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Hi there,

Welcome back to our Rethinking Growth Advice email course. In the last email we delved into the unique challenges of selling credence goods like consulting services. Now let’s talk about earning visibility, the importance of building and nurturing relationships, and why some of the most popular marketing frameworks don’t apply to your consulting practice.

Oscar Wilde said, "There is only one thing in the world worse than being talked about and that is not being talked about."

Marketing is all about connecting with and earning trust from your target market. And when we think about the typical client journey, it's easy to spot your first marketing goal: building awareness of you and your consultancy.

The main objective is clear: Get in front of your ideal clients so they know you exist.

You can't do that if you don't know who your ideal clients are. This is why, before you even think about your marketing initiatives, you must have your overall strategy clear. It includes your targeting, positioning, and value proposition. Unfortunately, most solo or micro consultancies skip this work - and then wonder why their sales pipeline is always empty.

Let's imagine you got that part down. You know who you're selling to, how you will differentiate from other consultancies, and how to communicate the unique value you're bringing to the market. Now what?

The first step for every solo or micro consultancy is to consciously avoid complicated marketing funnels (that are automated, scalable, and loved by marketing gurus), and look at the people and relationships that can support you.

After all, as the entrepreneur and investor Ben Casnocha said:

Unlike other industries, where selling products or commoditized services can be less personal, consulting is a trust-intensive business. Expert advice is a credence good, meaning it is bought on trust alone. And that trust takes time to build.

This characteristic of consulting is why the funnel model, often used in other industries, doesn't work well for consulting services. The funnel model makes several assumptions that simply don't apply to most consulting practices:

• The funnel assumes an infinite supply of leads.
• The funnel assumes that leads are of short duration.
• The funnel fails to appreciate the importance of referrals and relationships.

Tom McMakin, author and consultant, gives us a hint on how to solve this problem:

That’s exactly what you need to do to improve your business development and bring more opportunities to your consulting practice. Do you know how people search for a new consultant or consulting firm? More than 70% of buyers ask a friend or colleague for a recommendation. Ignoring this fact in your marketing strategy is a recipe to waste time, money, and energy.

I’ll share with you a real story from a large consulting firm to illustrate a completely different approach.

Dominic Barton had just become a partner at McKinsey when he saw the opportunity to go to South Korea and build a banking practice there. His colleagues said it could kill his career. But he decided to take it.

When he moved to Korea, he didn't know the language. He didn't know the culture. He didn't know any people.

He knew he needed to build awareness and introduce himself to the business community. Yes, he carried the McKinsey brand. But that doesn't change the fact that he was an outsider to the Seoul banking club.

Here's what he did:

A second approach that Dominic took was to write and give speeches:

You may wonder: How was that enough to build a multi-million dollar practice?

If you run a consulting practice, the number of relationships you need to build and nurture is smaller than you think. For most of you, a network of 200 is all you need to aim for.

If you offer data analytics services for financial institutions, there are 200 heads of risk who make all the difference in your world. If you provide marketing advice for real estate companies there are roughly 200 developers who, if they knew and hired you, would keep you busy for the rest of your life.

What if you sell to smaller clients? Your list of 200 names will likely include people who can refer good prospects to you. People who have the means to put you in front of your buyers.

200 might not be the right number for your consultancy, but it's not 20,000. For McKinsey's Partner Dominic Barton, the number was 500.

Once you understand that, building awareness becomes not only much easier but also much less expensive. Whatever tactic you choose to focus on, your goals should be to:

1. Figure out with whom you should be speaking; and
2. Appropriately introduce yourself to all of them.

You can ask for advice. Publish and share your insights. Speak. Ask your contacts for referrals. Attend conferences. Email or call people. Invite them to roundtables. Host webinars. Write newsletters.

I’ve personally seen and helped consultancy founders build 7-digit practices by choosing just one of those and doing it well, week after week. The difficult part is not choosing the right tactic, but finding what fits your personal style and what you can stick with over a long period of time.

To close this long email: You might have noticed it’s the first time I mention online initiatives. Do not take it as a sign that one-to-one interactions are more important scalable marketing initiatives. You will need both in your business development toolkit.

In terms of marketing, there are a few reasons why smaller consultancies should actually prioritize digital initiatives (which is a topic we’re not covering today). But they are just another piece in your growth engine. The more active and relevant your online initiatives are, the easier it will be to figure out with whom you should be speaking and introduce yourself to them.

When it comes to managing relationships, most consultants are quickly presented with a tricky practical challenge: Spreading your attention among your contacts doesn’t work.

In theory, it is possible to meet anyone and turn them into loyal and delighted clients. But that’s rarely easy - a close partner does not remain a partner forever. You can’t wow someone on day one and then come back a year later expecting the relationship to be where it was.

You must sustain the efforts over a long period. Earning trust and a strong reputation takes time. This means you can’t expect to invest the necessary time and attention with every single contact on your list.

The average consultant has hundreds, or even thousands, of relationships. It’s hard enough to allocate time and attention to all of our clients, prospects, and colleagues. When we add friends, acquaintances, and digital connections to the mix, it becomes clear that the task is simply not possible.

So part of the challenge is exactly figuring out which of our many relationships to invest in.

Should you focus on your best clients? Your unhappiest ones? The people who actually say yes when you invite them to lunch? The people with the highest job titles?

Research shows we are prone to a number of network biases. The strongest of those is the proximity principle. The idea is simple: we prefer to populate our networks with the people we spend the most time with.

These could be your business partners or team colleagues. The people who go to the same gym you do, or with whom you play golf every weekend. Or the folks who attend the same church as your family.

Physical proximity is the number one correlation between who we spend time with. Life naturally steers us toward the people who are closest to us, but they won’t necessarily be good clients or collaborators in our business. If the goal is to deepen the professional connection and bring in more opportunities to the firm, we need to adopt a consciously designed system or mechanism to shift our attention toward the most important relationships for our long-term professional success.

That's where the Primus List comes in.

Primus comes from "primus inter pares", or “first among equals” in Latin - this term was historically used in Roman times. The idea is simple. Some people are more important to your professional success than others. The Primus List is how you capture those names and keep them front of mind.

A Primus List is made of the 8 to 10 people you know can make the biggest impact in your consulting practice in the future. They’re generally a mix of people you know and people you don’t. They’re not necessarily those who got you where you are - instead, they’re the people that will get you where you want to go.

So who goes on your Primus List? A mix of clients and prospects, and people who can help with your business development indirectly: referrers, your business partners, influencers, strategic partners, or other experts you rely on. This ratio depends on the specifics of your practice.

If you sell to smaller organizations or do a large amount of work for a particular client that will never need your services again (such as M&A firms and damage-control PR experts), your list may consist entirely of strategic partners who can refer you to the right kinds of clients. If you work with a handful of large clients and grow with them, your Primus List might be made up of leaders at those client companies. For some of you, it will be a mix.

​You can find a template of a Primus List here. Take 10 minutes to write down the most important relationships for your long-term success. What's the next proactive next step you can take to move the relationship forward?

Feel free to check this post, with 6 ideas to nurture relationships in less than 6 minutes. We highly recommend you complete and review your list using pen and paper. There are no deadlines for nurturing relationships (and this is why our brain avoids it), but keeping your list visible and bringing back your attention to it week after week is what makes you naturally find opportunities to move those relationships forward.

If you want more information on how to better use the Primus List (as well as what other tools and activities micro consultancy founders use to make business development a healthy and sustainable habit), just reply to this email and I’ll personally get back to you.

Thank you for reading, and see you in 2 days for the next one!

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