Last week, a £500K consultancy founder told me: "I'm busier than ever, but I feel like I'm always one month away from disaster."

This is the consultancy paradox.

You have the expertise. You deliver brilliant results. Your clients love you.

But your sales system? It's held together with hope, hustle, and the occasional referral.

And it's killing your growth.

The revenue ceiling

Here's what I hear all the time from consultancy owners:

"I can't break past £20K–£50K months"
"Every prospect wants to 'think about it'"
"I'm working 60-hour weeks, but revenue is flat"

Most consultancy founders blame themselves. "I'm not good at sales." "I need to hustle harder."

It's not that you're bad at sales. It's that you're relying on hustle dressed up with a CRM — not a system that scales.

Stop blaming yourself.

The problem isn't you. It's that you don't have a sales system, you have random hustle dressed up with a CRM.

The four system killers

1. You're the Bottleneck
Every lead needs your personal touch. You can't scale yourself, so revenue hits a ceiling.

2. Wrong Prospects
You're optimising for volume, not value. Hours wasted on tyre-kickers who'll never buy.

3. Vanity Metrics
You track meetings and likes, but ignore what matters: cost per qualified lead, close rate by source, lifetime value, and how many hours you waste on dead-end calls.

4. No Predictable Process
LinkedIn posts aren't a system. Networking events aren't a system. Hoping for referrals isn't a system.

The high-value alternative

Over the next 14 weeks, I'll share the High-Value Sales System frameworks I'm testing with clients, along with the results. From diagnosing broken systems to identifying your "irrational clients" to building offers that command a premium, you'll see what works, what fails, and how to apply it.

Work through the series to get your blueprint for a sales system tailored to your consultancy — whether you're selling £10K projects to CEOs or £100K programmes to procurement teams.