How to get consulting clients FAST in 2024 [18 Unique ways]

Whether an independent consultant or a consulting firm, finding clients is the primary challenge but a necessity too.

And here’s the root solution for this challenge – Focus on building trust! 

Stats reveal that 87% of clients make purchases based on their trust level in consulting services.  

So, if you never want to run out of clients and projects, you must win your client’s trust.  

This blog uncovers the 18 best ways that will help you find new potential clients/projects.

Let’s dive in.

Before you start finding your clients and projects, do these things!   

These are some excellent practices to help you achieve your set target. Let’s have a closer view at them: 

1. Define your niche   

Consulting businesses always seek to offer multiple services to attract more audience and revenue.

But doing the exact opposite will help you achieve the target you set.   

Defining your niche lets you focus on a particular service and increases your probability of becoming an industry expert.  

Moreover, you build credibility among your target audience when you work dedicatedly in a niche. 

2. Identify your ideal customer persona 

When you know their personalities, it becomes easy for you to strategize your outreach or inbound marketing campaigns accordingly.

Here it would be best to consider every factor that falls under demographics and psychographics.

Follow these five simple steps to identify to ideal clients:

1. Look at your past clientele from your contact management data and identify the ones you enjoyed working with. Further, understand why you enjoyed working with them.  
2. Next is to look at characteristics that your clients share. For instance, are all my clients CEO? Or do they belong to a specific geography? Or are they from the same industry? Or more.
3. Then, it’s time to analyze their shared fears and challenges. You must know this to address it in your pitches and projects.  
4. Next, you can now clearly picture your ideal client persona. Now, you know whom to market. 

3. Discover your unique value proposition

Your unique value proposition must include factors that speak for your work. It should be:  

• Relevant to your client’s concerns and challenges. It must showcase how you can assist in overcoming the problems.  
• Discussing the value you bring and the benefits they experience.   
• Offering something that differentiates you from the competitors. These will be your USPs (unique selling points).

18 Efficient ways of finding consulting clients   

As I said before, the easiest way of getting a consulting client is by winning their trust.

So, the techniques mentioned below are a perfect way of getting clients by building their trust in your services.

1. Create an official website for your consulting firm

Finding ideal clients becomes more manageable if you have developed a dedicated website for your consultancy.  

Your website is the home place for your offerings. It provides all the information you offer, including your unique value propositions and social proofs (past happy clients’ testimonials or case studies), pricing, etc.

Moreover, you must leverage it to present unique solutions through blogs and other free resources.

In short, your website should showcase all your expertise and knowledge and presents you as a professional consulting company helping you gain the trust of your website visitors.  

Ensure that your website should be well-designed and offer a smooth customer experience.

Just have a look at Rapidops‘ website. It is an IT service and consulting company. You can use this website as a reference for building your own.  

Remember, you must optimize your website for search engines to attract your target audience. As for the fact, 50% of management consulting companies weekly update their websites.

You can also practice inbound tactics like developing targeted content, creating gated resources as lead magnets, placing catchy CTAs smartly over content, developing case studies and testimonials, etc.

This way building a high- functionality website builds client trust in your consulting business and offers more sign-ups. 

2. Practice networking   

Networking means meeting and spreading awareness about yourself and discovering how others could be your potential customers.  

It lets you get into in-person interactions and build credibility and trust among your networks.

Thus, use these networks to gain more clients and projects.   

You can open doors to get more consulting clients and projects by joining:  

• Industry based meetups  
• Conferences and trade shows  
• Conventions and exhibitions  
• Professional association events   
• Niche-specific seminars/webinars

You should not miss any opportunity to impress your potential clients to get more projects on board.   

3. Have a strong social media presence  

Consultancies must have a sane social media presence as this help boost their brand visibility.

Choose the right social platform for your business (LinkedIn is good for consultants). Then, build your profile describing your consulting values.

Your social platform profiles should talk loudly about services and unique value propositions. Here’s an example of a LinkedIn profile of the Tierra consulting firm.

You need to be working towards helping your potential customers through sharing content that solves their problems.

Here are some best practices for finding more consulting clients fast through social media:  

• Focus on using multiple platforms; this will help you reach a mass audience.   
• Interact with your followers; this will keep your audience engaged.  
• Collaborate with relevant influencers; this will help you build brand awareness.  
• Schedule your social media posts to get more engagement.  
• Measure the post’s performance using metrics.  

Ensure you are active on your social platforms, as this builds your credibility and trust among your audience. 

4. Leverage Facebook platform  

Here’s how you can leverage this platform to its fullest and gain results:  

• Use Facebook search to find people who need your help: You can go to the search bar and type “help with Facebook ads” to connect with people who need your help.   
• Start creating a Facebook ad campaign: Create hyper-targeted campaigns, test different consulting marketing strategies, and pick the most effective one to attract leads. 
• Use Facebook groups to add the target audience as “friends” and use direct messages: This is an organic way to engage with potential clients and find common interests. Start conversations, identify opportunities, and attract more clients organically. 

5. Offer shareable and high-quality content   

Crafting and marketing helpful content boosts your brand visibility, gets more engagement, and establishes you as a thought leader.

Your content must include their pain points and unique solutions to overcome obstacles.

This doesn’t mean you give all your knowledge and leave the paying customers questioned for their penny. But to provide small solutions to some problems.

When you offer audience-specific and helpful content, you can better connect and attract them to your business.

You can also offer shareable content; here are the best ones:  

• E-books   
• Templates    
• White papers  
• Checklist   
• Industry specific infographics  
• Insightful videos 

You can also use gated content like downloadable resources, templates, etc., as lead magnets.

Must follow the below tips when creating shareable content for your consulting company: 

Further, you can practice content syndication to increase your reach.  

Hence, reusable and shareable content will build your audience’s trust in your consulting business.  

6. Leverage email marketing 

With 4.37 billion email users worldwide, email marketing has become a potential platform for getting clients. Here are some best tactics to attract clients with email marketing:

• Personalize email targeting 

Personalization grabs your client’s attention and also makes them feel valued. You can consistently provide value to nurture and grow your business effectively. 

• Sharing valuable offers  

Sending emails with meaningful offers can help you get interesting prospects. These can be offering a winning checklist, report, templates, etc.  

• Starting your newsletter to build your followership 

A newsletter is an insightful resource that sends to attract and engages clients. In this, you can send holiday greetings, industry insights, valuable tips, company updates, etc.  

The best part about emailing strategy is that you can set this for autopilot to scale your responses.

7. Cold call outreach 

Look if your audience really wants to hear from you or is annoyed with the calls.

You must draft a precise cold pitch if you’re a consulting business whose audience entertains cold calling strategy.

Also, if cold calling is one of your primary tactics, using calling software with high-value features like auto-dialing, auto-recording, and voicemail drop is worth to invest. 

8. Partner with other consultants and firms  

Partnering with other consultants and firms is a great idea to build or grow your client base.   

On having your niche decided, you should partner with a consultant that offers different services. This collaboration should be such that it’s a win-win situation for both of you.  

For example, if you excel in offering tax-saving financial services, you should partner with someone who is an investment consultant. This way, your clients can benefit from both of your services.   

You can get those clients of your investment consultant partner looking for tax-saving services.

Similarly, your clients looking for smart investment consultancy can connect to your consulting business partner.

Want to find your ideal consulting partnerships?

Try out these actionable tips: 

• Register your consultancy business profile to the best consulting firm directory. 
• Contact the consulting firms/consultants working or serving your former organizations. 
• Try to seek potential consulting firms in your domain of expertise. 

However, you must practice these tips carefully, as certain drawbacks exist.  

One such drawback is downplaying your brand. It means you are working under your partner’s brand and adding value to their name and brand instead of your own.

Other drawbacks can be disagreements about consulting fees, slow payments, etc.   

Hence, it would be beneficial if you practiced partnership smartly. 

9. Establish content partnerships with people who have the audience you want 

Establishing content partnerships is different from the partnering we studied above.  

When you collaborate with influential individuals and brands, you gain exposure.   

You can do so by jointly offering valuable content. The most obvious practices are: 

• Collaborate for a guest blog 
• Co-Create webinar/seminar 
• Host training sessions 
• Cross-promotion 

This way, you can surely tap larger audiences and expand your brand visibility. 

10. Get published in a niche magazine/site to gain instant credibility 

It boosts credibility and trust when reputable magazines/sites endorse or feature you. The best way to do this is to shortlist your industry’s popular magazines or sites.  

Once you have the list, reach out to editors or writers that share your interest. Compliment their work and express your willingness to contribute valuable content. 

Once you publish your content, whether online or offline, you’ll build an authority in your niche to attract ideal clients.  

11. Join a marketplace 

Marketplace bridges the gap between clients and consultants by facilitating a seamless collaboration.  

Moreover, it increases visibility, credibility, and trust plus gives you access to many helpful resources to expand your market reach.  

Joining a marketplace can also help you gain more positive reviews and high ratings because many marketplaces offer such an opportunity.   

Here is the best marketplace to find new clients:  

• Zintro  
• Catalant  
• TopTal  
• GuidePoint  

Click to learn the best 7 consulting marketplaces, plus the pros and cons of joining a marketplace. 

12. Cash referrals  

When you get clients through connections, you already have their trust.  

These referrals come with secondhand experiences of their friends, family, relatives, or any other known source.  

So, using references or creating a referral program to find new clients are easier ways to get prospective clients.

Push your past and existing clients to help you with references by offering special discounts, a percentage off in their current plan, or any other perks.   

Turning these referrals into paying customers is easy compared to other customers.

Moreover, you can create opportunities to upsell your current client. For instance, if you have launched new services that can benefit your existing clients, then set up personalized email campaigns to generate opportunities for making more money! 

13. Use Google My Business 

You always want to ensure that your local customers know about your services, and this is where Google My Business (GMB) integration plays a crucial part.

Listing your business on the GMB profile is simple and requires basic information such as: 

• Company Name 
• Category  
• Address  
• Service areas 
• Contact details 
• Website 

These details are flashed up whenever a potential client searches for consulting services nearby, so consulting businesses aiming to get local clients must register on GMB. 

Later you can ask your happy clients to leave good reviews and high ratings to help you get more consulting clients. 

14. Create a podcast or video series 

A study reveals that 44% of C-level executives, VPs, HODs, and business owners regularly listen to podcasts. 

Well, that’s a huge sign of how important podcasts have become on the professional front. 

So, your consulting business must invest in creating podcasts as they have a huge potential to get to the right consulting clients quickly. 

You can select a relevant topic related to your industry, service, or project and produce high-quality content.   

This content can be only in audio or combined with the visual format. This will help your consulting business audience connect with you more deeply.   

To leverage this method, you can discuss your clients’ challenges or provide specific solutions to some of their problems.  

This will bring clients looking for similar solutions. Further, attract a broad customer base.   

Moreover, practicing this helps you establish yourself as a thought leader in the niche. And engage and gain client trust. 

If you are still in a dilemma about starting your podcast, click to listen; Is podcasting good for a consulting business?” 

15. Host a webinar or online course 

Hosting webinars or online courses is one of the powers moves to generate consulting clients.   

By organizing a webinar or course, you can offer valuable information, industry insights and engage with the audience.

It also benefits building a solid and lasting relationship. At the same time, it positions you as a thought leader.

Further, they are cost-effective and convenient to conduct. This makes it suitable for all businesses and helps attract a broader customer base. All this fosters trust among your audience.   

Here are some tips on how you can leverage this technique:  

• Promote the webinar or the course as much as possible  
• Focus on your customers while preparing the content   
• Design your webinars and courses in a way that’s interactive and keeps the audience engaged  
• Practice before going live  
• Have a backup plan in case of technical issues  

These virtual events help you generate leads, build brand awareness, and capture the interest of prospective customers.

16. Utilize influencer marketing 

Influencer marketing is a modern approach to finding consulting clients. It is collaborating with an influencer with a wide hold among your target audience.   

Influencer marketing can be beneficial for getting potential clients: 

Using influencer marketing can help you target niche communities and specific audiences. Influencer offers fresh and relevant content, giving a new approach to your services.

All this increases your visibility and generates more new clients.  

However, when selecting influencers, it’s essential to follow the following steps:  

1. Define your goals  
2. Identify your target audience  
3. Research about potential influencers  
4. Analyze their reach and engagement to determine the ideal ones 
5. Determine your budget  
6. Negotiate terms and fees to onboard the best influencers
7. Create and review content before going live  
8. Measure the results to maximize success  

This is how you can conduct influencer marketing for your consultancy. 

Hence, consistency and patience will significantly build your audience’s trust and bring new clients. 

17. Follow up on all your opportunities

Very few leads turn into paying clients. This leaves a considerable scope to follow up on leads that didn’t reach the bottom of the funnel.

It would help if you didn’t miss any opportunities and consistently nurtured these leads.

Make sales follow-up a habit by scheduling conversations. Utilize tools to organize leads, contact details, and follow-up dates. This eases your follow-up task. 

18. Leverage social proof to get clients 

Consulting firms must use customer reviews and testimonials like every other business to gain trust and attract new clients. This point is purely for winning the client’s trust.    

Positive customer reviews are a great way to build credibility in the market. These reviews should be present on your website and social platform.  

This helps you grow long-term and ensures you always find consulting clients and projects.  

Hope the above tactics were helpful.

Is your lead an ideal client- Prioritize with lead scoring! 

Understand that not all leads are of the same value or need your equal attention.  

Hence, to identify potential clients, you need to qualify your leads. 

Building a lead scoring model and automating the process will save time and prioritize the potential clients with higher chances of converting into paying ones. 

Build a tailored lead scoring model to get the most interested prospect to pitch your consulting services. 

With 45+ triggers, conditions, and actions, Salesmate Score lets you prioritize leads based on your defined qualification criteria.

Moreover, it offers a depreciating score in case your conversation results are time-dependent. 

See the example below: 

Salesmate is a CRM and lead-scoring software that can automatically help your consulting business get more qualified leads, saving you time and growing your pocket!! 

How to craft a winning proposal? 

You need to draft an effective consulting proposal to never miss or win a client.

Here are some of the best practical tips and tricks when crafting one: 

• Keep the proposal about the client and not your business. Focus on showcasing your understanding of their business, pain points, and how you can help them.  
• Mention the ROI at the start. This compels buyers to sign your consulting proposal. Demonstrate value and ROI to win their confidence. 
• Address their expectation. Talk about results and outcomes rather than processes and methods. This makes them confident about your services. 

Moreover, have a concise and simple proposal that clarifies the deal.

Red flags to watch and tips for dealing with difficult clients 

We have talked about getting clients, but here’s what you must be careful about dealing with them.  

Do you know that 54% of COO believe changing client behavior is their biggest challenge?  

Moreover, lack of communication, trust, and unrealistic expectations are giant red flags with consulting clients.  

But there’s always a solution to overcome these hurdles. Here’s a detailed blog on how to deal with consulting clients in 7 actionable ways!

Wrapping up 

Winning the client’s trust is the solution to finding more consulting projects or clients.

Moreover, consulting is more than advising, so you must understand your potential client’s business and its needs, challenges, and desire.

Before looking for new prospective clients, you must perform the groundwork. This includes defining your niche, identifying your potential client, and knowing your unique value proposition.

Practicing top digital marketing strategies like website optimization for SERPs, content marketing, and social media marketing can help you get more and more future-paying clients.

Frequently asked questions