3 principles to keep your pipeline full and routinely attract the right clients

3 principles to keep your pipeline full and routinely attract the right clients

Are you finding it hard to attract your ideal clients?

A lot of consultants get absorbed in running their business and find themselves stuck working with some clients just to pay the bills.

Now this is a very normal situation to be in – small consulting business owners are strapped for time.

But to break out of this vicious cycle and grow your brand, it’s important to take control of the situation.

In this article I share three principles to make this change happen – all of which underpin an effective marketing approach.


1/ Be proactive and take action into your own hands

The first principle to adopt is to have a proactive mindset and be accountable for taking action.

No one else is going to promote your business for you, so it really is all down to you.

Instead of hoping the right clients will find us, it's important to consider the activities we can do to find them.

Whether that’s starting more 1-1 conversations with prospects using direct outreach, or going to networking events, we need to take responsibility for our actions and understand that we get out what we put in.


2/ Continuously market your services

Now this is something that a lot of expert service providers get wrong.

We fall into the trap of only making time to market our services when client work is running dry.

But by this point it’s often too late.

The marketing efforts you put in today are unlikely to have an immediate effect – they usually pay off in future months.

We need to get ahead of the curve and continuously promote our services.

So when you're in need of that new project, you will have already done the hard work upfront.

You may be thinking “what if I already have too much work – do I still need to market my services?”.

The answer is YES!

Having more leads than you can fulfil is the driving force behind a strong and profitable service business.

It enables you to:

  • feel more confident about your offering and market fit
  • be selective about the clients you work with, and
  • routinely increase your prices

What I’m going to say now sounds counterintuitive, but I believe we should prioritise our marketing and business development activities over client work.


3/ Focus your efforts and resources

As I touched on at the beginning of this article, small consulting business owners are spread thin.

Our time is sparse so it’s critical that we don’t try and do too much.

As resources are limited, doing a few marketing activities to a high standard will yield a better ROI that trying to do too many.

To give you an example, it's common for marketing gurus to say you need to be on every single social media platform.

But I don't think this is very helpful advice for smaller businesses.

It’s better to pick one or two channels initially – start small and build up to it.

Identify the marketing activities that you can carry out on a routine basis and integrate these tasks into your daily/weekly schedule.

For example, I wanted to be more active on LinkedIn but I didn’t dive straight into posting three times per week right off the bat.

Initially I posted once a week and gradually built it up as the habit became further ingrained.


Conclusion and action point

To routinely attract the right clients and keep your pipeline full, follow these principles:

  • Be proactive and take action into your own hands. Don't rely on clients coming to you – take responsibility for your marketing efforts and actively promote your business.
  • Continuously market your services. Don't wait until you run out of client work. Start now and consistently promote your offering to build a strong pipeline for the future.
  • Focus your efforts and resources. Don't try to do too much at once. Identify a few key marketing activities that align with your goals and integrate them into your routine.


If you're on board with these points but aren’t sure where to start, here are your action steps:

  1. Decide which service you are looking to promote
  2. Identify your best clients (the people who you enjoy working with and greatly value the outcome the service enables)
  3. Plan your marketing activities – how are you going to reach the target audience?
  4. Execute the activities on a routine basis and give it at least a few months before you experiment with other tactics


Matt Saunders

Strategic web design & marketing for charities | Certified business coach & mentor

1y

Solid tips Tom 👌

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