15 Consulting Best Practices: How Elite Consultants Run Their Firms

What are the best practices for running a successful consulting business?

After helping several hundred solo consultants and small firm owners build strategic and profitable consulting businesses in our Clarity Coaching Program, we’ve observed what works in the field.

By the end of this article, you’ll have 15 best practices to implement — and be in the driver’s seat to start seeing immediate results in your consulting business.

Ready? Let’s dive in…

NOTE FROM COACHES IN THE CLARITY PROGRAM: Instead of trying to implement all of these consulting best practices at once, start with just 1 every week or two. Follow the instructions on our blog, take imperfect action, and measure the difference it makes. Once you feel as though you have a good handle on one of the best practices, try implementing another one.

Delivering Successful Consulting Projects

1. Follow A Proven Process

Follow a consistent consulting process when you are delivering work for clients. Developing a consistent process will make your projects run smoothly and stress-free, creating better and quicker results for your clients.

Here’s a high-level overview of a typical consulting process:

Step 1: Assess – In this step, you are assessing the client’s situation and current condition.
Step 2: Plan – In this step, you create a plan: the action steps that must occur for the project to succeed.
Step 3: Implementation – In this step, you implement the action steps from step 2 — either delivering them yourself, or, like most consultants, guiding or advising the team responsible for implementing.
Step 4: Optimization – In this phase, you’ll optimize your offer to ensure your client gets consistent results through retainers like ongoing coaching, training, mentorship, etc.

Example: Prior to joining Consulting Success®, Vanessa Bennett didn’t the kind of formal and structured process she wanted for her firm. Everything was custom and bespoke. This customization ate up a ton of time and limited her firm’s capacity. However, by streamlining her firm’s processes (specifically the onboarding process), Vanessa was able to take on far more clients. And as a result, their revenue is up 30%.

Further Reading: Proven Consulting Process: 4 Steps To Successful Projects

2. Leverage Productization

Productization is a type of consulting offer that is NOT customized to individual clients. Instead of creating a unique solution for each buyer, you create the same solution applicable to all of your buyers.

Whereas a typical consulting project might be 80% custom and 20% productized. A true productized offer will be 80% productized and the same for each client, with a much smaller percentage of that project being custom to the client.

Creating a productized offer begins starts with identifying the problem that you are solving — a problem that your clients want to solve the most. Think about the exact steps you would take to solve that problem. With productization, you package those steps to create your productized offer.

Example: Prior to joining the Clarity coaching program, Alexandra Craig, a WordPress & Salesforce consulting firm, offered highly custom services. This prevented her from growing and scaling her firm. By productizing her offers into packages that were fixed in both price and scope, she was able to deliver more work with greater efficiency and results. For example, she used to offer discovery work for free — and now, she charges 10K+ for that same work. The difference? She productized it.

Further Reading: Consultant’s Guide to Productization: How To Productize Consulting Services

3. Use Consulting Retainers

Consulting retainers are the consultant’s version of recurring revenue. Instead of being charged for a project, your clients pay a fee for a) your work, or b) access to your expertise.

Use consulting retainers whenever your clients require your work or your expertise on an ongoing basis. These offers will help stabilize your income and ensure your clients get consistent, ongoing results.

Example: When Vince Rath started his consulting business, he was charging a standard daily rate. However, if a client rescheduled or something unexpected came up, he would lose all of the revenue for that day because he worked onsite with his clients.

To eliminate this revenue rollercoaster, we helped Vince create and sell a monthly retainer offer. These offers have his clients access to his expertise on a monthly basis. Now, Vince earns a more consistent income — and has added $600K in new revenue to his consulting business.

Further Reading: 2 Types of Consulting Retainers (& How to Use Them Effectively)

Instead of trying to implement all of these consulting best practices at once, start with just 1 every week or two. Follow the instructions on our blog, take imperfect action, and measure the difference it makes.

Marketing A Consulting Business

4. Get Clear On Your Revenue Goals

Consultants who write down their goals are much more likely to achieve them. This is especially true when it comes to getting consulting clients.

So, write down…

Your monthly revenue goal
How much your average project is worth
How many conversations with ideal clients it takes to win a project

This will help you be precise about the daily actions it takes to reach your monthly goals: like how many of your ideal clients you should reach out to per day or how many conversations you must have with them per month.

Example: Doug Nelson was fairly new to consulting when he joined the Clarity coaching program. When he learned about the Magic # Exercise — and writing down his targets — he put them up on sticky pads all over his home. This renewed clarity and focus helped him reach out to more clients because he knew exactly how many he had to reach out to each day. This simple number was the driving force that inspired him to increase his firm’s revenue from $400K to over $2M.

Further Reading: Consulting Sales: 10 Techniques To Get More Consulting Clients

5. Develop A Magnetic Message

Develop your Magnetic Message: a concise statement that explains who you work with and the value you provide to them. It’s a marketing message that gets the attention and interest of your ideal clients.

Here’s the formula:

I help [WHO] to [solve WHAT problem] so they can [see WHAT results]. My [WHY choose me]…

WHO: Who you serve.
WHAT (Problem): What problem you solve for them.
WHAT (Result): What result you create for them.
WHY: Why they should choose you.

With an enticing and specific Magnetic Message, you’ll have messaging that helps to attract the attention of your ideal consulting clients and start conversations with them.

Example: Jason Fearnow, a consultant to mining companies and executives in the natural resources space, used to struggle with marketing. He didn’t know how to communicate the value he could create for his clients without coming across as “salesy.” Through our program, we helped him develop a powerful message that attracted his ideal clients due to the specificity and authority it conveyed. His newfound grasp on marketing and messaging helped him begin earning more than 6 figures — in a single month.

Further Reading: 8 Powerful Value Proposition Examples (& How To Write Yours)

6. Market From B2B, Not From B2C

B2C (business to consumer) marketing is a different beast from B2B marketing. Consumers will often spend time watching lengthy webinars, even if they are automated. They will scroll for days on social media. They will go through complex funnels. Buyers of high-value consulting services rarely do any of those things. It’s critical that you recognize this difference.

B2B marketing, on the other hand, is different. Because you are selling high-touch, customized consulting services (and not off-the-shelf products), you need to focus on building a relationship and providing value. Here’s the key principle: each executive you reach out to should feel like: “Wow, this person is speaking directly to me and my needs. They really understand my situation, our industry and know a LOT about this issue/result that we want to work on. They know more than I do!”

Example: Matt Domo works with software companies to help them improve their technology and engineering processes. He came into this business as a technologist, not a marketer. At the beginning, he didn’t know how to reach his ideal clients: software company executives. But through the Clarity coaching program, Matt learned how to write personalized and valuable direct outreach emails that his potential clients read and responded to. He’s since doubled his revenue — and was even recognized as one of the top nine entrepreneurs in 2021 by USA Today.

Further Reading: Selling To Executives: What Works For B2B Consultants (& What Doesn’t)

Pricing & Creating Consulting Offers

7. Conduct The Value Conversation

When you’re selling your consulting services, it’s critical that you understand the economic and intangible value your services will create for the buyer.

And in order to do that, you’ll have to conduct a value conversation.

The purpose of the value conversation is for you and your client to clarify and agree upon the economic outcomes and total potential impact that your offer creates for them.

For example, charging $75K might seem like a lot for your service. But, when your client understands that they will gain $750K in additional revenue over 12 months, that $75K becomes a superb investment. Where else will they get a 10X ROI in their business?

Example: Howard Bryant struck out on his own after many years in the corporate world. However, one of the most pressing challenges he faced was consulting sales. We should Howeard how to clarify his offer and structure his offering. This came directly from learning to navigate a productive value conversation, where he asked penetrating questions to uncover his client’s problems and desired future state. Using this approach, he won a big consulting contract with a major client: a client he had dreamed about working with.

Further Reading: How To Package Consulting Services: 5-Steps To Six-Figure Offers

8. Sell A Discovery Offer

A discovery session is a smaller-scope, lower-priced, introductory service to offer your consulting clients. It enables you to get your “foot in the door” with clients and get them a quick result. Discovery offers are smaller, lower-risk investments for your client, and they allow you to demonstrate your value and expertise to the client. Think about them as a way to provide your client with a quick win. The first sale is always the hardest to make. That’s why after delivering your discovery offer you’ll be in a great place to provide and deliver a full, higher-priced higher-value, next engagement.

Example: Software/Technology consultant Sam Schutte used to do free discovery work for clients before presenting them with a proposal. It didn’t work. “I can’t get approval for this amount of money,” his buyers would respond after reading his proposal. Sam regularly charges 6-figures for his consulting work.

Going from free consulting to $100K+ consulting threw his clients off. So instead of giving away this discovery session work for free, he began charging for it. For $2500-$5000, he’ll spend an afternoon with the client and make a plan for their project. They work out if their goals are feasible, what it would take to accomplish them, potential roadblocks, etc. There is tremendous value in these types of conversations for your client -— value you should be charging for.

Now, Sam begins 100% of his consulting projects with a discovery offer. Recently, he used his discovery offer to create the opportunity for a $250,000 engagement — and has increased his firm’s revenue by 60%.

Further Reading: The Discovery Session: How to Create & Sell Introductory Services

9. Price Based On Value

Value pricing is where you charge based on the value you create for the client. It’s one of the best ways to charge more for your expertise without having to do more work or provide more deliverables. Once the value has been established, you can make a compelling case for how your value-based price and fee is a significant ROI for the buyer.

Once you have the value conversation and understand the value you’ll create for the client, a simple rule of thumb is to charge 1/5th of the ROI you’ll create for them. So, if your marketing consultant services will generate $750K in revenue in 1 year, you can make a powerful case for charging $150K. This isn’t a law and there are several factors that will influence what your fee should be. This is the kind of thing we work closely with our Clarity coaching clients on so they can maximize their fees.

Example: Stephen Fleming, a research consultant, was determined to grow his consulting business. We taught him how to grow his business by charging based on the value he created for his clients.

For example, he used to charge a $20K flat fee for his service. But, after learning value pricing, he presented options of $50K, $70K, and $130K for the same service. One of his recent clients chose the $130K option.

Using this value pricing approach, Stephen was able to grow his consulting business by simply asking his clients the right questions, and gaining the confidence to charge based on the value his services were creating.

Further Reading: Guide to Value-Based Pricing for Consultants: 10 Experts Share Their Fee Strategies

Charging $75K might seem like a lot for your service. But, when your client understands that they will gain $750K in additional revenue over 12 months, that $75K becomes a superb investment. Where else will they get a 10X ROI in their business?

Running & Managing Your Consulting Business

10. Articulate Your Values

Taking the time to articulate your values — a list of words that define you and the business you’d like to build — is key to attracting like-minded clients and team members (here is a great example list from James Clear).

Once you’ve written down your values, you can develop a full mission statement for your firm. All of this work might seem trivial or “soft,” but it’s incredibly important as it speaks to “why” you’re in this business. It will give you meaning to keep on going, even when times are tough.

Example: One of the reasons we’ve been able to grow Consulting Success® to become a successful business is by articulating and sharing our values.

These values are at the center of our decision-making criteria. Before we make any big moves, we ensure that they fit with our values.

And not only will your values help you internally, but they’ll help you attract the best-fit clients as well. We have many clients tell us that it was our values and story that attracted them to work with us.

Further Reading: How To Write Your Consulting Firm Mission Statement (& Why It’s Important)

11. Track The Right Metrics

Metrics are important to track because they help you keep a pulse on your business. They help you identify what is working and what needs to be improved inside of your business.

However, there are many different numbers you can track. And many of them will lead you in the wrong direction. So, instead of focusing on vanity metrics — metrics that look good, but don’t move the needle for your business — we teach consultants to focus on a small group of key metrics. These include:

Magic #: The number of prospects you have to reach out to in order to achieve your revenue goals.
Direct Outreach: How many prospects you’ve reached out to.
Sales Conversations: How many sales conversations you’ve had with your ideal clients.
Sales Call Conversion %: The percentage of sales conversations you turn into consulting projects.
Proposals Sent/Offers Made: How many proposals you send to clients following sales conversations.
Proposals Won/Loss: How many proposals you’ve won and loss.
Average Project Revenue: How much you sell your average consulting project for.
Monthly Revenue: How much revenue you generate every month.
Client and Project Profitability: Not all clients and projects are equal. Certain clients and projects will almost always be significantly more profitable than others.

When these numbers are visible, you’ll know where you’re strong, where you’re weak, and where you should improve.

Example: Kristen Ireland and Erin Mies started People Spark Consulting to help companies improve their HR strategy. They faced a common problem that many other consultants had: they had the expertise, but they had trouble filling their pipeline with clients who would pay for their expertise.

In our Clarity Coaching Program, one of the things we taught them was to build and track their client pipeline. With this system and metrics in place, they were able to turn prospective clients into paying clients within one day. By the end of the program, they had months that were as successful as their previous quarters. The numbers don’t lie.

Further Reading: 8 Metrics For Consulting Businesses: What To Track (And Why)

12. Create Systems & Processes

Think about the tasks in your business that you do frequently. You probably have a set of steps for doing the task in an efficient, timely manner.

Instead of having to think about what to do to accomplish the tasks, you follow the steps and get your desired result. To create processes for your consulting business, you want to list all of these tasks.

Then, you’ll write out the exact steps you take to complete them. When you do this, you’re laying out the systems that make up your consulting business. They go from abstract and in your head to solid, tangible steps. Then, you can hire and train people to implement these processes so you can focus on higher-value work.

This is especially important if you’re spending time on things inside of your business that you don’t enjoy. Things that drain your energy. Document the process and get it off your plate onto someone else’s. Often something that you don’t enjoy doing, will be something someone else loves doing.

Example: Scott Payne is a lead management consultant working with mortgage companies. When he started his own consulting business, he lacked the resources that his former employer offered. The Clarity Coaching program helped fill that void.

6 weeks into the program, he had acquired so many clients that it started to overwhelm him. We taught Scott how to create systems and processes for the tasks that make his business run.

As a result of becoming more efficient, he increased his overall revenue by 30%. And here’s a note from Scott about what creating systems and processes has done for his business:

“Just a quick note of appreciation for the help that you provided me early on with my business. I’m up to 5 full-time employees (actual W-2 employees) and have such a great team of people that I get to spend 95% of my time working “on” the business instead of “in” the business like I used to. Honestly don’t know where I’d be without your team’s help and guidance to push me in this direction.”

Further Reading: How to Scale Your Consulting Business to $1M (And Beyond)

Growing & Scaling Your Consulting Business

13. Delegate Your Lower-Value Tasks

If you’re serious about growing your consulting business, you need to spend more time on high-value tasks (sales, marketing, offer creation, partnerships) and less time on low-value tasks (email, bookkeeping, scheduling, organizing).

You must learn to delegate these lower-value tasks. Many consultants have a tough time “letting go” of tasks that they can easily train someone else to do. But it’s one of the major steps you’ll have to make if you want to grow your firm’s capacity and revenue.

Hiring an administrative assistant is a game-changer for learning how to create systems and delegate those systems. You’ll have more time to work ON the business, and not just in it.

Example: When he first started his solo consulting business, Tony Velasquez felt like he was working hard, but didn’t know if he was working toward the right thing. He wanted to grow beyond the solo consulting model and become a consulting business owner.

Throughout our Clarity Coaching Program, we taught him how to delegate and outsource tasks so that he could focus on running the business. Now, he puts together customized teams made up of both his own employees and subcontractors to provide exactly the kind of help his individual clients need. As a result, he’s grown his consulting business to nearly 4X revenue growth: see his case study here,

Further Reading: 6 Simple Steps To Hiring An Administrative Assistant (For Consultants)

You can invest your time and energy to try and figure it all out yourself, or you can invest your money to learn and implement it far more quickly. You can always create more money, but you can’t create more time.

14. Become A Thought Leader

Thought leadership marketing is a form of marketing where you share your expertise on a specific topic. As consultants, our expertise is our product. Therefore it’s critical we demonstrate our expertise to prospective clients.

Thought leadership, in its essence, is banging a particular drum over and over and over again on a specific topic — and providing genuine value — until your name becomes synonymous with that topic.

Start creating content that shares what you know and provide valuable insights, opinions, perspectives, and data to your ideal clients. Not only will this spread the word about your business, but it will help you build an undeniable reputation in your industry.

Example: Nic Campbell dealt with many common challenges that consultants face: creating a clear set of offers, getting clarity around your ideal client, and setting profitable fees.

What made solving all of these challenges easier was becoming a thought leader in her space in grant-making and organizational structuring for nonprofits. Nic had the insight, but it wasn’t until she began sharing that insight that her clients began to notice.

By sharing weekly videos and podcast episodes, Nic became a thought leader in her industry. Now, it’s much easier for her to create offers, target the right clients, and command higher fees. She’s gone on to build a 7-figure consulting business and is a recognized authority in her space.

Further Reading: Thought Leadership Marketing For Consultants: Quick-Start Guide

15. Invest In Yourself & Your Business

The vast majority of successful people have a coach, mentor, or both. Why? Because taking guidance from someone who has mastered what you want to do and is where you want to be is the closest thing you’ll get to a “shortcut” to create success in your business.

You can invest your time and energy to try and figure it all out yourself, or you can invest your money to learn and implement it far more quickly. You can always create more money, but you can’t create more time.

Investing in yourself means investing in coaching, courses, books, events: anything that will give you the knowledge and skills you need to get you where you want to be.

Example: Tiffany Rosik was encouraged by her mentors to become an independent consultant. However, her lack of confidence held her back from getting started. After coming across our videos, she decided to apply for the Clarity Coaching in our program — which was just as much an investment in herself.

Within four months, she won her first major client who she worked with for nine months. Soon after, she picked up her second client at double her previous fee. The investment she put into herself and her business has paid off greatly.

Further Reading: Coaching Vs Mentoring (B2B): What’s The Difference?

Want Help Implementing These Consulting Best Practices?

When it comes to using these best practices in your business, the devil is in the details.

It’s easier to take action on these when you have a coach to guide you through each step.

So if you’d like personal, 1-on-1 help to implement these best practices, we can help.

In our Clarity Coaching program, we’ve helped over 850 consultants to build a more strategic, profitable, and scalable, consulting business. And we’ve helped many of them become leaders of their consulting businesses — growing from independent consultants to consulting firm owners.

We’ll work hands-on with you to develop a strategic plan and then dive deep and work through your ideal client clarity, strategic messaging, consulting offers, fees and pricing, business model optimization, and help you to set up your marketing engine and lead generation system to consistently attract ideal clients.

You’ll learn how to make more money with every project you take on — and how to land more clients than ever before. Learn more about Clarity Coaching and get in touch to talk about your situation and goals.

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