Time to finally talk about what sort of offer you can provide to clients. And, more importantly, how to structure it up.

Let’s get started:

Once we’ve convinced people of our expertise we sell our consultancy services.

Remember we prove expertise by doing the thing, not talking about the thing. Big difference.

Now we’ve shown that we know what we are talking about we can provide service to other businesses. Let’s look at some options.

Types of consultation

Consultation comes in various forms.

I’m sure some of these aren’t technically considered consultation.

I don’t technically care! 😁

They are all about helping businesses solve problems - the specific vehicle for doing so is flexible.

Some options:

• advisory

• consultancy

• implementation

Advisory is providing your expertise. It may be a client has a problem and wants a quick yay/nay from you the expert. It may be that they have no idea what they need and require someone to come and help them get aligned. Either way advisory is light touch - it’s about being able to tap your expertise where they lack it.

Consultancy proper tends to be more specifically providing advice and a strategy for a particular project. The client needs a new branding design for example - a consultant can help the company work out what they actually want and then prepare a plan.

Implementation is a step further. Implementation moves us into becoming a service provider. We provide the advice, the strategy and then do the work itself.

Obviously this is all a continuum. And most of the time your offer will include a little bit of everything.

As you move up the scale you, as the consultant, have more responsibility.

Giving advice is easy when you aren’t tied to the outcomes of it. But when you are charged with actually implementing the ideas you’ve given a client it’s a different ballgame - you are directly responsible for delivering on what you’ve sold them on.

Because of this increased responsibility there is also a continuum of payment. Advisory → Consultancy → Implementation increases effort, workload, risk and thus how much you charge.

Natural funnel

The eagle eyed amongst you may have noticed that makes this a very tidy pre-built sales funnel. There is a natural escalation.

Here’s the exact funnel I recommend:

1. Free content on social media to build an audience + Direct outreach via LinkedIn
2. A low cost workshop ($1000+)
3. Advisory calls ($1000+) or advisory retainer ($x000/month with 6+ month contract)
4. Project consultancy ($x0,000)
5. Project implementation ($x0,000-$x00,000++)

Each stage leads into the next as trust and invoice levels increase.

Specifically this also shifts from DIY to Done With You (DWY) to Done For You (DFY).

Your best clients will want to escalate naturally as you prove your value at each stage.

You provide a workshop to introduce the company to the value of AI. Who do you think they’ll call when they need advice about next steps? You.

You’ve been their impartial AI advisor for 3 months. Your advice has been solid. They are ready to scope out a project, getting their sales team upgraded with AI tools. Who’s the first person they ask? You.

You put together the plan. They love it. The strategy you’ve presented looks strong. The step by step guide to getting it done is feasible. Now they need someone to do the work. They try internally for a month - it’s not working. Time to get an expert. Who gets first refusal? You, again.

This isn’t us stiffing clients at each stage so they have to come back to us. Far from it. It’s us nailing each stage independently of the others.

And thus becoming naturally the go-to for the next stage. We don’t even need to pitch each stage - we just wait for the client to naturally get there!

First step

I’ve shown you the funnel but that’s useless unless you can feed prospects into the top.

How do we get clients??

This is the question I get the most when I talk about AI consultancy. And for good reason. Lots of people say “oh well it’s easy for you - you have 50,000 subscribers and 100,000 TikTok followers”.

Lol, I wish it had been that easy.

I began consulting with cold outreach. And I recommend you do the same - personal network and LinkedIn are the top resources early on.

At the same time start to build up your organic reach via social media. Just know that it takes a long time and is hard work. Once it’s up and running hells yeah it means you’ll get leads - but until then use cold outreach to get the business rolling.

Also don’t go for the $100,000 consulting and implementation contracts off the bat. They’ll come. But as a first goal it’s silly. You need to build up the trust as shown in the funnel above.

What has worked for me as the first opener has been workshops.

Specifically I used LinkedIn to:

• filter industry

• filter company size

• filter geographic location

And then reached out to 200+ decision makers a day saying “Hey this is who I am and what I do. Are you interested in an AI workshop for your staff? Price is $1000 for a 1 hour workshop. If yes I’ll send you over a one pager”.

Small ask for something that is highly in demand. It’s an easy sale at this low prince point. And remember that later there is a backend funnel. The workshop is the door-opener.

I then go on to deliver the workshops. In person if in London or international at a place I want to travel to. Online if not and I don’t want to travel.

The workshop that I personally deliver comes in a range of options - 1 hour, 1.5 hours, 2 hours and 3 hours - depending on the level of depth needed by the client.

The content is focused first on getting everyone in the organisation up to speed about what AI can be used for, what it can and can’t do, how to use AI properly and what sort of tasks it’s best deployed on. Pretty basic stuff! But mega valuable to companies, especially because about 60% is practical exercises rather than me just yapping!

This is a super powerful mechanism that I use to open up the rest of the funnel.

Whilst getting paid $1000-4000/hour. Which is a nice bonus!

I’d be remiss not to mention my cohort right now. I license ALL my workshop material for people to use, along with 4 weeks of training, live sessions, personal consultations and all my business docs. Application here: Learn more and apply.