How to stack the odds in your favour when attracting clients to your data consultancy

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I was recently talking to a marketing manager in a mid-sized data consultancy who had invested heavily in a LinkedIn "connect and pitch" campaign that failed. 

Chances are you've been on the receiving end of these connect/pitch campaigns in the past.

Here's how it works...

1. You hire a B2B agency (or do it yourself) and identify a list of several thousand target profiles, typically at the C-level. 
2. Next, you fire off a stack of connections, followed by pitches (typically for meetings), to the target profile list. For the hundreds of failed pitches, you may grab a (tiny) handful of meetings from those asking for details about your service.

For some consultancy founders I speak to, this feels like progress. If they've had few online leads before, it now feels like they have a systematic lead generation 'factory'.

There's one fundamental problem with this approach: waste.

Throwing away the catch of the day

In my younger days, I helped out on a fishing boat catching crab and lobster.

We would haul up pots with perfect specimens – those of legal size and attractive enough for local restaurants. But a large percentage of the catch we would throw back because it was too small, unhealthy or injured.

When I talk to firms doing 'connect and pitch' campaigns, the first thing that strikes me is they're also throwing most of their catch away. 

One firm recently confided that out of 1,000 connection requests they created:

• Five meetings
• Three proposals
• Zero sales

But that was five meetings more than the previous year (from online marketing), so it felt like progress.

But consider the stats:

A 0.5% 'conversion', from connection request to meetings booked, means that 99.5% of their 'catch' is wasted. That's not a smart way to grow a thought-leadership business.

And it's not just wrong from some ethical, 'holier-than-thou' stance that they're annoying thousands of senior data leaders every month. It's wrong because there is a finite number of C-level data leaders on the planet for this firm to pitch.

They'd have burned through their possible list of targets within 12-months.

And then what would they do?

If this is a flawed strategy, the question becomes – what should they have done instead?

Let's go back to my fishing analogy.

Imagine that instead of throwing away the crab and lobster, you had a big holding tank where you could nurture the catch until it reached maturity.

Yes, you would have to invest time, energy and resource into the catch, but it becomes an appreciating asset. It's value increases each time you supply it with more feed, fresh water, and care.

When the time is right, you reach into the tank and select the best shellfish available. You could even get 'picky' and choose only those with the best attributes to maximise your profit-to-effort ratio.

This 'community harvesting' mindset is precisely the approach I used to build my consulting business back in 2007 and it's what I teach to my clients.

In my (admittedly biased) opinion, it's the one every data firm should adopt. 

How do you create a successful 'harvesting strategy' for your data consultancy?

My clients sell a wide variety of data solutions. Yet, they nearly all reach out to me for one reason – they want a more predictable flow of clients, typically via more effective positioning, solution packaging, content marketing and social selling.

Chances are, it's why you're reading this article too. You're tired of an empty pipeline. You're frustrated by the feast and famine that results from referrals and waiting on channels outside of your control.

You want to grow your business in a more controlled and predictable way.

But how do you create sales predictability without annoying prospects with endless sales messages on LinkedIn, cold-calls to their mobiles, or a barrage of spam in their inbox?

The answer is to create a repeatable process that:

1. Creates a simple, compelling message, for your services
2. Embeds your sales message within insightful content
3. Creates a 'production line' to scale insight delivery
4. Shares insights with a targeted audience
5. Invites ideal clients into your offer

If you're struggling to attract leads through your content, then chances are you're not applying all of the steps above, e.g.

• You don't have a simple sales message or value proposition
• You're only producing sales messages (e.g. connect and pitch)
• You're publishing nothing but insights, with no sales messaging
• You can't scale your content output, or you're struggling to get started
• You're not intentional about audience growth
• You're creating generic offers such as 'reach out to learn about our data services', instead of specific offers to specific problems

The most important omission I see right now from the content strategy of most data firms, is a lack of insightful content with a simple sales message attached.

How do you 'embed a sales message' within your content? 

If you read back through this article, you've already experienced a sales message:

• I've introduced my Ideal Client Profile (data solution providers)
• I've explained the outcome they want (lead predictability)
• I've introduced the problem (not enough meetings/sales)
• I've outlined how I help (positioning/content marketing/social selling etc.)

How is that any different to connecting and pitching you via LinkedIn with:

"Hey, great to connect.

If you're a data consultancy, you may need help with predictable client attraction through content marketing. I do that stuff, shall we talk?"

Do you recognise the message above from the endless messages you get from firms trying to sell you directly after a connection request on LinkedIn? It's the same message structure, but in this article, I've embedded it within an insight. 

Instead of endlessly connecting and pitching my audience, I endlessly connect and share useful content (with a simple offer embedded).

And yes, some people may find the whiff of a sales message contemptible. They may feel so affronted that they block my content from their feed or unfollow my profile.

But here's the thing...

If you're putting out great content that is genuinely helpful to your audience, the volume of ideal clients who block you because you added a simple sales message to your content will be a tiny fraction of those who feel nauseated at the practice of the connecting and pitching techniques so prevalent on LinkedIn these days.

Great content, backed up with an ethical connection campaign built on mutual trust, creates the biggest 'holding tank' you can imagine for your ideal audience.

Selection fuels your growth

When prospects consistently reach out from your audience, you can start to get 'picky' about who to work with.

• Too small a client? Not for you.
• Too small a project? Not for you.
• Too far away? Not for you.

When you build a 'holding tank of dream clients', you get to choose what type of clients will optimise your growth, help you scale predictably, and reach your financial targets.

What are some examples of 'client holding tanks'?

Here are some obvious examples for building your own 'prospect repositories':

LinkedIn/Website Newsletter (that you invest effort into):

Email is still one of the most effective forms of lead generation, but your content has to be good enough to attract prospects onto the list in the first place. This is where many firms go wrong, they're not intentional at building a stand-out blog or article.

For those lucky to have the LinkedIn Newsletter feature (this article was published via LinkedIn newsletter) it's an excellent way to get into the inbox of future clients every week.

Podcast/Webinar/Live Stream Show:

Within myDataBrand, we have a number of data consulting/software clients who have built a loyal following that consistently tunes into their content. We expect to see demand continuing to rise in this space, especially as a result of Covid.

Podcasting in particular is an area we've seen a growth in demand within the data sector, but a regular webinar show can still deliver tremendous results that builds a loyal following (not to mention a thriving email list).

A percentage of your audience will consistently reach out for additional services once you start showing up consistently.

Specialist Groups/Communities:

My LinkedIn Data Quality and Data Governance Professionals Forum is fast approaching 10,000 members, with 20+ joining most days. I get to connect with everyone coming into the group and have lots of engagement with people behind the scenes, many of which are my ideal client profile.

Building a community around a movement or focused topic like this is a great way to build a platform for future growth, but only if you treat it with respect and create an environment for personal learning, insight and development.

You'll need to be patient. Nurturing your community as a long-term asset is the key here, but you don't need thousands of people to make a community viable. A few hundred focused members is more than enough to start getting results.

Connecting and Caring

Instead of connecting and pitch, try connecting and caring.

I teach my data consulting clients to connect with their ideal client profiles on LinkedIn. But instead of pitching, I get them to focus on a longer-term strategy built around developing trust with their audience.

Once you connect with a target profile, they'll see your content show up in their feed, but you can go further by engaging with their content – helping them to build their platform.

Add your own expertise and insight to their discussions. Help them achieve their goals.

'Serve don't sell' is the key here. If your messaging is simple and compelling, you'll soon be front-of-mind when they have a need for your services.

Next Steps

If you want to beat the feast or famine trap, the allure of connecting and pitching your way to sales success may feel like the easiest path. But as we've seen, the odds are stacked against you with that approach.

To swing the odds in your favour, start building an audience around your expertise. Today.

The longer you procrastinate, the faster and harder your competitors are working to build their own audience.

It's time for you to adopt a shift in strategy. Your ideal clients are saturated with sales pitches. But they still crave insights and wisdom that lead them out of the fog and 'data maelstrom' they've inherited.

Stop trying to push yourself into the lives of your target profile. Invite them to follow you, and give them simple tools and great content to make that a reality.

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Do these ideas resonate? Would you like to launch a content marketing and social selling strategy (that works) for your data solutions business? 

Join our next intake of the myDataBrand program and learn how to create a predictable pipeline for your data solutions business.

Book a call to learn more: https://mydatabrand.com/breakthrough