• Published December 5, 2020
  • 4 Minute Read

5 Keys to Growing Your Leadership Consulting Business

Published December 5, 2020
5 Keys to Growing Your Leadership Consulting Business

Nearly every leadership development consulting firm experiences the same challenge: managing client demands while expanding their offerings and growing their book of business.

How do the best leadership consultancies balance these responsibilities? What do they do to succeed?

5 Guidelines for Leadership Consulting Business Growth

Best Practices to Follow

We’ve seen what distinguishes the best, most growth-oriented leadership consulting firms from those who are struggling to survive. Here are 5 best practices that we recommend to grow your leadership consulting business:

1. Think “Program,” Not “Event.”

The best leadership development practitioners understand that leadership development isn’t an event — it’s a process. So if a potential client calls and requests a one-day leadership workshop, you can certainly start there, but use this as an opportunity to discuss what makes learning stick and advocate how a larger initiative and longer-term relationship can be even more beneficial to their business and their employees.

Learning initiatives that span a longer period of time have more lasting impact than one-day events, and for you, they have the added bonus of helping to ensure cash flow.

2. Right-Price Your Services.

You probably became a leadership consultant because you’re passionate about helping professionals grow and develop as leaders. Don’t take your commitment to your profession so far as to under-bill for your time though, or underestimate how “easy” it will be to deliver a service, therefore not pricing it correctly.

Also, remember that leadership development consulting is a specialty service – it’s not a commodity. If your firm is seeking to compete on price, be cautious. It’s diminishing the real value of your firm’s services.

The most stable leadership development firms approach their services with eyes wide open. Before pricing, benchmark your services to understand the competitive landscape, and understand their value – if you perform service “X” for a client, it will result in “Y.”

And “Y” has a financial outcome to it; leadership development research has proven it works to drive key organizational benefits. The best leadership consulting firms understand that value, so consider a value-based approach to program pricing.

3. Hunt and Farm.

Most leadership development consultants didn’t start their firms so they could focus a majority of their time on business development and marketing. Yet these are necessary to grow your leadership consulting business. Client acquisition requires initiative, effort, and consistent activity. That’s why the most successful leadership development consulting practitioners are always hunting and farming:

  • Hunting requires actively marketing services to new client prospects.
  • Farming requires growing existing client accounts.

Avoid hunting and farming only when business is down; instead, focus on marketing and business development consistently and routinely. Not only does this help ensure long-term stability, but it also allows you to keep raising your game by promoting new research, services, and resources to current and prospective accounts.

4. Seek to Expand Your Offerings.

The best leadership consultants have expertise in a specific aspect of leadership development, but don’t overlook opportunities to expand into other areas. This openness allows them to extend the value they can offer their clients, all the while expanding their contracts with their clients.

The most successful leadership consulting practices are also intentional about aggregating the best content, tools, and courses they can to share with their clients, based on the specific challenges they face currently. They stay abreast of leadership research and emerging insights and look for opportunities to share what they’re learning to grow their network.

5. Join Helpful Partnerships.

Most leadership development consultants and practitioners rely heavily on a partnership model for their business. The reality is, it’s nearly impossible to have a full suite of custom assessments, facilitator content, leadership research, and digital tools that are 100% research-backed, proprietary, and created in-house.

But partnerships enable leadership consulting firms to focus on creating dynamic experiences for clients, without additional research, product development, and design responsibilities.

When you’re able to insert best practices like these into your firm management, you’re better able to grow your leadership consulting business and dedicate more time towards the work you enjoy the most: delivering exceptional services to clients.

Ready to Take the Next Step?

We can help you grow your leadership consulting business. Learn more about how the leadership tools offered through our Channel Partner Network enable leadership consultancies like yours to deliver consistent, robust, and trusted content to clients. Joining gives you access to our world-respected leadership resources and research library, and our suite of leadership assessments, programs, workshop kits, and tools.

  • Published December 5, 2020
  • 4 Minute Read
  • Download as PDF

Written by

Leading Effectively Staff
Leading Effectively Staff

This article was written by our Leading Effectively staff, who analyze our decades of pioneering, expert research and experiences in the field to share content that will help leaders at every level. Subscribe to our emails to get the latest research-based leadership articles and insights sent straight to your inbox.

This article was written by our Leading Effectively staff, who analyze our decades of pioneering, expert research and experiences in the field to share content that will help leaders at every level. Subscribe to our emails to get the latest research-based leadership articles and insights sent straight to your inbox.

What to Explore Next

Article
Accelerating Leadership Development & Scaling Learning

Leadership development is no longer just for individual leaders at the top. Follow these 3 steps for accelerating leadership development and scaling learning and skill-building across your entire organization.

Webinar
How to Use Workshop Kits to Upskill Employees and Scale Leadership Development

Across the globe organizations have adapted to working remotely. In this webinar we’ll demonstrate how you can use our simple and engaging workshop kits to upskill your leaders wherever they are.

White Paper
Future-Proof Your Organization by Scaling Leadership Development

Scaling leadership development is the best way to future-proof your organization, creating new capabilities across a large population of leaders in a short amount of time.

Article
Incorporating & Scaling a Leadership Development Curriculum

Discover 4 best practices our experts recommend for incorporating a robust leadership development curriculum into your institution's workforce development, continuing education, or exec ed program.

Article
5 Characteristics of a Successful Leadership Development Strategy & Approach

Our research explored how much organizations invest in leadership development. Learn 5 factors HR executives say are part of a successful and effective leadership development strategy.

Related Solutions

CCL Regional Headquarters

AMERICAS

+1 336 545 2810
ccl.org

EUROPE, MIDDLE EAST, AFRICA

+32 (0) 2 679 09 10
ccl.org/emea

ASIA-PACIFIC, INDIA, CHINA

+65 6854 6000
ccl.org/apac

About CCL

At the Center for Creative Leadership, our drive to create a ripple effect of positive change underpins everything we do. For 50+ years, we've pioneered leadership development solutions for leaders at every level, from community leaders to CEOs. Consistently ranked among the top global providers of executive education, our research-based programs and solutions inspire individuals at every level in organizations across the world — including 2/3 of the Fortune 1000 — to ignite remarkable transformations.

At the Center for Creative Leadership, our drive to create a ripple effect of positive change underpins everything we do. For 50+ years, we've pioneered leadership development solutions for leaders at every level, from community leaders to CEOs. Consistently ranked among the top global providers of executive education, our research-based programs and solutions inspire individuals at every level in organizations across the world — including 2/3 of the Fortune 1000 — to ignite remarkable transformations.

Meet our people where you are: ccl.org/locations.