Stop Selling One-Off Consulting Projects (Advanced Lesson from ICS 2025)
You don't build a thriving consulting practice by selling unique projects to new clients. You instead sell modular work to a growing pool of returning clients.
Let me teach you a system we cover as part of the Indispensable Consulting Systems Program.
Note: This is the final week to sign up.
This system is the one system most newbie consultants need to learn.
It will generate thousands of dollars in additional revenue for you and deliver much better results for your clients.
What Is The One Thing Every Business Needs?
Take a second to think about almost any successful business you know.
What is the one thing they all have in common?
The answer is simple.
→ Regular customers.
They have customers who come back to them time and time again. The larger the pool of loyal, regular customers, the more successful the business is.
Around 60% of my business comes from past clients today. And even that number is far too low.
Sure, you can get by with attracting newcomers from time to time - but overall, you want regulars. Without regular customers, your consulting practice will struggle.
Most Consulting Practices Are Set Up For One-Off Projects
In my coaching sessions, I’ve noticed almost every consultant sets up their practice to deliver one-off projects to new clients.
But success isn’t built on attracting an ever greater number of clients. It’s built on creating a pool of clients who return to you year after year. That doesn’t happen by chance; that happens by intention.
Most consultants have an approach that looks like this:
Promote themselves through various channels.
Attract an expression of interest from their ideal client profile.
Ask the client what they want.
Create a proposal outlining how they will deliver that.
There are two significant problems with this approach.
First, you’re making yourself incredibly replaceable. You’re selling exactly what the client told you they want. If they give that same information to the next name on the list, they will get the same result. There isn’t much expertise being provided there. That’s the same service any consultant can offer. The client isn’t invested in your system.
Second, once you’ve sold your strategy, the client doesn’t need you again. You could quickly exhaust your client pool and find yourself struggling to attract more clients. Or even if they do need someone, they’re equally likely to hire someone else, rather than you, to do the work.
In this mindset, you’re always going to be floundering around, hoping for the next opportunity to bite your hook.
Sell Modular Work - Aligned With Your System
Here’s the critical thing most consultants know but forget.
Clients want to be guided. They want to benefit from your years of expertise and hard-earned wisdom. They want to know they’re on the right track. They don’t just want you to give them what they want - they want to be told what they need.
A better approach is to sell your unique system, which you will use to guide the client to a world-class level. This is how it works.
Step One: Begin With A View of What’s Great
You should have a clear view of what good and bad practice looks like within your space. It really helps to have your own maturity model or benchmarks here.
In whatever space you’re working within, what does a world-class result look like? And how can you break it down to objectively say if an organisation has achieved that or not?
This is where you should develop your own proprietary benchmarks (which naturally lead to lots of great content you can share).
You can see my example in my consulting maturity model below if you like.
Once you have something like this, you have something to use to evaluate and attract clients (I’ll also show you another way of using it later).
Step Two: Diagnose Where The Client Is Today
When you begin a project, diagnose where the client is today. Sell the diagnosis as its own project, either to get started or as part of a bigger project.
I can’t stress enough how important the visual is on this one. You need a simple visual which will clearly explain where the client is today and where they need to go next (p.s. I share examples of these as part of my Indispensable Consulting Systems Program).
Depending on the budget, you can sell multiple diagnostic deliverables here. This might include:
Audience analysis (interviews and surveys with members of the audience).
User experience research identifying pain points.
Internal analysis/readiness audit.
Opportunity audit.
Capability gap assessment.
etc…
The key thing is that your project begins with a precise evaluation of where the client is today, packaged up as things they can easily share internally.
This evaluation should clearly identify the gaps between where they are today and what they need to change/improve to get to a world-class level.
Step Three: Create a series of modules that a client can buy
Now you get to the critical part - you design a series of modules clients can buy to get to a world-class level in each of the areas that make a world-class experience.
You can group these into different packages if you like. I often like to create low, mid, and high-budget options. You can even align these to each phase of your model. For example, you can have one package to get support to an advanced level, another for world-class, etc…
The great thing about this is that the offering is customized to the client, yet it is also somewhat repeatable in the service you’re providing.
Step Four: Offer a series of modules to clients
Once you’ve finished your project, set up a call and give the client a roadmap of ongoing improvement (which naturally includes how you would help at each stage of the journey). Put a fee next to each module and clearly show where the client is at today (again, the visual is key here).
You can package these modules up in a wide variety of ways if you like. You can give discounts if they buy multiple modules at once etc…
What you want, though, is
The client is invested in improving themselves based on your vision. They believe in your evaluation and want to reach the highest level.
Buying improvements solely from you - because it’s your system. Who else can get them to a world-class level when it’s based on your benchmarks?
Having shovel-ready projects ready whenever a client has the budget. This is the big one. When you work with larger enterprise clients, you will often encounter situations where clients have tens of thousands of dollars to spend before the end of the year. Having projects they can immediately get started on is incredibly helpful.
Promotional offers. I haven’t tried this personally, but one of my students achieved success with running time-limited promotional offers that align with the end of the financial year.
You can explore different ideas here, but you generally get the point. You need a clear system in place.
Step Five: Make ongoing benchmarks part of your ongoing engagement system.
As I’ve written before, you should contact all past clients at least once every month or two. These shouldn’t be sales opportunities, but in your ongoing engagements, you should be able to help them identify what they need and if you can help.
Ultimately, what you want here is a consistent offer where clients can invest as little or as much as they want to improve what they’re doing - but they’re always committed to getting better.
And that’s the process. It’s generated millions of dollars for us over the years, and it means we are constantly getting requests from clients to move to the next level of what they do.
If you found this useful, consider signing up for our Indispensable Consulting Systems Program.
This is an eight-week program that will help you
Identify your north star.
Select the right niche.
Sell the right services.
Attract a steady pipeline of new clients.
Develop a pool of regular clients.
Deliver world-class consulting work.
Build the right strategy partnerships.
And much, much, more.
I hope you can join us.
p.s. Once all places have been taken, no more will be offered this year.