The Consultant's Maturity Model - Find Your Place On The Roadmap
If you're not sure where to improve to advance in your consultancy efforts, this maturity model might help.
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The Journey To Become An Industry-Leading Consultant
I suspect a lot of consultants get stuck doing what they’ve been doing and hoping the results improve.
There’s a very strong possibility that’s not going to happen. If you’re not systematically improving yourself as a consultant, you’re almost certainly going to stall at a fairly low level.
Reflecting on the journey I’ve been on and the journey I’ve seen others go on, I’ve published a maturity model (I’m aware this is somewhat meta) to help guide you and others.
There’s a lot of information here, so be sure to download it here.
The independent consultant’s maturity model features four phases (emerging, sustainable, elite and industry-leading) and benchmarks progress against six areas.
Expertise and specialisation.
Website and personal brand.
Business structure.
Processes and pricing.
Promotion and sales strategy.
Clients and services.
There are probably other areas we could cover too - but we’ll see how useful this is before involving others.
If you’re like me, you might look at the final column and figure ‘I’m going to jump straight to that’. I’d advise against that. For starters, getting to that column requires resources you don’t have. Second, jumping steps misses out on valuable learning you need to acquire to reach that level.
My advice would be to figure out where you are in this model and then decide what a good roadmap for yourself might look like.
We’ll briefly tackle each of these levels.
Emerging Consultant
I won’t use an example here as it could cause offence, but I’ll say A LOT of new consultants begin and get trapped in this bracket. We all go through this phase of just emerging and trying to attract clients. This isn’t a rigid process, but it typically means we:
Have expertise from our past employers we’re trying to sell to others.
Create a brochure-style website outlining who we are and what we do.
Often are self-traders with basic insurance (I’d strongly recommend incorporating).
Charge by the hour.
Download online templates for contracts, proposals, deliverables etc..
Promote ourselves by engaging on social media or asking for referrals.
Serve small to mid-tier clients - often taking on contract rather than consultancy work.
Your primary goal in this phase is to attract an initial base of clients so you can keep playing the game and invest in areas to expand your practice.
Sustainable Consultant
A sustainable consultant is where you are earning enough to replace the work you left behind and you feel comfortable that enough work is continuing to come in that you can keep playing the game indefinitely.
This typically involves:
Having a clearly defined niche and developing your unique positioning in that niche.
Learning the core skills of consulting and having regular fact-finding calls with industry players.
Have a website which offers unique resources, consistent branding, and good testimonial quotes from past clients.
Be invited to speak on podcasts, webinars, and small events.
Established a limited liability company with a separate bank account and utilised a freelance accountant.
Developed end-to-end processes for the client journey with customised contracts and NDAs created by a legal professional.
Price per project based on the perceived resources of clients.
A clearly defined client acquisition medium and creating unique content.
A growing base of relationships with industry peers leading to new client acquisition.
Attracting large brands by offering differentiated consultancy services in your niche.
Many people get too comfortable in this phase. You have largely achieved your goal of finding freedom and earning a living without having a boss. But it’s far harder to get to this phase than it is to advance to the elite level. So why not jump up a tier?
Elite Consultant
An elite consultant is one where you begin to make multiples of the income you earned in your past career. Your reputation should be growing and you should be getting a steady stream of inbound referrals. At this level, you would typically do or have:
Deep knowledge of the niche and hosting regular information exchange calls with key industry players. You might even be undertaking your own proprietary industry research.
A focus on acquiring new skills and certifications to distinguish your expertise from others and be able to offer services others can’t.
A resource-rich website professionally designed which features plenty of testimonials videos from past clients and interactive tools and methodologies for visitors to explore.
Your applications to speak at major industry events should be accepted on a regular basis.
A team of freelancers including designers, researchers, and contractors to support your practice and deliver great work.
Clearly defined and documented processes for every deliverable and aspect of your work with custom-designed templates.
Processes to stay engaged with past clients and continually check in and offer new services and ideas to support their progress.
Pricing based on the value of the project and perceived differentiation from competitors (with retainer and repeat project options).
Building a brand across multiple mediums by adapting messaging to each audience.
Hosting own events which are well attended and building strategic partnerships with key vendors in the industry.
Developing a clearly defined outbound sales process to identify, engage, and convert client prospects.
Creating unique branding around consultancy services and attracting 50% of business from past clients.
Hosting online and in-person workshops and on-demand training courses.
Most of the folks I know at this level are earning $250k to $500k per year. You’ve achieved the goal of earning a great living with the freedom and flexibility you wanted. But there is another level above this.
Industry-Leading Consultant
At the very top level are the consultants who are known names throughout their industry. Often they escape the confines of an industry and create a new niche all on their own. In this bucket, I think of people like Eric Ries, Olivia Fox Cabane, Will Reynolds, Anthony Iannarino, Chris Voss, Jim Collins, Nir Eyal, etc…
These folks usually do most of the following:
Create an entirely new branded methodology which helps organisations tackle their most costly problems by combining multiple skillsets only they possess.
Host focus groups and systematically interview prospects to gain a deep understanding of their needs and challenges.
Have a highly interactive website offering a range of services, resources, tools, community features, and dozens of video testimonials and case studies.
Invited and paid to speak at the industry’s largest events around the world.
Hires multiple staff under an LCC with a comprehensive set of approved contracts and documents - and has the right insurance to match.
ISO 27001 certified (if handling data) and gaining (or creating) additional certification as needed.
A publishing powerhouse with content created and adapted for multiple channels by a small team of freelancers/staff.
Publishes books and methodologies which are widely adopted by the industry as a best-in-class standard.
Hosts major events and builds strategic partnerships with all key players in the industry.
Runs marketing campaigns to spread a unique message and build a pipeline of prospects.
Create own benchmarks and indexes for organisations to compare themselves and track their progress.
Offers a suite of services and on-demand products covering the entire spectrum of the client’s maturity cycle in the topic.
Public speaker commanding $10k+ fees to keynote at major industry events.
Naturally, only a few consultants can be industry-leading consultants in any field. In some industries, some of this might be more aspirational than possible.
The key lesson, however, if you want to get unstuck and grow you can’t keep doing what you have been doing. You have to consistently improve and develop your skillset to the next level.
Thank you for taking the time to come up with this. And then for sharing it.
I think there's really useful reference points in the inidividual elements of the model. The six factors make sense. However I wonder if it could be more relevant to a wider group of people if it felt less prescriptive at each level of maturity?
For example, some people starting out on their own might have had prior experience in Big Name firms...with good understanding of, say, the risk management disciplines or deliverale quality expectations that come with that grounding. They may struggle with the more "better done than perfect" culture that more entrepreneurial types might feel comfortable with.
IMHO, I feel the model could have wider use to more people if it was more "pick a path" than an implied linear trajectory.
I just realized that a couple of the key points are quite irrelevant to Indonesia's standard. In our country, the profession of Community Consultant is quite new and most people still undervalue it. But, thanks anyway for opening my mind through the model!