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Do not hire because the consultancy feels busy. Identify what is constraining growth.

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Diagnose the bottleneck

Lead generation bottleneck: not enough relevant conversations. Sales bottleneck: conversations happen but few qualified opportunities close. Delivery bottleneck: sold work exceeds reliable delivery capacity. Technical bottleneck: opportunities require specialist implementation expertise you do not have. Founder bottleneck: routine delivery or administration prevents sales and account development.

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Contractor versus employee

Contractors are useful for variable demand and specialist skills. Employees make more sense when demand is recurring enough to justify stable capacity and the capability is core to your operating model. Consider:
  • utilisation risk;
  • quality control;
  • client ownership;
  • IP and confidentiality;
  • availability;
  • margin;
  • management overhead.

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Build a specialist network before you need it

Useful partners may include:
  • software engineers;
  • data engineers;
  • security specialists;
  • cloud architects;
  • change-management specialists;
  • ERP/CRM implementers;
  • industry experts.
Agree commercial and client-ownership expectations before introducing them to a live client.

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First hires

The correct first hire varies. Often it is delivery capacity or operations rather than a salesperson, because founder-led sales still carries the strongest market learning early on.

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Quality rule

Never sell a capability you cannot reliably deliver or manage. Partnering is better than bluffing.