How to expand your consulting business into other markets

There’s more to growth than just “adjacent spaces”
 
If you’re looking to grow your consulting business, there are certainly a bunch of commonly-accepted ways of doing it. Very broadly, there’s organic vs. inorganic growth, in which the former is basically “getting new accounts,” and the latter is more radical initiatives, such as “acquiring a current competitor.” 
 
In this article, we’re going to limit our discussion to the former—that is, organic growth via getting new accounts—but we’re also going to veer into some very interesting, and creative, ways of doing it. We bet you’ll see some impressive parallels that you can profit from. 
 
Land and expand
 
Before we tell you about that intriguing, counterintuitive way of proceeding, let’s clear the decks of all of the usual suspects (how’s that for a mixed metaphor?). 
 
We’re talking about “adjacent spaces.” Our old adage here is “Start with what you know.” Back when we were in New York, the expression was “Own your backyard.” They’re all different variations on the same theme. To wit: 
 
If there’s a segment you’re really good at, let’s say it’s P&C (property-and-casualty) insurance, then your first order of business is to own and dominate that vertical. If there are other P&C carriers out there that haven’t heard of you, then you need to shore up your marketing efforts to them. Because, frankly, you should be able to close new P&C prospects with relative ease; they’re the lowest-hanging fruit. 
 
Okay. So let’s assume that you’ve done all this. You now “own your backyard.” Where do you go next? 
 
The next-door neighbor
 
The next logical step would be other segments within the same vertical. That is, the second-lowest-hanging fruit. Following our P&C example, this would be to extend your outreach efforts to others in the insurance space, beyond P&C. Such as, say, health insurance. 
 
That’s a pretty big ask. If a health insurer asks you about your experience, and all you’ve got is P&C, it will be a tough sell. But it won’t be as tough as, say, trying to crack open a wholly new vertical, such as, say, logistics. 
 
And remember this: All you need is one new client in that new segment, and you’re set for life. You will, from that point forward, have “health insurance” (in this example) as one of your areas of experience. 
 
You can use the “big ask” to shape your marketing efforts. If you’ve never helped health insurers before, we doubt you’ll get in the door at Blue Cross. But there may well be a smaller carrier who’s willing to take a chance on you, especially if you 1) sweeten the deal, and 2) tout your ability to leverage synergies from your experience in P&C and apply them to healthcare. (We wrote a related article on what we call “Cross-Pollination Consulting,” which you might also enjoy.) 
 
So you can do this kind of marketing all day long. Pick out adjacent spaces where you could at least carry on a credible conversation in the room, and then play the numbers game: The more prospects you’re able to reach, the higher your chances of closing new business. 
 
Sticking your neck out
 
The highest-hanging fruit, by contrast, consists of entirely new clients in entirely new verticals—those that would occupy the farthest quadrant in the classic Ansoff Matrix of prospects. Keeping with our example from earlier, if your main experience is in P&C, good luck trying to crack open a brand-new client in logistics. 
 
That said, there are ways to counterintuitively crack open new spaces, just as we’d teased at the outset of this article. 
 
Granted, these are not entirely new spaces, but they’re not exactly adjacent, either. 
 
Allow us to explain. 
 
The basis of this idea—indeed, the inspiration for this article—came from a recent experience with one of our clients. We’ll need to clothe this in anonymity for obvious reasons, but we think you’ll be able to get the gist—and perceive the takeaways. 
 
This client of ours did tons of work in one very specialized consulting space. It was a lot of what we might call “after-the-fact cleanup”: a common calling in the consulting space. Our client was really good at this, and had tons of experience, won awards, you name it. 
 
But there was one other space they wanted to crack, which was dangling tantalizingly just out of reach. And it consisted of an entirely different vertical that was tasked with doing all the stuff that invariably led to cleanup requirements later.
 
Hmmm! Think about that. There’s a chronological logic to this. Our client was doing cleanup work. They were yearning to get into the “Before” side of the equation, but had absolutely zero experience there. How do they get in? 
 
We helped them craft the messaging to this new market. It went something like this; note how brutally honest it was: 
 
“Hello. You don’t know us, but we would like to help you. And we certainly believe we can. We’ve spent the last XX years helping XXX clients to clean up all the messes that have happened in the ‘Before’ side of the equation. Doing this, and gaining all this experience, we realized that we could bring unprecedented foresight, power, and savings to all of those who, like you, toil in the ‘Before’ side of the equation, helping them to avoid costly mistakes in the first place. Might you have a few minutes to schedule a quick introductory call?”
 
Guess what? It worked. Beautifully. Today, this client is straddling both realms: the “After” (their traditional area of expertise), and the “Before.” And like our fictional P&C example above, they needed to land just one new client in the “Before” realm, using that new messaging. After that, they already had experience in the “Before” realm, and the introductory messaging was already outdated, having served its purpose admirably. 
 
Turn the tables yourself
 
You can see how cagey we’ve been forced to be here with our whole “Before” and “After” descriptions, but we’ll bet that you’re seeing parallels to your own practice already. Any business operation proceeds in a chronological fashion, and more often than not, consultants are called in to “clean up the ‘After.’” Yet therein lies the opportunity to “better empower the ‘Before.’” This could apply to any of a number of upstream verticals or segments; the only limit is your imagination—and your creative approach to the outreach. 
 
Need help finding that creative approach? Contact us. We solve challenges like these for our clients all the time, and would be delighted to help you, too. 

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