The REAL reason I created strategic partnerships for my consulting business…and what ended up happening (read before watching the video 👇)
Yesterday I posted a video about why many strategic partnerships don’t work (see link in the comments)
A strategic partnership is when your consulting business partners with another non-competitive individual or firm to refer leads/opportunities to one another.
When I started my business, the first few engagements came via referrals and I got busy fast. 🤝
When my engagements ramped down, I started pounding the pavement for new clients, which was exhausting and stressful.
I lost income in-between projects, which hurt my business badly. ❌💵
Fed up with both my busyness and my inconsistent income, I decided the best thing to do was to set up sales partnerships with non-competitive businesses I shared a similar clientele with.
So I found accounting firms, lawyers and financial advisors and partnered with them. They would refer new leads to me and I would do the same. 🧑⚖️📝
On paper, everything sounded great. I created those partnerships and waited for new clients to fall into my lap.
As you can tell, months went by and…
I landed a grand total of 0 clients.
I’m not saying you shouldn’t partner with others. I’m saying that the way I went about doing it was completely wrong (see my post from yesterday for the reasons my partnerships failed – the link is in the comments).
But there’s a bigger lesson here, which is that I created those partnerships not because I felt they were the most efficient approach, but because I didn’t like to do “sales” myself.
❗❗ I was afraid of putting myself out there, “bothering” my potential clients and risking being rejected. It was only later that I realized that the fastest way to drive sales in a consulting firm is for the business owner/founder to be directly involved in prospecting and selling to the end buyer. Nobody is going to be more motivated than the founder/owner to add new clients and grow their own business.
Once I learned that sales is not something you do TO someone but something you do FOR someone, my business was better for it. As a consulting business owner, it’s imperative that you learn how to drive sales for your own business. Your business literally depends on it.
There’s a time and place for strategic partnerships, but they must not be used by consulting founders to hide behind their misguided distaste for prospecting and sales.
Check out the video for more on this 👇👇👇
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Image credit: Fritz Wagner
