The Three Stages Of B2B Client Acquisition

So many consultants only get their business clients via word of mouth or referral.

Sizeable business contracts coming to you via a warm introduction is ideal, right?

But of course, this is limiting because you rely on the jobs coming to you.

You have almost no control over when this will happen.

Other consultants get inbound leads via SEO, paid ads, or content marketing but find that the business decision maker is just not reaching out to them.

This is because those decision makers are not necessarily googling for a solution or trawling through blogs or social content online.

Executives and heads of departments tend not to be hanging out in Facebook groups.

These ladies and gents are just not accessible via inbound methods like the average consumer.

For B2B, more than any other demographic, proactive cold outreach to a decision maker via LinkedIn and/or email is the MOST predictable form of client generation.

And too many consultants and business owners are NOT doing cold outreach AT ALL.

Or they have done cold outreach for a bit, found it didn't work, and then just gave up.

Here is a quick overview of the three stages of B2B client generation that work with predictability:

1. Optimize

2. Engage

3. Convert

The first stage is OPTIMIZE.

This means knowing who you are targeting in terms of:

• the size of the company,

• the number of staff,

• the annual turnover,

• the industry,

• the department within the company,

• the decision maker's title or role,

• the geography of the company

• its stage of development [start up, seed funding, merger, sale, etc.]

Once you have optimized what type of company you can help and who the decision maker is you have to optimize the message you use to connect cold with new clients.

This message must address their challenge or need for cold outreach and refer to their goal or desire.

You can’t talk about what you do - but about the RESULTS you can help create.

Of course, it’s impossible to know with 100% accuracy via cold outreach which company is facing a specific need or challenge at any particular moment. Still, some research with your optimization and niche targeting can help greatly here.

The second stage is ENGAGE :

This means setting up and sending outreach messages to the lists of decision makers you have found via LinkedIn and email.

Engagement messaging is not selling - you are talking about results you create to gauge interest and open a conversation.

With a good engagement strategy, you should get a higher than average % of people responding to your cold outreach to learn a bit more, and this is where the sales conversations start.

And if you engage across LinkedIn and Email, you have double the chance of reaching a decision maker and opening the door to a conversation.

The third stage is CONVERT.

At this point, you regularly have outreach messages to your ideal client decision-maker via email and LinkedIn.

To pour fuel on the fire, you can automate much of this process through a few good LinkedIn and email automation tools.

This means you can send more messages to more people and book more appointments with regularity.

More conversations mean a fuller pipeline of business, a handful of relationships you can nurture and develop to the point of proposal or business contract.

A strong follow-up and lead nurture process are necessary for all leads in your pipeline, so tracking and measuring your pipeline's value and regularly touching base with leads is essential.

This way, you turn cold leads into warm leads and warm leads into hot leads. Finally, hot leads turn into business clients.

To put this into context:

The average consultant charges a day rate of $500 - $1500 [and often more].

This means that projects of several weeks quickly become $5k - $15k, and monthly retainers can turn into $10 - $100k annual contracts.

Therefore, just converting ONE MORE project each month is worth more than $50k per year, and one more retainer per month can quickly become $100k - $1m per year more.

Most consultants can easily pass work to associates or grow their team on demand - bringing in the paying clients is the challenge.

Do you see how a cold outbound lead generation system on LinkedIn and email is a no-brainer?

If you are interested in consistently generating high-value leads using LinkedIn and cold email, simply send me a DM. We'll chat quickly to see if the program is a good fit for you and your business. If so, we can start right away!

Jen Bishop consulting and marketing lead generation and marketing strategy social media London, UK

The Reason Why You're Not Getting New Clients Might Not Be What You Think

If you are seeking more clients via the lead generation channel or strategy or asking:

• How can I use LinkedIn to get new clients?

• How can I use cold email outreach effectively?

• How can I land clients via organic Facebook methods?

• How can I get clients on Instagram or YouTube?

And if your current networking, lead generation, or outreach methods are not working well and clients are not converting,

A new platform or channel won’t solve the problem.

If you have a low conversion to your service, you have an offer-message problem.

You need to ask yourself -

• Are you solving a BIG ENOUGH business-related problem? [Usually tied to profitability]

• Are you solving the RIGHT problem that a business wants to solve right now?

• Are you being SPECIFIC about how you help a company?

• Are you able to create tangible business-related RESULTS?

I recently spoke to a strategy consultancy that runs company day workshops at $1500.

They are finding that very few companies were signing up currently and wanted me to advise them on how to use LinkedIn to get more leads.

However, their one-day workshop could not produce tangible results for the company because participants who attended the workshop had to go away and implement the findings over 3, 6, or 12 months.

The consulting company could not measure any results regarding their influence or input because results occurred so long after their input.

As a result, the one-day workshop was not providing value. It was not solving the problem the company needed to solve.

I suggested they create a series of workshops and reporting to track implementation milestones of any strategy created.

One day had to become a package of workshops to ensure momentum and deliverability of objectives and to see tangible business change.

This costs more than a one-day workshop but delivers results in a more tangible way for a company.

And it’s RESULTS that companies care about, not the price or the time frame.

Focus on results and solving painful problems, create happy clients, then focus on traffic sources to fill your funnel.

If you would like help creating a solid offer message for your offer, then click this link to check out a short training on this.

The Reason Why You're Not Getting New Clients Might Not Be What You Think

Three Secrets Of LinkedIn

If LinkedIn has not worked well for you in the past, this post might help you out.

If you post content, add the right people, and even direct message new connections - and get nothing.

Zip, zero in terms of new business or revenue won.

Here is a list of THREE main secrets I have learned over the past few years, using LinkedIn for client generation and teaching others to use LinkedIn.

#1. LinkedIn is not about you; it’s about other people

#2 LinkedIn is a database as well as a social media platform

#3 LinkedIn is a professional networking platform similar to events, conferences or meet-ups

Let’s go through them one by one.

First, LinkedIn is not about you; it’s about other people.

A classic mistake I see all the time is people use LinkedIn like a job-hunting platform [that maybe it once was] where they hang their CVs and hope people take notice of them.

They list every award, certification, and notable achievement, and press mention there and even write their about section in the third person as though it’s a formal biography.

The problem is that this focus is all about you.

Your achievements, your credentials, your stellar career.

This is lovely if you want to be admired but not helpful if you sell a service because people ultimately invest in solutions and results.

Your Harvard pedigree is excellent, and your TEDX speakership is fantastic. Still, if you cannot solve a pressing problem or create impressive results for a business, it’s just window dressing.

It’s far more effective to make your LinkedIn presence about other people; by this, you make the results you create and the problems you solve abundantly clear.

Turn your headline from a role description into a POWER PROMISE.

For example, instead of writing, ‘My NAME: Principal Consultant and Founder of My Company,’ write ‘My NAME: I help small to medium businesses add $20k of revenue per month through organic Instagram strategies.’

Turn your About Section into a sales letter, and by this, I mean list:

1. The results you create

2. WHO you help

3. Case study examples in concise bullet points

4. How you help them - in steps if possible

5. How people can get in touch or find out more information

Of course, optimize your featured content, professional experience, skills, endorsements, and recommendations to support this information further.

In short, turn your LinkedIn profile away from being your CV and into being about the results you create for your ideal client.

Second, LinkedIn is a powerful CRM, lead finder, and social media platform in one.

This is the second biggest challenge I see people face when using LinkedIn.

They share heaps of quality content as they would on Facebook, Twitter, their blog, or via email marketing channels and get frustrated when crickets meet it.

While inbound leads from LinkedIn are possible, waiting for people to message you or call you because of your shared content is missing out on the vast potential of LinkedIn as a database.

LinkedIn holds masses of data that can be useful for client generation.

You can find email addresses, phone numbers, and other links relevant to your ideal client.

You can also find out important company news and events such as mergers or funding received, whether a company is hiring or releasing staff, and you can track down key decision makers and their relationships with each other.

A little-known feature of LinkedIn is that you can upload data to LinkedIn from your phone, your email account, or from your own CRM via a CSV and then use this data to further extend your network by connecting to a new second-degree network by finding similar audiences to your current contacts.

By not using the database features of LinkedIn and simply posting content like any other social platform, many people are missing out on the vast, unique potential of LinkedIn.

Third, LinkedIn is a professional networking platform [like events, conferences, or meet-ups]

I’ve been invited to online BNI events, regional business breakfasts/ lunches/ round tables, etc., via zoom and often have to remind people - LinkedIn is available 24/7. You do realize that, right?

Like attending any industry event or conference, you would get a list of attendees, their role in a company, and their contact details, and you can use the breakout sessions and meal times to approach people, strike up a conversation, trade business cards and essentially begin what can be very fruitful relationships.

LinkedIn is a 24/ 7 networking event.

LinkedIn gives you a vast array of ways to interact with people you would like to, in addition to a direct message.

You can read their content and like or comment on it. You can follow them, endorse them, recommend them, and add them as a connection.

Like any networking event, walking up to people and asking if they want to buy your stuff is neither good manners nor a good business development strategy.

But nor is standing in the corner with a bright sign hoping people will come to you.

Networking requires proactive engagement and constructive relationship development, asking questions, offering resources, making relevant introductions, and making relevant offers of help to painful problems.

LinkedIn is such an excellent tool for business development. Take it from me as someone who consistently makes thousands of pounds each month from LinkedIn.

If you would like help using LinkedIn to secure $10k - $100k clients regularly, then comment below, and we can set up a chat.

Three Secrets Of LinkedIn