⭐ Tip #2: Growth comes from hiring or growing new partners that can drive new business.
There’s value in the law/accounting-firm model: A small percentage of junior folks will want to and be capable of becoming a partner that drives new business. The rest grow as contributors or go in-house and can become customers. Customers get your best people that choose the in-house path. Everyone wins.
Growing pulls on your expertise and focus. The more areas of expertise you have the less focus you have and the more challenging customer acquisition becomes.
A team of size one is not sufficiently diverse.
Start reaching out to the people you’ve added to your
⭐ Tip #3: Join a vibrant community and build a new community.
Initial traction results from solving meaningful problems for your customer and community. A community can become vibrant to you when you gain energy from being a part of it.
The longer-term consulting fly-wheel will likely result from building and growing a new community where people bring their challenges to your community and leave with positive results. Even if you don’t solve the problem yourself, that will drive more people to your community. How much value you capture depends on how you service this community and how you enable others to help.
A referral program can incentivize customers and collaborators to refer their friends to your business.
⭐ Tip #4: Your marketing starts with the story described by your portfolio.
Avoid taking projects that reduce the value of your portfolio.
Every new project should help improve your company’s story.
⭐ Tip #5: Communities vary in their willingness and ability to pay for services and products.
Optimize community engagement and building for your business objective.
Some communities are focused on free open source while others are interested in paying for finished products/solutions.
⭐ Tip #6: Customers live in complex organizations with multiple simultaneous influences
Understanding your customer’s organizational complexity ((e.g. organizational structure/politics, business incentives, technical capabilities, etc…) will help build a long term engagement.