In this episode of the Unlocking Value podcast, John Howard speaks with Craig Herd, founder of Consultancy Growth.

Craig shares his journey from door-to-door sales at 19, to becoming National Sales Director with a team of 55, to working with a growth enablement consultancy, and now leading his company, Consultancy Growth, which helps UK boutique consultancies build growth systems that actually work. He explains his six pillars of consultancy growth and what consultancy-specific sales and marketing needs to look like in order to become a genuine ROI-driven growth engine, rather than a costly black hole.

The conversation covers:

• Why “marketing only matters if it goes somewhere”
• The six key stages of the client journey: lead generation, lead nurture, sales, delivery, retention and ascension
• How to avoid the founder sales trap and enable teams to sell effectively
• The risks of expecting written proposals to do too much heavy lifting in a sales process
• The often-missed opportunities in retention and expansion into bigger client problem spaces

For consultancy leaders, this episode offers a practical blueprint for building long-term value and avoiding common growth pitfalls.

Host: John Howard, Partner at Garwood Growth
Guest: Craig Herd, Founder of Consultancy Growth