How to get clients outside your network

Academy member0:02

In the past, what I've done is I do business development when things are so slow and I'm a little bit in panic mode, it's only when I'm when I'm desperate.

Leah Neaderthal0:16

Welcome to the smart gets paid podcast with me. Leah niederthal, I help women land higher paying clients in their independent consulting businesses, but I've never been a salesperson. My background is in corporate marketing, and when I started my first consulting business, I learned pretty quickly that it's about 1000 times harder to sell your own stuff than it is to sell someone else's. So I taught myself how to do it, and I created the sales approach that I now share with my clients so they can feel more comfortable in the sales process. Get more of the right clients and get paid way more for every client contract. So whether your client contracts are $5,000 $100,000 or more, if you want to work with more of the clients you love, do more of the work you love, and get paid more than you ever thought you could, then you're in the right place. Let's do it together. Thanks for tuning in, and don't forget to rate, review and share. Hey there. Leah here, thanks for tuning in. I hope that wherever you're listening to this, wherever you are right now, you're having a great week, making some good progress on your business and taking some time for you. So happy fall. Everybody happy back to school. If that's part of your world. In our house, I know in a lot of houses, back to school is also known as everybody gets sick season. You know, because kids are going back to school, they're in close contact with their friends and their classmates and all of their classmates germs. And they bring those germs back to the house, and everybody gets sick. If this is part of your world and part of your experience right now, you know exactly what I'm talking about. So like this year, on the second day of preschool, my son brought home a stomach bug that like knocked my whole family down and me down for like two days, or still actually, like feeling some lingering effects of it. But you know, for those two days, I had to cancel every meeting. It was bad. And even though we're through that now, I mean, I guess mostly now I feel like the beginning of a head cold. I don't know if you can hear that, probably another gift from school. And all I can say is, in this season, this is when I'm grateful to just be running my own business, because for those two days, I could take the time I needed, I could rest if I had to reschedule a call with you. Thank you for understanding, because I'm in charge of my time. You know, this is really the benefit of running your own business, and it's nice to sort of reflect and appreciate that when things are going well and things are fine, but it's also made so clear when things don't go well. So if you're going through this right now, if this is part of your experience of back to school or the fall, just be sure to take time for you. Take a rest if you need it, and we'll all get through this. All right, let's dive into the episode. So a few years ago, early in my business, I got a message on LinkedIn one day from a woman that I wasn't connected to. She did marketing consulting for midsize businesses, and the message said, Hey, Leah, I was referred to you by a friend, and I think I need your help. And she went on to sort of talk about, you know, some of the stuff that was going on in her business, and it actually was exactly what I do. And then she ended by asking, you know, can we set up a call? And I wrote her back, and I was like, hey, great to hear from you. Happy to set up a call mind if I ask who sent you my way? And she wrote back and said the name of somebody that I had never heard of. Like that name did not look familiar at all, and I was so pleasantly surprised, because up until that point, I had gotten all my clients from referrals, right? No surprise there. That's pretty common, but it was all referrals from people I knew, like people I had worked with or had some connection to, but up until that point, I hadn't really gotten referrals from people I didn't know. And I was like, Huh, okay, all right, how do I get more of that? And that sent me on a path of learning and testing and developing a system, really a methodology to get referrals from outside my network. And since then, I've had tons of those messages and so many women who have reached out to me because they've been referred to me by someone else, someone I didn't even know. And I've taught that same methodology to my clients so they can see the same thing in their business. And I was thinking back to that very first message as I was putting together this episode on a topic, or, I guess, a question really, that I hear from so many women consultants, how do I get clients from outside my network? And I was thinking about the methodology that's come from answering that question for myself, and that's the question you're going to hear me talk through with my client today. The client I'm talking to is a consultant in communications for large. Companies, and in the years she's been running her business, she's gotten work, but she's also realizing that she can't keep relying on the same sources for connections and introductions. So that's the problem we're going to talk through. So in this episode, you're going to hear how to get clients outside of the people you already know. You're going to hear the mistake that a lot of women make when they try to get clients outside of their network, and you're going to hear how to avoid getting caught flat footed when you need to make clients happen. This is actually part of a longer coaching call where we touched on a few topics. But I just wanted to pull out this part here, because this question, this topic, is so important, so you're going to hear us just dive right in. I want to send a huge thank you to this client for allowing me to share this conversation with you. Take a listen, and at the end, I'll come back and share a lesson you can apply to your business. So you might have noticed that with the economy being as it is, things feel Ali shaky. Referrals are slowing down. Budgets are getting cut, and clients who you thought would say yes are saying no or not right now. And here's the thing, in this economy, you can't run your business by waiting for referrals. Clients just aren't going to swim into your net. You have to be intentional. That's why the best way to protect your business today and for the future is to have the two systems that every consulting business needs, a marketing system to bring the right clients to you and fill your pipeline, and a sales system to help clients say yes and get you paid more. But it's not just about getting clients. It's about security and stability and making your business sustainable no matter what's happening out there, smart women are doing this right now, even in this economy, they're winning their biggest contracts, filling their pipelines and their businesses are growing, which lets them do things like build up six months of family savings a lot sooner than they had planned, or go from having one to two months of revenue booked to having eight to 10 months of revenue booked, or getting to the place where you're able to pick and choose your clients and say no to the ones that aren't Perfect. These are real results from women in the academy, because this is what we do inside the Academy. We help you build the marketing and sales systems that make your business and your revenue more stable, more secure and more sustainable. So if you've been in business for at least two years, if you made at least 120k last year, and if you want your business to feel secure no matter what's happening in the economy. Join us. Apply today. It's markets, pay comm slash Academy. We get started on Monday, February 9, because you can't control the economy, but you can control what you do about it. Let's talk about the first question that you brought up, which is how to get clients outside of people you already know?

Academy member7:43

Yeah, I think my thing is I, and I've started some of the portal, like questionnaires and such is like, I just don't know how to get work beyond people I already know. And kind of, I've mentioned that I like the startup idea, who are VC funded, just to be clear, because the startups tend to not have money for me, but the ones who are like, like, I worked for a startup a few years ago that was backed by GM. So it was like, they had shit ton of money, and they were like, just and anything that I did, they were like, Oh, this is great, because they didn't know what they were doing. Sometimes, when you go into a big corporation, they think they know what they're doing, and you try to make such it just depends how open they are receptive to suggestions for change. I feel like the startups are more like, okay, great idea. Yeah, we love that. Let's do it. I feel like, but I just like, have no idea how to go after them. How I got the job with the startup a few years ago in the first place I knew somebody, and she brought me in, and she couldn't do it by herself, so I ended up taking on that role. But maybe VC funded startups aren't really where I should be, but I feel like it's I really enjoyed that project.

Leah Neaderthal9:07

Okay, how to get clients outside of people you already know? Yeah, okay, there is no module on this, because everything does this. Okay, okay, okay, so because, how do you get clients outside of the people you already know? First, you describe your work in terms of the value you have a great painkiller statement so that you essentially arm people with the tools to understand the value you provide and who you provide it for, right? Okay, you start to show up with high value educational content that shows people how you think about the problem. So, you know, it's again, it's not like, should you use an Oxford comma or not? It's like, No, we're not. We're not at that level. When we think about high value content, it's stuff that our clients care about. Yeah, right, right. You show up where client where your clients are. For us, that's LinkedIn. You. Yeah, and you do it consistently, right? Because when you do that, you start to activate your broader network. All right? It's not a case of like reaching out to people you know, and saying, you know, can you introduce me to new people or whatever? Because, have you ever said, Have you ever had somebody who said, Oh, yeah, I'll introduce you, and then they never introduce you, right, right? Yeah. So we have to start to carve out a little bit of real estate on the internet, on LinkedIn, and arm them with those tools. Value you provide, who you provide it for, and and what they can do, okay? And on the one hand, you know it's the bummer. There's no silver bullet I get outside of Ali already know, but it's, it's a strategy that works and, and the truth is that, you know, all business development is a process, not an event, right? It's a process of planting seeds, planting planting a lot of seeds, consistently over and over, in front of, you know, in the right places. I don't know if that's like a good thing to hear, or does that kill your dreams? Or?

Academy member11:19

No, I know it. What my in the past, what I've done is I do business development when things are so slow and I'm a little bit in panic mode, like beginning of 2022, the first quarter, I had nothing, and so I was like posting on LinkedIn, and I was reaching out to people I knew. And then things picked up, and then I dropped LinkedIn. Because I was like, Well, I'm too busy to do that. I got what I needed. But now I feel like, oh, the second half of 23 could be more of where I was a year ago in q1 so it's like, I don't necessarily treat it as an event, but I definitely LinkedIn is not, you know, my my go to it's only when I'm when I'm desperate,

Leah Neaderthal12:09

yeah, okay, well, let's talk about that. Because, first of all, you're not alone. When I was running my consulting business, I felt like I had two modes, right? That's like, panic. Need to make something happen mode, and then things are fine. I'm just gonna do the work mode, right, which is what you're describing. So, yeah, and that also sucks, because it means that when you do show up, you're in the most desperate, you know, and and the nature of the the type of clients that you're working with that the woman in the Academy are working with, you don't just, like, make some shit happen, yeah, you know, it's nearly impossible, even if, if you got a new client, if you got a new conversation today, you still, just, by the nature of the B to B sales cycle, would have a new client in like, three to 18 months, right, right? And so that's why it's, it's like, by the time you're like, Oh, my God, I need to make something happen. It's like, too late, yeah,

Academy member13:04

which I definitely felt like last year and I and you know what you were saying before, it definitely feels like, Oh, I'm a little behind. I don't know how realistic it is to reach my goals for this year, because I, like you said it's gonna take when I was the last time I got a bunch of clients, it took three months to get everybody ramped up.

Leah Neaderthal13:27

Yeah. Well, we do have some strategies that are more fast acting, like I like to think of, I think of business development as, like, medicine, right? Some medicine is fast acting and some medicine is slow release. We have a technique called the shoulder tap that's a little more fast acting, not to get clients, but to get conversations right. LinkedIn is sort of a mix of fast acting and slow release, but like probably more slow release, okay? And we're going to use both of those, okay with you. But what we're going to do then is put them into what we call a sustainable strategy. And a sustainable strategy allows you to plant seeds consistently, no matter what's going on in your world, whether you're super busy with work or whether you you know maybe you come to the end of a client engagement and you want to bring in some more work, right? Yeah, because we put it into three modes. So there's maintenance mode, which is like, regular stuff, right? I'm just, you know, spitballing, but it could be like, two or three posts on LinkedIn a week. And by the way, we'll teach you, like, exactly what to say, how to say it, all that. But let's say two to three posts on LinkedIn a week, two shoulder taps. Maybe that's your maintenance mode, right? Every week you're doing that, if you want to turn it up, or you need to turn it up, we go to Power Mode, which is like, okay, maybe we post on LinkedIn four, five times a week. And again, you know, you're gonna learn how to do that in a way that's very you know, it's. Very doable, and maybe it's bringing some more things in, right? Maybe there's something else that's like, in your wheelhouse. And then when things are maybe things are good, you have, like, a full slate of clients. Can't really take on more. Then when you go down to simmer mode, simmer mode just means, like, we're not taking the pots off the stove, right? Which is what you've been talking about. Like you stopped doing LinkedIn because you're like, so similar mode. Maybe you just post once a week. Maybe you have no shoulder shafts, but you're, you're sim. It's, it's still on the fire, right? That's good, so, but we need to do, we need things to do, to put in that plan, right? And that's where the shoulder tap LinkedIn, and you know, maybe one other thing, but the only strategy is consistency. Yeah, like, Okay, that's it. No matter what does that actually matters less what you do then it matters more that you do it consistently. Does that make sense?

Academy member15:54

Okay, yeah, yeah, definitely, very inconsistent on LinkedIn. So all

Leah Neaderthal16:00

right, well, we're gonna, we're gonna fix that. Okay, okay. And when you can do that right, when you when you're planting seeds, when people start to follow along, when the right people are seeing you, and, you know, getting a little taste of, like, how you think about things, that's how you start to expand outside of the people who already know you, because then you're, you know, with our LinkedIn strategy, our LinkedIn system, you're getting visibility, let's, you know, 1000s, 2000 views every time, right? And, and those are people who you're connected to, but also those are the people that those people are connected to, yeah, and that's what we talk about, activating a broader network, okay, all right, but the first thing you have to do, wait, hold on, let me. Let me just pause. How does tell me how that's all sort of landing with you?

Academy member16:50

Good, yeah, I'm excited. I also, you know, I'm glad to hear that you tell me not necessarily what to write, but the kind of content, because definitely, I mean, like, I'll repost an HBr thing that I really liked, but that's about where it stops, you know, like, I might say congratulations to a friend who got a promotion or something. But content wise, I'm more of a like, a re sharer or a congratulator kind of gal. So I need a little more, even though I can come up with stuff for other people, it's for myself that, you know, I haven't had a strategy before. So having helped creating a strategy that might help my wheels get turning on, like, what kind of content I would put out there. I just have never thought of it in a strategy type way before. Again, it's ridiculous, since I do that for clients all the time.

Leah Neaderthal17:55

I hear you, I hear you, and everybody, to a person who does some type of like comms or marketing work will echo the same, the same sentiment your clients get all your good stuff. Yeah, you, it's almost like you don't even have the have the muscle of using that genius on yourself.

Academy member18:13

Yeah, it's so true. It's so true. It's like, what is the shoemakers children never have shoes. Like, that's how I feel. I'm like, I'm too tired. I'd just rather be done with my work day to now. And yeah, sorry about my dog.

Leah Neaderthal18:31

Okay, it's okay, all right. So let's look at how we're going to start to turn this chip so that you are activating that broader network, getting more of the right clients and doing it on purpose. Okay, all right, so if, as you heard my client say, if you've ever done like, a lot of biz dev or marketing or posting or whatever, to get clients, and then you stop doing it when you get clients, because, like, Thank God you know you don't have to do that anymore. Raise your hand wherever you are. I mean, maybe you're in the car. I mean, of course, keep one hand on the wheel. Or maybe you're on a walk or on the subway. Just take a second and raise your hand, just so you know, just be aware that so many women are raising their hand with you. This is so common, so you're not alone. All right. So there is one big thing I want to leave you with today on this topic of getting clients outside of your network, and it's this idea of activating a broader network, your broader network, and really showing people how you think. Because let's step back for a second when you think about the people you know your network, people who maybe have made introductions or given you referrals in the past, they do that because they know that you're good at what you do, that you're smart, and basically they know you're awesome. And they did that. They were able to do that because you worked together, right? Maybe you worked at the same company. Or they were a client or a partner, but they had some opportunity to see how you think and how you work and see that you're good at what you do, and that's amazing. But from your career, you get what, like a handful of those relationships from every job or project that you had so like what you work somewhere for, let's say, three years, and you come away with five or six people who want and are willing to send work your way, sometimes less, sometimes more, but five or six people every three years, that's a really slow way to get potential referrers. And in that old model, the only way to get more potential referrers, people who are going to send you work is to get another job, work there for like three years, and then hope that a handful of those people later send clients your way. It's just so slow. It's just not a work of a model. Not to mention, you know what happens when you start your own consulting company? By definition, you're not working in a company, creating relationships with colleagues, where they come to know that you're smart and you're good at what you do, and they can send people your way as slow as that model is just, you know, at a baseline the model, it stops completely, because, by definition, you're not working in a company. So what do you do? Essentially, we have to replicate that process of people who know you're smart, know how you think, and know that you're good at what you do, but we have to do it online, and that's what we're using LinkedIn for, not for selling or pitching or DMing or anything like that. That's why we post high value educational content that shows your ideal clients how you think. We also don't just post on LinkedIn to just post right or check a box like you're, quote, unquote, doing social media. You can post any old crap. You can share an article or game the algorithm to just show up. But the difference is, we want people to through your content to see how you think, to see how you're unique, to see your perspective on how to solve the problem you solve. So that fairly quickly, instead of just the handful of people you already know being the only ones who know that you're smart and good at what you do, now 1000s of people start to know it, and that's what we mean by activating your broader network, and that's how you start to get clients outside of the people you already know. That's one of the things we're doing in the academy. You can check it out at Smart gets paid.com/academy because listen, you do incredible work, and the clients who need your help are out there outside of the people that you already know, and they're waiting for you. You Hey, everything we're talking about in this episode is part of the system. Women like you are learning in the academy. In the Academy, we help women consultants install the two systems. Every B to B consultant needs a marketing system to consistently attract the right clients and a sales system to lead a sales process to a yes and get paid more for every contract. So even if you've only gotten clients through referrals or word of mouth in the academy, you'll learn how to attract and sign clients outside your network, how to lead a sales process with confidence and how to get paid for your value, not your time. And There's no cold calling or cold emailing involved, no changing your services or making a course, and you won't use any pushy sales tactics. That's just not our vibe. So if you like what you've heard here, the academy may be your right next step to learn how you can get these two systems in your consulting business and make progress faster and with fewer roadblocks. Head to smart gets paid.com/academy and apply, and we can chat about next steps. All right, see you over there. Transcribed by https://otter.ai