The two significant factors in terms of business consultants, experts and thought leaders scaling their businesses are Service Delivery and Audience Response.
Get these two things right and you’ll have MASSIVE IMPACT.
Factor 1: Your Service Delivery
As business consultants, experts and thought leaders, the way that you deliver your services is going to determine how many clients you can take on and efficiently deliver your service to them, ensuring they get results.
We want to be able to increase our capacity without sacrificing results.
Bespoke Delivery
At one end of the spectrum, we’re delivering our services as Bespoke.
I see many business consultants who are doing almost everything Bespoke. And it’s exhausting.
Generally, this happens because we’ve got all of that knowledge locked inside our gorgeous brains. And when the client comes to us with a problem, we are creatively applying our experience, our expertise, our skills, to create a bespoke customised solution. And we make sure the client gets high-quality results.
It’s not necessarily the quickest, most efficient, or most profitable way of doing it. But we have attention to detail, and we have a high-value customer service experience.
Proven System Delivery
At the other end of the spectrum, we’ve got a Proven System.
A Proven System is where you have a proven step-by-step process that no matter who in your team delivers this service for your clients, they are guaranteed to get high-quality results. You’ve proven time and time again, that this system works.
You’ve taken what is inside your expert brain, you’ve put it into a system, and you’ve laid it out so that everybody on the team can be trained to deliver that service to the highest possible quality.
And that’s how you can increase your capacity and your ability to provide quality services.
Factor 2: Audience Response
The second factor that impacts your ability to scale is the way that your audience responds.
No
At one end of the spectrum, we have a “No”, which business consultants, experts, and thought leaders all dread.
You submit a proposal, you get up and pitch your services, you do a keynote presentation. And for whatever reason, you’re getting a “no”. You’re not making a sale, you’re not attracting clients, and you’re not getting the response that you want from your ideal clients? Maybe they’re scrolling past you on social media.
RAPT
At the other end of the spectrum, you have an audience who’s RAPT in the solution and the service that you’re offering, and they can’t wait to work with you.
You’re a rockstar.
Activity: Work Out Where You Are
Let’s plot where your business sits on each of these different lines.
In terms of your Service Delivery, where are you along that line? You’re not necessarily going to be at one extreme end or the other, you’re going to be somewhere along that line. So mark where you are.
And then for the horizontal axis, do the same. Where are you at in terms of the response and conversion rates you’re getting with your clients?
If you’re getting a 100% conversion rate, then you’re down at the RAPT end. Or are you getting a 0% conversion rate? That places you on the NO end of the spectrum.
Then once you’ve got those two points on the axes, you’ll be able to join them together and see which quadrant you fit into in this matrix. Below I’ve described what is in each quadrant.
High Risk
If you’ve ended up down here, in this bottom left corner, your business is at high risk.
You’re hanging on by the skin of your teeth because if you are not attracting clients, you’re not converting those proposals into actual dollars in the bank. And when you do get them, when that rarely happens, when that does happen, you’re not delivering efficiently because it’s a very bespoke service.
You can only fulfil one project at a time before you’re then scrambling for the next one. It’s a very high-risk way of doing business.
Hidden Gem
If you’re up in this top left quadrant, you’re still not getting great conversions with your audience. But you do have a Proven System. You’ve got a hidden gem.
You’ve potentially got a goldmine, and you just need to have a way of communicating how great your system is, clearly and succinctly that will convert and have a RAPT audience.
Bottle Neck
Now down in the bottom right quadrant, this is where you’re providing your services in a bespoke customised way, AND your audience loves you.
So you’re attracting all those clients in, and you’ve got more clients than you can handle. And so you’ve got a capacity issue.
There are also bottlenecks within the team because you’ve still got knowledge locked inside the business owner’s brains. Individuals can also become bottlenecks within the business, meaning that you cannot deliver the service as efficiently and profitably as you would like. And that key person risk can be dangerous.
If you want to read more about how to get out of the Bottle Neck phase, we have a detailed blog post on How To Streamline Your Service Delivery which addresses these issues.
Massive Impact
The top right, this is where we want to aim.
Massive Impact is where you’ve got a Proven System you can deliver, you’ve got capacity, and you can provide your services with exceptional results for your clients time and time again.
And you’ve got and the ability to attract your audience and your clients, because they love your work.
That’s how Business Consultants can Scale for Massive Impact
By focusing on improving your Audience Response and your Service Delivery, you can scale your business to have Massive Impact.
