hey there today on the profitable joyful Consulting podcast we're going to talk about what you need to do to build a continuous pipeline of new potential clients coming to your Consulting business [Music] hey it's Samantha Hartley of the profitable joyful Consulting podcast this is season 11 we are talking about Consulting skills and the most fundamental Consulting skill is the ability to get clients are you able to bring new clients into your business and if so do you have as many as you want is this a thing that comes easily to you today I'm going to talk about what you need to be doing in the business so that you could have as many clients as you want to have I find when Consultants come to me they fall into one of two camps this Camp is I have clients coming out of my ears I'm so overwhelmed I don't have any I don't have any time to grow the business and I have like I'd like to have more Revenue coming in but I I don't have time to grow my business because I'm too busy with client work so that's one group the other group are those who uh would like to have more clients and they have some but could I please have more uh when I recently pulled my um Consulting uh coaching group about this and asked like where does everybody land on this uh for themselves they said I feel like I'm a on a scale of zero to ten with zero being like dying to 10 being like ah I'm flooded and overwhelmed with clients where they fall and they said uh you know really about three to four so most of them felt like they had referrals coming in or they would get clients from you know sometimes from LinkedIn or from their website sometimes but a lot of it was referrals or um or past clients and so what I said would it look like if you were an eight to nine on that scale of what would you really want to have in your business and they said um that would look like weekly leads a continuous flow continuous Pipeline and not just of any clients but well-qualified clients coming to them so I said okay let's talk about how to make this happen and that's what I'm going to share with you today so the first thing I want to say is a little bit of harsh truth and I'm going to tell it to you I'm going to tell it to your face and I will be the person who will be honest with you brutally honest if you have only had a single client long-term client or you've only ever worked with one client at a time or maybe two then you don't really have a Consulting business what you are as a freelancer who has worked for a couple of other companies and it doesn't turn into a Consulting business to me really until you have three clients that you're working with all at the same time I will tell you why because when you have three clients and you are delivering for all three or advising all three you have to manage that time and you have to manage them to where they're not all all of your business uh and then you have to manage your own business so you're really juggling four balls at the same time right here and it teaches you how to manage your time it teaches you how to manage client work and hold a lot of different things in your head and once you have three you can grow to many but if you only have one you still haven't proven to yourself that you necessarily know how to continuously attract clients and continuously attracting clients is the key to having a Consulting business like this is what the the lifeblood the fuel all the metaphors here of what feeds the business so we have to know how to get clients so if you've had a long-term single client then the time is now to go and get a second one and have two clients at the same time and then once you have that you have to get three clients at the same time so if you've been in business for a really long time and you've never really had more than one client at a time then I want you to really think about if this is the right profession for you or if it might be a better fit for you to find an employer um or find a couple more you know work for a consulting company that will help you to find clients because that skill um you know you might have pushed to the limits of your ability in that skill I always say that like the basics of client attraction are you know charm Charisma magnetism the thing that kind of draws people to you just in a basic ability to talk about what you do so that people are interested in it and then a basic ability to be like do you want that here's how much it is and here's how we would work together so those basic business skills are what gets somebody started and then this part that we're going to talk about today is the are the pieces that are going to really accelerate you into the few hundred thousand and low Millions if you choose these are the things that Propel a business forward one of the first things that I asked my clients when I begin to work with them is where did your last five clients come from the answer to that question tells you what is working in your marketing you can pause here and even answer that question for yourself where'd your last five clients come from when I was about seven or eight years into my business I did this exercise and I said where have my clients come from and I went back as far as I could remember so there were like 20 something clients and I I looked at where each of them came from and in some cases I would say well that one came from a referral and I'd say well who was it a referral from well it was a referral from so and so and how did I find them well actually they saw me speak so really this referral was actually um a result of a speaking engagement that I did way back when you can do the same thing where I want you to look at every single one like who was it a referral from and then how did you meet that person and then how did that person come to you and then how did that one so when you do this you have this kind of like taxonomy of your leads like how they come to you and then what's working in your marketing it's easy to say uh that if you don't have enough clients then you're not doing enough marketing but it's really not necessarily about doing more of things but it's about doing the right things the things that are working for you and then being consistent about that so the big topic here is of course lead generation like how do we generate leads leads being potential clients and lead generation being like what are the marketing techniques the business development techniques that you're doing that are bringing new people into your business whenever I do this you know a lot of people call this top of the funnel because it's like how people find out about you way up there before they kind of get in here and are nurtured and hear but they become your client you know that you could have this funnel shape thing I kind of also think of it as like fingertips I'm like fingertips are like way out there like where are our clients uh because uh getting discovered like lead generation begins like we love the idea of them coming to us but before they can come to us we got to figure out where they are and uh what they're doing and so in the beginning it looks a lot like figuring out where they are um and how we can get to them so so often nowadays this is social media like what social media might they be looking at and are you on there with text and video and all the things so um in a lot of cases the CEO that you're looking to connect with might not be using social media so we need to be realistic about that who is looking for you and where are they looking for someone like you I mean are they doing a Google search really are they doing a LinkedIn search I had a lead last week that came in seemingly through my website but I could tell by the time I had a conversation with him that he had actually come in uh he'd actually found me on a LinkedIn search followed me to my website and then filled out the form there to speak with me so look at those kinds of um chains to figure out where where they are searching where are they publishing is huge for consultants and again that can mean putting your content onto social media where it's seen but it can be in Publications like trade journals or magazines that they read online or offline Publications it can look like writing books being part of other people's books writing articles so uh keep in mind that a lot of times Publications are a way to reach your perfect clients that's not going to be something that's going to get you clients tonight but it is something that is a good idea for um you know for your future and creating credibility for your future all of the things that I'm talking about right now with the lead gen and the fingertips and things are visibility strategy how are you visible to your perfect clients and where they are so uh referrals a lot of consultants get their clients through referrals and that is fabulous but referrals can be a very passive way to get clients so if we get clients through referrals first of all I try to turn those more into strategic alliances so that it's a more formalized and ongoing relationship and then I would also like for um you to consider how do you stay top of mind with those people sending you referrals or referral partners are you in touch with them on an ongoing basis do they get your newsletter like we need to have a visibility strategy that is specific to referrals if that's going to be a major lead generation source for you I talked last week about networking networking is incredibly important as is speaking so uh and I love um events whether live or in person and that can be things like you know webinar with whatever euphemism we use for webinars nowadays uh training or um you know round table it's all basically lets us all get together in a meeting on a zoom or let's us get together um for a meeting in person around a conference table or in a classroom setup where you're teaching so hosted events or things what are the visibility strategies that you can use to get in front of your perfect clients visibility is the key to lead generation because they can't reach out and learn more about you unless they you're discovered by them we're going to talk in a future episode about video and about the rise of short form content so short form content is things like reels and shorts and stories and things like that so little videos as opposed to long form videos what's good about little videos is if you're brand new to someone they don't want to watch 10 minutes of you because they don't know you yet right and if they hit play on 10 minutes of you they're like I don't know if I how far I can get into this it's really hard to get into uh a short video of a minute 30 seconds 45 seconds something like that is a great little sampler to get you in front of somebody and to get them interested in your longer content so a lot of people are poo pooing shorts for work like hours like you know Consultants this isn't really respectable for us and you know as the CEO really gonna watch the shorts if you are targeting your content correctly putting in the right places putting in front of the right people and having the right stuff in it then you are going to find that it will be the gateway to your longer form content so those are all kinds of visibility there are more kinds of visibility that might be a fit for you but what is going to be the main kind of visibility that is going to generate leads for you that is the big thing that I want you to be thinking about the second piece of getting more clients into your business is the ability to convert them it means you are able to have sales conversations and which you get someone to say yes and you may have formal training in this or you may just be able to say yeah let's just go ahead and do this um whatever that is preparing for having more you know getting more clients is really about having more leads and turning more of those leads into your clients and on the sales metrics episode I talked a little bit more about what your measurements should be as a consultant because it's not like we close every sale or you know um anything like that I think in general for Consultants really if you are getting in like a steady stream this continuous flow of leads that we're talking about and you're scheduling you know about four conversations a month minimum I think you can expect to conclude to close or enroll uh at least one of them one to four I think it's a really good ratio for Consultants of conversations to onboarding new clients and hearing that you might think I don't have capacity to enroll a new client every single month which is a good consideration for you uh or like actually I need to have more than that I need to do better or you may say you know what I close like three out of four people I talk to perfect whatever it is that works for you um by the way if you close three out of four people you talk to you need to raise your prices but the ability just to be good at enrolling clients is important and then the last thing is when I talked about the outcome that my clients wanted they were very clear they would well qualified leads so I don't just want a bunch of people coming to me I want well qualified leads the key here between having a bunch of people show up who are like I don't know what you do but I want it and you're being like that's not what I do messaging this really comes down to messaging so in your content that you're putting out there in the way that you communicate what you do you need to say who that's for who it's not for you need to say what problems you solve what problems you don't solve what outcomes you can get what outcomes you don't get so it's really important to be clear in your messaging about who's a good fit for you about the results that you get this is case studies testimonials don't have case studies testimonials on your website that speak to results that you no longer are interested in getting for your clients about work that you don't want to be doing anymore so be really clear about that in Discerning make sure your message is you know you might not want to push controversy but it's okay to be polarizing in terms of sending away the wrong people so you've heard me talk a little bit even today about like if somebody has never gotten a client they've been really at it a really long time I uh I I think I'm not necessarily a consultant to help them I also don't work with a Consultants who are brand new why because that's what this podcast is for I want you to hear this I want you to go get three clients and then when you come to me and say hey I got three clients now can you help me grow my business yes so it's okay to say this is not a thing I do and this is a thing I do and I want you to be um intentional about that in your messaging and we'll have other episodes that are about sales conversions and about messaging today specifically I only want to talk about things that you can be doing to get more clients it's so much about lead generation it's so much about uh being willing to do the business development so uh home stretch here five things for you first question is almost always and this is a another one of those things that I hate to hear what do you know you should be doing that you're not doing right now right we all hate this advice stop confronting me with my own avoidance so there's usually something that you know you should be doing uh and either you're not doing it or you're not doing as much as you should be or you're avoiding something or you were doing it great before but then you fell off the wagon what's that thing what do you know you should be doing uh or doing more of but you just aren't and don't shoot the messenger I have to hear this advice for myself as well I did answer that question for myself uh second I think most of us are about 25 as visible as we should be definitely less than half as visible as we should be so if you were to be twice as visible as you are right now what would you do how would you do that to your perfect clients I want you to think where is the buyer of my services where is she is she doing Google searches is she mousing around websites I'm not sure you guys is she um on social media if so which platform where is she looking for someone like you is she talking to her colleagues is she networking is she a member of a Trade Organization trade Association that you can be a part of um this is the question to ask yourself and how can you be in front of her more twice as much as you are right now third thing for you make offers what's really interesting is in internet marketing businesses they make offers make offers and in Consulting we tend to take orders well I knew somebody to come to me and then tell me what's broken and then I'll tell them how I can fix that but we still have to have calls to action we still have to invite them invite them so your content all of your Outreach if you want them to be inbound you have to tell them what to do and to send them invite them to yourself so what does that mean uh you can invite them to schedule a consultation just plain old right you can have resources that they can download give them some something appealing that they can go and download you can invite them to Coffee chats you can invite them to hosted events that you're doing uh you can invite them to engage with your post make offers you can even sell a course you know for 99 bucks for 900 bucks for whatever uh you want to do but um make offers because you want to train those who are seeing your content that there's always something cool going on over there so there's always a cool invitation and so you want them to pay attention to that and if we're not making offers how can we expect people to feel invited so uh have inviting energy it sounds like I'm saying to do more stuff and someone today revealed that uh when she hears about um these conversations she's like I was I want to think oh I want to be doing that I want to be doing that and I shouldn't be doing that it's not about doing more what I want you to do instead is choose the lead generation Business Development marketing whatever you want to call it technique that is in your joy and genius Zone so the thing that you love to do and you are awesome at doing and then I want you to double down on that as long as it's working as long as it's a thing that's ever brought clients to you I want you to double down on it so that you can uh see it doing more for you it's not usually about doing more different things more varied things it's most often about doing the right things and doing that uh doing more of that so doing it twice as much so if you love writing and you love posting on social then I want you to do that twice as much if you only do posting on LinkedIn then I want you to do commenting because that's another great way to be visible and to bring people to your posts and your profile so if uh if you hate writing and you hate posting uh then you we all need to post so uh do the thing that you love maybe it's video uh and then get that video have an assistant help you but get that video posted onto LinkedIn uh and if you love events like let's do more events you guys we have to do these things that if we love them they'll be more fun and we're likelier to do them the opposite of that is like if you hate doing the things and you're like I feel like I should be doing this but I really don't like doing this either do it enough that you start to build a muscle you get better at it maybe you enjoy it more or don't force yourself to do things that you're not going to do because if you're not going to do them then they're not going to work for you um I think it's important that we all as consultants we fall in love with business development we fall in love with marketing and we dedicate a third of our business time hours you dedicate a third of your time in your work to Business Development working on your business growing your business and uh whatever marketing techniques it you need to do in order to bring those new clients to you last of all to quote James Clear author of atomic habits consistency is more important than intensity so it's better that you do one small thing a day or you do one small thing three times a week then that you do a marathon one day and then you never do it again so find the things that you like to do you enjoy doing and that you can do consistently because whenever I hear I don't have a consistent flow of leads I think are you consistently doing your marketing I don't have a consistent flow of clients I um I have a revenue roller coaster I'm like how consistent is your marketing activity well when I get a client I stop marketing so of course so consistency is better than intensity you don't want to be like Market Market get a client stop all your marketing oh my God I'm unemployed Market get a client stop marketing uh that is the key that's going to keep you on the revenue roller coaster that feast and famine cycle it's super frustrating so if you can find ways to be consistently marketing and then I get a client and I keep my marketing and then I get another client hey two clients cool now you have a real business almost uh Hey Market Market Market three clients awesome now you have a great Consulting business that is the way to build a Consulting business that is going to sustain you as you grow and continue to have that continuous incoming pipeline of well-qualified leads so if you want to know more about how I can help you with this you will find more information on the super page at my website it's called samanthahartley.com super there are ways that I help Consultants to build their businesses along with some other really great resources from the show I would love to hear from you what are your takeaways from today what activities are working to get you clients and where are you on the 0 to 10 scale of feeling like you have a pipeline built um I'm always excited to hear from Consultants because you teach me things that I can use to help other Consultants and with that I am wishing you a profitable and joyful Consulting business thanks for watching I'd appreciate if you'd like this episode and if you enjoyed the show why not subscribe be sure to click the Bell to get notified when new episodes drop