Trust, Not Tricks, Wins Consulting Clients
Discover my simple promotional strategy for the past fifteen years - it has nothing to do with marketing automation and everything to do with selecting and serving a community.
Hi, I’m Rich. Welcome to my weekly newsletter where I share systems and frameworks for scaling your consulting practice from $0 to $1m+ in revenue.
You can get 1:1 personal coaching or explore my new course: Proposal Mastery: Learn To Write Winning Business Proposals.
The Tempting Allure of Marketing Automation
Occasionally, I need to talk a coaching client out of the appealing prospect of marketing automation, particularly the option to pay for a system (often an AI system) that sends “personalised” messages.
You can see the appeal - the ‘system’ sets up a bunch of meetings with qualified prospects for you. You show up and sell to them. This theoretically saves you a lot of time and energy.
Here’s an example.
You can see all the hallmarks of AI/lead generation services here:
A vague subject line that prompts the recipient to open.
A reference to something specific I’ve published in the past to make it seem like they’re writing just to me.
A question where the answer is obviously yes.
The problem with this is threefold.
This isn’t how human beings speak to each other. I’m amazed this has to be said, but you don’t approach someone you don’t know and ask them if they can take on more clients.
We know these are automated messages. We get dozens of these a week. We can distinguish genuine messages from automated ones. Pretending it’s personalised is essentially a lie that loses you the trust of the recipient from the very first message.
People don’t trust people who cold-message them. The very fact that they thought it was appropriate (in the modern age) to send you a cold message makes it impossible for you to trust them.
A simple way of thinking about this is to imagine it happened in real life.
Imagine being at an event and someone walks up to you and says the words above - straight off the bat. You’re more likely to worry about them than buy from them.
It’s best to imagine cold-messaging in the same manner as knocking on doors and trying to sell something.
If a stranger showed up at your house offering to sell you something, would you buy it? Is there a combination of words they could use to persuade you to buy whatever they’re selling?
The very fact that they’re knocking on doors is a clear sign that you shouldn't trust them.
And, ask yourself this:
Have YOU ever bought anything from a stranger who approached you on LinkedIn or by email?
If the answer is no, why do you assume that other people would?
Even If It Succeeds, It Fails
Now, I’m sure some people say, “Well, actually, I’ve sold things this way”. And that might be true, but trust me, the people who buy from strangers really aren’t the people you want as clients.
If you’re curious how the person above will help you attract more clients, it’s by sending out messages exactly like the one you received.
Only now you’re paying them to do it on your behalf to your target audience.
The problem is that even if they do book meetings with you, you and the attendee won’t know each other. You won’t have researched them, built a relationship, or deeply understood their needs. You will be forced to show up and give the same generic pitch - regardless of whether the person wants the service or not. The odds of a sale here are slim.
Do you think the folks at any of the major firms you want to work with are responding to messages from strangers on social media?
No. The only people you will find yourself in meetings with are the gullible folk running tiny firms with limited budgets.
The only person who benefited here is the spammer who got paid for booking a meeting with a “qualified lead”.
I can’t stress this enough. Please don’t be one of the people sending out hundreds of spammy messages on LinkedIn (or any other channel). Even if you were able to book a few meetings, you’re harming your reputation amongst the very people you need to earn the trust of.
My Simple Promotional Strategy
Selling in the modern era is a trust game, not a cold-calling game.
Success in consulting depends entirely upon the number of people who trust you to solve their problem.
For 15 years, my promotional strategy has been dead simple to explain and dead hard to replicate;
→ Become one of the most trusted names in my niche.
That’s it….(you’re welcome to steal it!)
It’s the same strategy I used for this newsletter.
I launched this newsletter in April 2023. I was publishing for over a year before I began offering coaching. That’s because I needed to earn your trust first.
I don’t hard-sell myself to any of you. If you like what I write here and think I can help them, you’re very welcome to reach out. And today that’s happening with increasingly regularity (thank you!).
But it’s taken over two years of work (and hundreds of posts) to get there.
Trust Is Your Moat
The secret to success in the modern era is to decide which community you serve and then become a trusted member of that community.
Trust is your moat. Anyone can replicate your entire website tomorrow - complete with the service offerings and all.
But they can’t replicate the trust you’ve earned in your community.
When you become a trusted member of the community, you never have to send out cold messages. You will have people coming to you when they need help.
Every single client I’ve ever had has been inbound. They contact me, not vice versa.
And while earning trust is hard and takes time, it’s also a fantastic flywheel.
Once you've earned the trust of a few people, they'll start talking about you to others. Which increases trust in you faster and faster over time. You will soon reach a point where more opportunities present themselves to earn more trust (speaking, books, interviews, etc.)
And so the flywheel turns…
You Earn Trust By Doing The Hard Things Over A Long Time
Trust isn’t something you can fake.
There’s a clear reason we’re skeptical of newcomers with amazing offers.
You have to earn trust by doing the hard thing. The thing that most people who aren’t as dedicated as you won’t have the time, patience, or energy to do.
You have to show up consistently—day after day…for years.
Showing up can take many forms. But it might include:
Publishing expert advice.
One-to-one interviews/fact-finding calls.
Hosting events for the community.
Responding to questions in other communities.
Showing up/sponsoring events.
Creating helpful resources.
Connecting others who can help each other
etc…
You might find yourself doing many of these things without any immediate idea of how it might benefit you. But, trust me (aha!), it will always come back to benefit you.
Now there are plenty of ways of doing each of these smarter - and much of this newsletter is dedicated to doing precisely that. But what matters most is the strategy.
The key question to ask yourself is:
Are your activities aligned to earn long-term trust by supporting a community you’ve chosen to serve?
Or are they designed for short-term gain at the expense of your community?
The answer to that question will be very predictive of your success over the next decade.
Thank you for your trust.
Good luck!
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