. Self-orientation - are you able to focus on the other person more than yourself?
Most effective consultants can do this job effectively if they have the right mindset around it.
Converting to a sale
This is the bit that people often find challenging. And understandably so. Flipping a relationship into a sales conversation requires a careful hand.
A fear of sales is common and we have a separate article on shifting your mindset on sales.
The goal here is to shift your mindset from, "I need to win some consulting work" to, "This person has a problem I can help with". That shift can be transformational.
Imagine viewing sales not as pushing a product or service, but as offering solutions and value to potential clients who need them. It's a perspective that can transform the sales process from a source of dread to an opportunity for impact.
On a practical level, one technique we recommend is ‘The Turn’. This is simply an explicit ask: “We think we could help you with this problem that we've been discussing. Are you open to a conversation about that?”
The Turn can help you open the door and get permission to have the conversation. Everything feels much more comfortable from there.
Whilst the work of attracting new prospects, building trust, and converting to a sale may be sequential for a given client, consultants must become competent carrying out these activities continuously to maintain their pipeline. The gold comes when you get good enough at this to both attract the clients you most desire and create a sufficient number of leads that you can be choosey about the work you take on.
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There are several other ways you can interact with Honeycomb Consulting Skills Training….
Connect with Deri Hughes (Founder & MD) on LinkedIn
Connect with Colin Mann (MD) on LinkedIn
Book a 30 minute intro call with Deri Hughes
Stay informed about our free workshops and webinars - follow Honeycomb on LinkedIn or visit our website.