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During the first few weeks of the new year, I dedicated quite a bit of time to reflect. I thought back on the communications I had in 2022. I reviewed all the audits I conducted. I went back to all the notes I made following discussions with consulting leaders and individual consultants.

I observed a lot of anxiety and gloom building up, especially toward the end of the year. "We need to tighten our belts" was a general feeling as many consulting firms were scrambling to adjust their strategy as the news articles were predicting a doomsday – the economic recession.

As a result, much of my time was spent helping consultancies understand two things:

(1) there is a sea of opportunities in hard economic times – it depends on the ability to anticipate new needs and re-evaluate own consulting positioning;

(2) many of the problems consultancies anticipate are simply being brought to the surface by the recession – they are not new problems, but there is a solution.

I also had a chance to speak to many high-performing consultancies. I've collected pages of notes on what makes them so successful. So I made it a point in 2023 to share as many of these learnings as I could – via my blog, the newsletter, and my LinkedIn posts.

So let's do a recap of the advice I shared with consultancies so far this year.

The Visible Authority blog

1. Relying On the Network Is A High-Risk Consulting Growth Strategy

There is nothing wrong with nurturing and growing a business network and relationships. Hell, I’m a big network guy myself. Don’t get me wrong! As a keynote speaker at 100+ conferences, I never missed the opportunity to meet prospects and add them to my network.

However, I was never reliant on my network ONLY to grow my consulting business. Building relationships was never my ultimate goal but rather the result of my expertise, my visibility and reputation on the market.?

In this article, I discuss why consultancies that heavily skew their business development efforts towards relationship-building place numerous limitations on their business growth.

2. High-Performing Consultancies Train Their New Hires on These 5 Things in the First Month

One of the things I see consultancies often struggle with is consultant recruitment, onboarding, learning and development, and retention.?

Not when it comes to high-performing consulting firms, though, which tend to operate in a highly synchronized and efficient manner. Everyone is working towards a unified goal. And retention doesn’t seem to be that big a hassle for them. Why? They have a solid employee management system that starts with the induction process of new hires.

This is what I discuss in this post – the common things I’ve observed high-performing consultancies train their new consultants on in the first month.

3. The Way a Consultancy Manages Its Pipeline Is the Way It Manages the Consultancy

For a service business of any type, the pipeline of work is the single most important indicator of business health. And consultancies are no exception. The pipeline represents potential revenue, growth opportunities, resource demands, and recruitment needs.?

However, managing a consulting pipeline effectively is no easy feat. It requires consulting leaders to have a deep understanding of their market, clients, service offering design, and internal capabilities.?In my experience, there is a strong connection between how consultancies manage their pipelines and how they manage their business internally, which is what I talk about in this post.

4. Without Thought Leadership, Consultancies Will Fail

Every year,?Grist conducts research ?into thought leadership trends in the advisory industry. Hands down, this is one of the best thought leadership studies in the world.

I was able to get a sneak peek at the 2023 edition of the study. Without revealing too much information or all of the statistics, in this post, I comment on a few trends that consultancies MUST be aware of.

5. Your Consultancy’s Slowdown Isn't the Economy's Fault

Newsflash: there has never been a perfect time for fast growth and business. This period of time just has more convenient excuses.?

But even at the economy's peak, I still heard excuses from otherwise very respectable consultancy founders for why their consultancies weren’t growing as expected. People are very good at finding new ways to see the problem instead of looking for a solution.

Hard as it may be to hear, there’s always a solution. There’s always a better or different way of doing things. Maybe there’s a new strategy you can pursue, or maybe you can just hang in there until things get better. But the key step is to stop thinking of new ways to see the problem.?

6. 4 Lessons Learned From A Consultancy Due Diligence

I recently assisted an investment firm with the due diligence of buying a consultancy. Of course, the investors did all the usual due diligence stuff – evaluating the P&L, balance sheet, contracts, client analysis, assets, and liabilities - to name a few - of the consultancy. However, on top of that, they wanted to gain a deeper understanding of a few additional dimensions.

I derived some valuable insights from this project that I believe all consultancies should pay attention to – irrespective of whether they are looking to attract investors, and that's what I discuss in this article.

7. Why Variation in Consulting Does Not Sell

I had a surprising call with a (very) tired consulting leader. To provide a bit of context, the chat was about the focus and expertise of his boutique consultancy. I challenged him on his firm’s (lack of) focus.

I’ve had variations of this conversation on more than one occasion. In fact, I have such conversations constantly. With tired, drained and overstretched consulting leaders. They work long hours trying to figure out how to keep their firm afloat.

One thing these firms have in common? They love the variation in the work of their firms. In this post, I explain why variation in consulting stagnates, as opposed to boosts, business growth.

8. My Biggest Learnings in 10+ Years of Consulting Work

In this overview, I share the ten main consulting lessons I’ve learned in the past years. Many are based on what I’ve come across during my project work with consultancies, while others are based on what consulting leaders have shared with me in the past few years.

9. 10 Consulting Trends: 2023 Edition

I have spoken to 100+ consulting leaders in 2022. I also hosted webinars, received countless emails with questions from individual consultants, read thought leadership content by consultancies, reviewed business plans of firms both small and large, and audited the positioning of 30+ consultancies and worked with those consulting firms to improve their positioning and business development in the market.?

Here, I’m sharing the 10 most pronounced trends that I’ve observed in my projects, research, and audits.

10. 140+ Pieces of Advice I Shared with Consultancies on LinkedIn in 2022

While the more in-depth analysis and recommendations I tend to post on my blog, I also make it a point to regularly share advice through LinkedIn – bite-sized observations and tips, if you will.?

I decided to aggregate all the posts where I take a closer look at individual pain points in the consulting space and make suggestions on overcoming them. And here it is – a library of 140+ pieces of advice I shared on LinkedIn this year.

11. Do You Need New Consulting Services to Fight the Recession?

There are various strategies that businesses adopt to survive economic uncertainty. Some impose severe budget cuts. Some streamline their product and service lines. Many go on hiring freezes.?

A common strategy I observed many consultancies adopt when anticipating challenging economic periods is?creating new services to catch more opportunities.

I consider this a mistake. Why? That's what I explain in this article.

12. A Business Development Template Consultancies Can Use to Introduce Their Firms

When pitching a consulting firm to potential clients, what's the best way to introduce them? Most consulting leaders default to talking about the consultancy’s history or impressive lineup of consultants.?

But there's a better way to make an impression - by highlighting the firm's unique achievements in solving problems. In other words, focus on your firm's client-centered outcomes that were achieved in previous projects.?I explain this in detail in this post.

13. I Never Had To Sell, Persuade Or Negotiate To Grow My Consulting Business

I got (and still get) this question all the time: is my continuous audience education work paying off?

Well…it’s paying off big time. For more than a decade now. People keep asking me – often somewhat skeptically – if my hard content work has been paying off, has helped me to grow my consulting business in the past years.?

The truth though is that visibility is the only thing that is going to make a firm stand out in a crowded and very competitive consulting world.?

14. Furiously Successful Consultancies Put All Their Eggs in One Basket.

I am experiencing it every day in my talks to consultancies: most of them struggle with the concept of narrowing their focus to deepen their expertise, their authority, their visibility in the market, their plain growth.

It’s too tempting to focus on creating?wide?expertise instead of?deep?expertise. They try to cater to numerous types of clients, instead of being a seen as true experts in one area. Keeping the options open. As a result, most consultancies aren’t seeing the results they want.

Here, I discuss why focus is the only way consulting firms can get the truly enormous results that will make them top of mind with their prospects.

15. Consultancies Will Always Have a Time Problem Until They Do This

When it comes to business development and business growth, marketing has to be added to the priority list. Experts within a firm have to allocate a sufficient amount of time to it on a consistent basis. Sporadic marketing will fail to yield the types of results that would fuel business growth in a real, meaningful way.

In this post, I break down the specific time strategy techniques that will help consulting leaders and their teams free up 30% of their time and allocate it towards marketing.

16. Why You Should Reverse-Engineer Your Consulting Service Offering

I received an interesting question from a partner in a consultancy. Due to the small size of the consultancy, he and his colleagues frequently get asked by buyers whether they have enough capacity – people and/or expertise – to deliver. “How would you react to that?” he asked me.

This is a really great question and not the first time the subject comes up in my discussions with consultants. And why wouldn’t it? From the clients’ perspective, this is a reasonable inquiry. Right?

Well, the inquiry is reasonable, but it does point to a larger problem in the consultancy. I elaborate on that in this post.