40 ways to grow your existing accounts

One of the most effective strategies for building a profitable, sustainable and valuable consulting business is to systematically grow your existing accounts.

However, many owners and their teams are too easily distracted by the potential of a new client. As a result, they consistently forget to nurture and expand their relationships with existing clients.

Stop running up the down escalator

Rather than spending 90% of your time chasing after new clients, take the more productive route and put some of your energy and focus into growing your existing accounts.

Marc Jantzen, founder of The Consultancy Growth Network, has collated his top tips for how to grow your existing accounts, and asked our community to contribute their ideas too. The outcome is a list of 40 ways that your consulting business can implement now to leverage the client relationships you already have.

Here are 3 of the 40 ideas to whet your appetite.

• Encourage your co-owners and partners to become informal mentors to key client sponsors. Book in a quarterly conversation to act as a sounding board, be that to support them technically or with corporate politics. You don’t need to charge for the support, but it keeps you front of mind when the next big opportunity is being discussed at a senior level.

• Work hard at subtly understanding what motivates your key sponsors – to impress their boss, leave a legacy, work less hard, look good in front of their team, have a social impact or get a promotion. In addition to achieving the business aims, align the benefits of working with you with achieving these personal goals.

• Benchmark your clients’ performance against their competitors and/or leaders in their field. Proactively offer solutions to improve their ranking.

For the full list of 40 ways to grow your existing accounts, click the button below.

Grow your existing accounts

Marc is passionate about helping the owners of consulting businesses achieve their potential. Having spent 20+ years in consulting, including 16 years growing his own consulting business and 5 years coaching and mentoring consulting owners and leaders, he is dedicated to making his knowledge and expertise available to those on the journey after him. Follow Marc on LinkedIn.