One of my consulting mentees recently reached out with a panicked message:
“Help, I just lost my biggest client! What should I do?”
Here’s how I helped her through it—and how she replaced that missing income in less than a week. Then, we’ll walk through the five-step strategy I teach consultants who want to build authentic networks and client prospect pipelines.
5 Steps to Take Immediately After Losing a Consulting Client
Step 1: Process and take stock
Losing any client can be a massive blow to your confidence. It certainly was for my mentee. But we talked through a few things that helped her refocus and make a plan:
- Assess your immediate financial needs. How long do you have before the missing client income becomes a financial crunch? How can you adjust your business and personal budget, if needed?
- Assess why it may have happened. Was a client unhappy and you missed the signs? Or were there internal issues with your client far beyond your control? (My mentee discovered she was simply swept up in big internal changes, but there had been signs that something was afoot that she could have picked up sooner.)
- Respond to the client with the utmost professionalism. Keep it classy so the door remains open in case the client wants to rehire you in the future. Later, if the opportunity arises, you can decide if you’re willing to rekindle the working relationship.
After the shock wears off, you might find that losing a client, especially a long-time client, can be a clarifying moment. Was the work you were doing with this client REALLY your ideal scope? Or do you want to build your business out in a new direction?
Step 2: Reach out to your personal and peer consulting network
This is where having a mentor and peers can make all the difference in how you and your business move forward. These are the folks you can be open and honest with. I guarantee you’ll quickly hear stories that help you feel less alone and more hopeful.
Whether you’re reaching out by email, phone, or in a structured community, let people know that you have an unexpected client gap and what kind of clients and projects you’re interested in taking on.
Step 3: Reach out to current and former consulting clients
I suggested my mentee reach out to several of her current and former clients to let them know she had space in her schedule and was open to accepting new projects and referrals.
This immediately led to three new short-term projects, which helped create plenty of breathing room to avoid a financial crunch. She’s also keeping up her ongoing work to cultivate new clients long-term (which you should always be doing!).
Step 4: Implement lessons learned
As consultants, we often learn the most valuable lessons the hard way. That’s actually one of the reasons I love coaching consultants: it allows me to help newer consultants avoid some of my own painful (and pricey) mistakes.
This mentee discovered that, by using her client’s contract template without edits, she’d agreed to a TEN-DAY cancellation clause. That meant even though she had what she thought was a stable, 12-month contract, she had left herself and her business vulnerable.
Step 5: Keep building your network
This might be the most important step of all—and the one that enabled my mentee to recover quickly. Always, always be building your network.
That can look like a lot of ways:
- Be a great resource to your peers. Take their calls, offer insights, and help them when THEY need it (and they’ll be on your team when you need them).
- Be a great resource to your clients. When you’re focused on your bottom line, it can be easy to get caught up in tracking billable hours or containing scope. But sometimes that extra 15-minute brainstorm you did with a client positions you as a resource and asset—one your client will be eager to recommend to their own networks.
- Participate in organized networking events and activities, online and in person. Networking can feel awkward at first, but your network is one of your most powerful assets as a consultant. So always be growing it. Take calls, explore connections, and get yourself out there.
Moving Forward: A Fresh Outlook and a More Resilient Business
The reality is that, as a consultant, you will face business setbacks. It happens to all of us. But it IS possible to recover and thrive. One of the keys is having the right people in your corner.
My mentee is now looking ahead with excitement rather than dread. She’s aiming to grow her business in a direction she’d been thinking about for months but needed a bit of a push to act on.
She’s also reinvesting in building her client pipeline, focusing on attracting more ideal clients, using the five steps below.
5 Steps to Grow Your Consulting Client Pipeline
Nearly every consultant I coach is looking to either grow their client roster or attract more ideal clients for new services.
I strongly believe there is no one-size-fits-all solution for attracting YOUR ideal consulting clients. Instead, you need to build and tend a community of prospects and connections who will be there when you need them.
I’m an avid gardener. So, for me, creating a consulting client pipeline is a lot like gardening.
Step 1: Define your services and ideal consulting clients
Before you plant a garden, you PLAN a garden. Like a gardener, as a consultant, you must decide the services you want to grow, the rates you will charge, and your ideal clients.
Do this work FIRST. Then:
When you network or speak to prospects, you know exactly what you are offering and why. You’ll be speaking from a position of confidence rather than desperation or anxiety.
Step 2: Start sowing seeds for your consulting client pipeline
When you’re growing a garden, there’s a whole period where you’ve planted seeds, but nothing has sprouted yet. Instead of giving up or starting over, you must keep tending the soil and creating the conditions where your seeds can sprout.
When building a consulting client pipeline, that means offering value to prospective clients and connections. Share smart insights with your email list, post great ideas on LinkedIn, and show up at community and networking events. Stick with it and stay consistent.
Step 3: Know when to say no to client prospects
Finally, green shoots poke out of the soil. Potential clients reach out. Someone who’s been on your email list for ages books a discovery call. Or another consultant recommends you to their client.
When I first started consulting, I was inclined to say YES to every project that came my way. You don’t have to say yes to everything, though. You can evaluate client prospects as much as they are evaluating you.
Step 4: Be ready to take on new clients with streamlined systems
There are so many factors that affect how quickly your harvest will be ready. A lot of these factors—weather, pests, disease—are outside your control. It’s the same with clients.
Many consultants I coach are fond of saying “when it rains, it pours” about client intake.
You need to be ready for this: have good contract templates, be prepared to create a waiting list if needed, know your capacity and scheduling preferences, and be crystal clear in your deliverables.
Step 5: Use slow seasons smartly
It’s easy to get frustrated when client intake is slow. I’ve been there before and coached many through it. But having a mentor and a community through these times can keep you inspired, accountable, and on track.
If you’re looking for that kind of support for your consulting business, you’ve come to the right place. You can learn more about our programs, including our flagship 60-Day Consulting Boot Camp.
