How many conversations should I have going at once?
Enough conversations to add up to about three times what you want to sign, which for most consultants lands somewhere between six and fifteen live opportunities at any moment. Three times is the rule of thumb I teach for a full pipeline, and it's a money number rather than a headcount.
Work it through with your own figures:
- Start with your revenue target for the year. Say it's $300,000.
- Multiply by three. You're looking for about $900,000 of live opportunity.
- Divide by your typical engagement size. At $60,000 an engagement, that's about fifteen conversations in motion.
- Spread them across the year, since a consulting sale takes three to eighteen months and they won't land evenly.
The number moves with your engagement size. A consultant signing four $150,000 engagements needs fewer live conversations than one signing twenty $12,000 projects, and she needs to start each of them much earlier.
What the multiplier is really pricing in is that you don't control the timing. Client time and your time are different: two months in your world is about ten minutes in theirs.
What happens when everything depends on one opportunity?
When one opportunity is carrying your quarter, scarcity starts making your decisions for you, and the client can usually tell. This is the real argument for the number, and it has nothing to do with forecasting.
Here's what a single live opportunity does:
- You read silence as a verdict. A two-week gap becomes evidence you did something wrong, when in client time it's nothing at all.
- You push too hard, or you don't push at all. Both come from the same place: this one has to work, so you either chase or you go quiet because you're worried about annoying them.
- You negotiate against yourself. The number softens before the client has said anything about it.
- You take terms you'd otherwise decline, because the alternative is an empty quarter.
None of that is a character flaw. It's what anyone does when one thing has to work. The way out is arithmetic: with other conversations in motion, you can focus on what's moving and still be there when this one is ready. And when an opportunity has truly stalled, deciding whether to keep pursuing it is its own call.
How do I count what's actually live?
Count an opportunity as live when a specific person has taken a specific next step with you inside the last few weeks. Most consultants overcount, which is how a comfortable-looking list produces a quiet quarter.
| Live | Not live, however much you'd like it to be |
|---|
| A named person with the problem, at a real organization | A company on a wish list |
| A conversation in the last few weeks, or a scheduled next one | Somebody who said "let's talk in the new year" in March |
| They've described the problem, the timing, or the budget process | You've described what you do and heard nothing back |
| A next step exists and one of you owns it | The next step is "I'll follow up at some point" |
The right column isn't worthless. Some of it becomes real later. It just can't be counted as cover, because cover is the thing standing between you and a quarter where nothing closes.
I'd also be honest about the perpetual ones. Most of us are carrying two or three opportunities that have been almost-ready for a year. Move them to a nurture list and stop letting them make the total look healthy. Working out what a full year needs is easier once the income swing itself makes sense.
When should I start filling it back up?
Start before you need to, which in practice means during the engagement you just signed. The moment a big opportunity gets exciting is the moment almost every consultant stops doing the activity that produced it.
Why signing is the wrong moment to stop
A signed engagement feels like the end of a process. It's the middle of one. The conversations that will pay you in nine months have to start now, while the calendar is comfortable, because there's no way to compress the months a client's decision takes.
So the rule I'd hold you to is simple: even when you have an exciting opportunity with a client, don't stop filling your own pipeline. Don't stop doing the activities you know bring clients to you. Drop the volume if you need to, and keep the smallest version running, but don't let it hit zero because one deal got interesting.
Leah's take
I want to name what changes when you have a full pipeline, because it isn't the forecast.
It's how you behave in the room. When you don't need this one, you ask the harder question. You say the price without flinching. You let a silence sit instead of filling it with a discount. You're willing to hear no, which means you're willing to find out, which is the whole game.
Clients can feel the difference, and I don't mean that in a woo way. Someone who needs the deal follows up differently. The emails are longer. The tone shifts. None of it is conscious and all of it is legible.
So when I say your pipeline is your power, I'm not talking about revenue predictability, though you get that too. I'm talking about the fact that a woman with twelve conversations going is a different negotiator than the same woman with one. Same skills. Same expertise. Completely different position.
And it works in the direction people don't expect: the fuller it is, the less you have to do to any single opportunity, which is what makes the whole thing feel less like pushing.
