 There are lots of ways to expand your consulting business. We’ve helped numerous consultancies do just that, so we’ve compiled, in this article, some of the leading tips and best practices for growing your business as quickly and effectively as possible.
How to grow your business 1: The basics You want people to find you. So make it easy for them. Let’s start with your website. You want to have a big, prominent, un-missable “Contact Us” link or button that’s always available. If someone happens to “parachute into” some deep page of your site via a Google search, you don’t want to lose them, do you? So make it easy for them to contact you. The same applies when they click that link. It’s popular these days to have form-fields for the prospect to complete in order to reach you, and then hit the “Submit” button. But not everyone likes those things (especially when they’re purposely intrusive [“What’s Your Net Worth?** **Required”]). So include an e-mail link, too. Why cut off one source of potential leads? Your “Contact Us” page should also include, obviously, your phone number, as well as links to all your social-media presences, which we’ll get to in a minute. What about your fax number? We hate faxes, and fax numbers. In fact, we’d suggest that you don’t even include the fax number on the “Contact Us” page, because it’s merely an invitation for someone who wants to call you to accidentally dial the wrong number and get frustrated. What prospect ever faxes you, anyway? An existing client can ask you for your fax number. ‘Nuff said. How to grow your business 2: The CTA Speaking of your website, make sure that every page includes a call to action, or CTA. This is what you want the viewer to do after they’ve looked at your site and are interested in doing business with you. Here’s a tip: Make it as specific as you can. “Call us” is fine, but if, say, your business offers a no-obligation productivity audit, say so. Tell them what they can expect to get, eliminate any concerns they may have about contacting you (“There’s no obligation, and the initial call will take no more than 30 minutes of your time”), and by all means, make it inviting. Don’t write it like some tax form (“Submit your information below in order to receive a response”); do make it warm and personal (“One of our friendly professionals will be in touch within 24 hours”). How to grow your business 3: Social Media 101 This is an admittedly huge topic, but we can still give you some basic boxes to check. First, you need a social-media presence. Second, you don’t need that presence to be everywhere. And third, you need to keep your “curated presence” current. Let’s explore each of those topics:
How to grow your business 4: Be a thought leader Increase your odds of business growth by taking a leadership role. We won’t tell you how to develop ground-breaking IP (intellectual property); that’s your business. But we can tell you how to make your breakthroughs known, and thus grow your influence among your peers and prospects. Here’s an entire article we wrote on the subject, which we think you’ll find interesting; it’s garnered lots of positive feedback: How to be a thought leader in your field. How to grow your business 5: Take advantage of free info Speaking of articles that you can put to use quickly, we’ll use Point 5 to shamelessly link to some of our most popular articles to help you grow your business. Here are some topics you might find especially useful for jumpstarting your business development: One last thought… No one ever said that you have to do all of these things yourself. We know. Because we help others do them all the time. That said, and following the best practice we espoused above, here’s the call-to-action: Contact us. Drop us an email, and let’s set up a time to chat. Zero obligation. In just a few minutes, we can answer (and ask) lots of important questions, and help you grow your business, just as we’ve helped so many others.
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