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Doing more work for a client with whom we have already worked should be easy. Once we have completed a project for a client, opportunities should start pooling at our feet like puddles after a spring shower. We've built credibility by delivering good work and trust in our relationships. We think of credibility – delivering good work – and trust – building strong relationships – as the two bulwarks of a productive consulting relationship and we've now cemented both. Our client has other things they need help with and where our expertise would be useful. The phone should be ringing off the hook.

Maybe, but maybe not.

We'll use PIE as an example. When we joined forces 10 years ago as CEO and COO, the company had a single client that accounted for 95% of revenues. That worried us a lot, so we turned all our attention to winning new clients.

Today, our biggest client represents a fifth of the firm's revenues. The rest comes from the new accounts the team has brought on. Our theory was that if we could establish a meaningful presence in these new accounts – most of which are multibillion-dollar companies – future growth would be easy. In a kind of Ray Kinsella – inspired Field of Dreams strategy, we thought, “if we build it, they will come.”

But that didn't always happen.

Add-on work didn't magically appear. We've had to fight for it. One of our oldest projects, for example – a $140,000 recurring annual program – with a client that is a $14 billion information services firm, failed to grow itself. The client was delighted with our work and asked us back to the dance every year, but not one of their 44,000 employees ever called us up and asked us to do this same work in other parts of the business.

Likewise, PIE has worked for a large IT integration firm for 15 years, aggregating groups of chief financial officers, chief information officers, and chief operating officers. Five years ago, the client pivoted and announced that it was focused on helping chief digital officers navigate disruption and transformation. Did it call PIE and ask us to pull together groups of chief digital officers? No. This, despite the fact they know we do good work, they trust us, and we have a long record of high ROI performance.

We began to suspect there were structural, systemic reasons that expanding one's work within a client is difficult. Our readers from How Clients Buy agreed:

I took an early retirement package from a global energy company and decided to set up a consulting practice. I was one of the leading experts in negotiating sub-Saharan oil field exploration contracts and figured, with everyone I knew in the industry, it would be easy for me to do this work on a consulting basis with Exxon Mobil, BP, and the other big players. Soon I was hiring MBAs to help execute on the various projects I'd secured. Somewhere around 20 people, though, our growth plateaued. We're doing work with all the upstream majors, based largely on my network, but the nut we can't crack is doing more work inside a client company. I've talked to my friends at the big consulting firms, and they say most of their new revenues came from existing clients. What do they know that we don't?

I was excited to take over the cybersecurity practice at my firm, one of the Big Four. We have a great brand name in an exploding space. My boss came in July and said, “I need your next year's revenue estimates. We have a firm-wide goal of 12%.” I think I must have blanched. I'm just not sure I know how to expand our footprint in the client.