When Your Pipeline Needs Help, What To Do First?

Let’s say you’re really hungry and you ask me where you can get something good to eat. I hand you a recipe and point you toward the grocery store.

Technically, this could solve your problem. In reality, it’s going to take a lot longer than you want. This is what I see happening with too much of the marketing and bizdev advice flung around today.

When you find yourself without enough opportunities to support your revenue or growth goals, you’re looking for something that will help get you back on track quickly.

Most of the advice you’ll hear puts you on a much longer path to new business.

When you’re responsible for bringing in business while also running your firm and serving clients, you have to be selective. You may have money to invest in business development. What you certainly don’t have is unlimited time.

So the question isn’t only what an activity might eventually produce. It’s also: how quickly is this likely to get you into worthwhile conversations with the right people?

The advice for getting more clients is usually some version of “you need to create more awareness.”

From posting and commenting on LinkedIn to starting a podcast to driving more traffic to your website, this stuff is mostly focused on attracting or engaging people who don’t already know you.

And now you’re probably thinking, “What’s wrong with that?”

Nothing, if your main goal is to become known by more people over time. The more potential clients who know about you, the better your chances of finding someone who needs your help. Consulting firms do need to keep developing new relationships.

The problem is expecting these activities to solve a pipeline challenge you have right now.

Awareness can be miles away from a worthwhile conversation.

The path from being aware of you to being willing to invest time talking with you is a winding trip through understanding what you do, recognizing a need for it and believing you can help.

At this point, you may have some of the ingredients. You still don’t have dinner.

When you need business sooner, evaluate what you’re doing by how quickly it can get you into the right conversations.

Look at the business development activities already taking your time and money. Are they designed to build awareness that may pay off later, or are they likely to create worthwhile conversations sooner?

You probably need some of both. But if you’re deciding what to do first, start with the activities that provide the shortest reasonable path to those conversations.

A recipe may be useful. Sometimes what you need is a meal.