Earlier this week I was having lunch with an entrepreneur that has a successful consulting business. He’s been in business for four years and has 10 full-time consultants. The big challenge for him now is that he’s both selling new deals and coordinating the delivery of work on existing deals — working 80 hours a week in the business. If he doesn’t sell new deals the business goes under, and if he doesn’t sell even more deals than last year, the business doesn’t grow.
The goal right now is figuring out how to train the consultants to sell and make it so that he’s not the only person bringing in new business. We talked for over an hour and this is what I suggested to him:
- Figure out how to get economies of scale with his sales abilities
- Consider having an inside sales person call on target accounts to set up appointments for him as well as offer events like “my CEO is going to be in town on xyz date and would enjoy grabbing breakfast or lunch with you”
- Build regular value-added content to stay top-of-mind with prospects and outsource this work to a markting person
- Look for other ways like lumpy mail and industry speaking events to stay in front of prospects
My biggest recommendation for him was to lean on junior sales and marketing people to help him maximize his reach.
What else? What are some other ways to help sell more as a relationship-oriented consultant?
David Cummings on Startups 
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