Consultant, what do you do when you receive adjacent opportunities from prospects outside of your chosen niche or market?
For example, as a strategic planning consulting firm focused on the academia market, we occasionally received referrals for strategic planning from the government agency market or small business market.
Although we specialized in the academia market, we did not say no to these adjacent opportunities because it helped our cash flow while we were building our specialty.
The danger in saying “Yes” to opportunities outside of your core market is that before you know it, you’ll be dealing with many different types of engagements from many different types of clients.
This affects commanding high fees, profitability and scaling.
So, if you receive adjacent opportunities from other markets, how do you decide whether you should take them or not?
Here are the four criteria that we used at our consulting firm, Springboarders:
🎯 Does it fit your expertise and can you get results for those prospects who provided those opportunities? Does it align with your core functional expertise like finance, operations, IT, marketing, etc.?
🎯 Do you have the ability to put together a team—whether an in-house team or associates from outside—without jeopardizing your current client engagements in your core market?
🎯 Is the adjacent opportunity from a growing market that is trending or something new that drives your curiosity? Will pursuing it provide better opportunities for your business down the road?
🎯 Does the opportunity provide you with sufficient cash flow to keep your business running as you are building your specialty?
Even though we were a specialized business, we would not say no to adjacent opportunities and we would take them on.
Something to consider as you’re building your consulting business.
✍ What do you do when you receive adjacent opportunities from markets outside of your core market?
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