Why Your Consulting Business Is Slow

Author: Melisa Liberman

Host of the ???Grow Your Independent Consulting Business podcast &?

Creator of the?? IC Business Scalability Scorecard

Slow business got you down?

I talk to independent consultants day in and day out, and some of them are facing the challenge of their consulting business being too slow.

If you’re in the same boat, I’m here to let you know that it doesn’t have to be this way.

But before you can make the necessary changes to move your consulting business from slow to thriving, you’re going to have to accept a really hard truth.

You are the reason your consulting business is slow. But the good news is…you have all the power to fix it.

In today’s article, we’ll discuss:

• The root cause of your slow business.
• What a pipeline is and the importance of a healthy pipeline.
• The 4 belief systems that make up a strong business owner’s mindset.

The first step that will get you from slow to thriving is understanding why it happens.

An unhealthy pipeline is the root cause of your slow consulting business.

Yep, I said it. I hope it didn’t sting too much. But it’s a fact. If you have a healthy pipeline, your business would NOT be slow because:

• If a client dropped off from your services, you would have another client lined up to replace them
• If you finished a project for a client, you would have another client to replace them in the pipeline.
• If a client in the pipeline that you thought was going to close didn't end up closing, you would have another one to replace them.

Do you see the trend here? This is what a healthy pipeline looks like!?

?

So- why is the pipeline in your independent consulting business unhealthy?

I'm going to be really direct with you. You are the cause of your slow, unhealthy pipeline. Therefore, you are the cause of your slow business.?

I'm not here telling you this to make you feel bad. I believe in you and your independent consulting business. It is my passion to help make every independent consultant successful! I'm saying this to you so that you really see the stark and honest facts of the situation. You created this slowness in your business because of the lack of health in your pipeline.

The following things did not contribute to your independent consulting business being slow:

• The economy
• The time of year
• The fact that you should have just picked a different lead-generation process
• The strategy you chose
• Your pricing

These things did not create an unhealthy pipeline. You and your current mindset are creating a lack of results in your pipeline.?

The good news is you're the one who created this situation in your independent consulting business, and you're the one who has all the power to be able to fix it.?

You don't have to:?

• Wait for the economy to get better
• Wait for all the economic uncertainty to go away
• Wait for the time of year to change in order for you to turn your business around and create a healthier pipeline

You can start moving your IC business away from being slow into thriving now.?

You have the power to do that. There are plenty of reasons why it might have happened, but it’s not a problem because you have the power to change it. Before we can do that, we have to make sure we fully understand what a few things are.

What is a pipeline?

According to salesforce.com, a sales pipeline is a visual representation of where all your prospects are in the sales process. This allows you to gauge likely revenue, and it provides a snapshot of the health of your business. After all, you can't manage what you don't measure.?

Imagine a pipeline as a free-flowing river. If there are problems upstream, there will eventually be problems downstream. Pipeline management allows you to catch tiny problems before they become big problems that impact revenue. With it, you can estimate how much you might close in a given week, month, or quarter.

There are 7 different stages of a sales pipeline.

1. Prospecting/lead generation
2. Lead qualification
3. Solution design
4. Proposal
5. Commitment
6. Contract execution
7. Delivery.

What is lead generation?

According to freshsales.com, lead generation is the process of finding and attracting people who are likely to become your clients immediately or in the future. These might be:

• Executive sponsors
• Stakeholders or buyers
• People in corporate with a problem

Now that we have that under our belt, let’s get down to why your pipeline in your independent consulting business is unhealthy.

Truthfully, it all boils down to one thing…the way that you're thinking AKA your mindset. Your mindset is literally driving everything. Let me break it down for you.

I want you to think of a house. It has walls and a roof, but in order to be sturdy, it has to sit on a firm foundation. Your mindset is like the foundation of a house. It's what everything is built upon. So any strategy, any tactic, or any way that you end up operating is like the house on top of that foundation.

Without that firm, sturdy foundation, everything will crumble.?

If you don’t get into a business owner’s mindset, that’s when things start to get shaky. What ends up happening is you're working off of a foundation that you have basically just taken for granted. It's probably an old employee-based foundation that you created at some point along the way, and you haven't cultivated it to make it really strong and fit for purpose for what you're doing now.?

When you create that strong foundation, which again is the mindset of a business owner, and you create it very intentionally, it becomes a very strong, solid, and sturdy anchor for you. Almost anything you put on top of it will work. When something happens and you have a shaky foundation, it becomes really hard to continue moving forward, being resilient, and being able to solve a problem.

There are 4 belief systems that create a strong foundation for you as a business owner.

Belief System #1: The thoughts you have about yourself.?

Do you see the difference between these two statements?

“I'm not good at sales. I'm not good at selling my services.”?

VS.?

“I'm learning I've done this before in a different way, and I'm learning how to do it.”

There is a stark difference between the two. The second statement will lead to a much better solution or outcome for you. One of them creates slowness in your business and a really withering pipeline. The other one creates the kind of dynamic where you get to the place where you have more work than you can handle.?

Belief System #2: The thoughts about your potential clients.

• What do you think about your potential clients?
• What do you think your potential clients are thinking about in terms of problems they need to be solved?
• What do you think your potential clients are thinking about you?

Belief System #3: The thoughts about your services and offers.

• What do you think about the services you provide?
• What do you think about the offers you have created?
• Do you feel like you are creating offers for services that bring you joy? Why or why not?

Belief System #4: The thought about the lead generation process you have created for yourself and your business.

• Does it bring you joy?
• Does it feel authentic to you?
• Do you feel like it’s too hard to keep up?

These are the 4 four belief systems that you have to rock solid in order to then put a process on top of to fill your pipeline.

Why does the success of your independent consulting business come down to these belief systems instead of a strategy?

I used to think that fact that whether or not your business is slow or thriving was dependent upon your mindset was completely made up. To me, it was all about strategy. And you might be in the same situation where you're constantly searching for the right answer that will unlock the ability to create this repeatable, consistent pipeline.

But after doing this for so long for myself, and working with so many consultants who've struggled with the same thing, I've realized that I was wrong. I was wrong for probably 5 years, maybe longer.?

I was constantly trying to figure out how one strategy worked for one person and not for another person in a similar field. Was it because of their skills? Was it because of who they were or who they knew? Time and time again, the answer to this question came down to the nuance of the way they were thinking and how much they believed in themselves.

It all rests on your ability to have an unwavering belief in yourself, as a business owner, that you will crush it in the delivery of that consulting service.

• It’s about you having a rock-solid belief in your potential clients.?
• It’s about talking to a prospect and giving them the benefit of the doubt that they want to work with you.?
• It’s about you going for the assumptive process versus waiting and being skeptical to see if they give you a sign that they want to keep moving forward.?
• It’s about having an unwavering belief that whatever lead-generation process you choose is going to be successful.?

If you have a rock-solid belief in what you chose, and know it's going to work, it ends up becoming a self-fulfilling prophecy.?

This unwavering belief is going to be the difference between slow vs. thriving, ups vs. downs, and healthy vs. unhealthy pipelines in your independent consulting business.?

Be sure to come back next week for an article where I'm going to go through exactly what to do about this in order to build up those belief systems so that they are unwavering and rock solid. I will share strategies with you to help you create and reinforce these belief systems, and to help you redirect when things become shaky.

Until then, I suggest you dive in and figure out for yourself, where you might have that shaky belief about yourself. You can do this by sitting down and journaling for a little bit. Go through the 4 belief systems from this article and answer the questions I listed.

Would you like a step-by-step process to fill your consulting pipeline in 26 minutes a day?

Go over to melisaliberman.com/RAM and download my free guide. It’s a great compliment to this article as well as next week’s article. It will really help you get into action and start addressing pipeline health from a more strategic perspective.