When you're navigating the transition from successful corporate executive to independent consulting, understanding the difference between being a micro thought leader and a macro thought leader is more than just academic—it's strategic.

Look, I get it. The moment you see someone on LinkedIn with tens of thousands of followers, there's this little voice that whispers, "That’s success!"

Is LinkedIn free/premium good enough for consultants and coaches or is Sales Navigator worth the price?

A consulting or coaching business is nothing without new clients, and I’ve found that intentional outreach is the fastest path to consistently getting conversations with ideal prospects.

For B2B consultants, it’s a familiar drill - you input your ideal client parameters into LinkedIn or Sales Navigator, sift through profiles based on typical criteria like company size, location, industry, and title, and voilà, you have your prospect list.

Did the word "prospecting" in the headline of this article fill you with dread? Did you experience an instant negative reaction?

13 years and hundreds of pipeline generation programs have shown me the power of a finely tuned LinkedIn prospecting effort. You can quickly build a steady flow of new clients with minimum time away from the work you love.

To do this, you’ll need a good LinkedIn Profile, list of desirable prospects, and a series of message frameworks. WIth these in hand, follow this simple 4-step process to get as many prospects calls as you want in less than an hour a day.

When business development programs don’t result in a full pipeline and enough new clients, too many people just do more. Send more connection invitations; more messages; more email; more calls.

In times of economic downturn, businesses pull back on “nice-to-have” investments.

But they continue to buy the “must-haves”.

So how can consultants and coaches become “must-haves’?

Good morning!

There are a bunch of great reasons why every consultant needs to choose a target market, but the most important one is this:

If your palms get sweaty and your heart beats faster when you think about posting something on LinkedIn, you’re not alone. It affects nearly every non-digital native at first.

But not posting is a lousy option. Your profile will be lonely and you won’t meet as many of those perfect prospects as you could.

This article is for consultants who, like me, get easily distracted, start new projects without thinking them through and sometimes leave good ideas unfinished.

In search of a magic answer, I read a dozen articles on the topic and they all pretty much say the same thing - with two exceptions that made a huge difference for me.

Launching your own B2B consulting business is exciting, but it can also be overwhelming, especially when it comes to finding new clients. The key is networking, and here’s a framework that’s proven successful for myself and other consultants.

Who among us hasn’t noticed the current deluge of ads and LinkedIn messages promising to “fill your calendar” with sales calls or show you how to do it yourself?

To those of us responsible for generating relationship-based new business – whether for ourselves or our companies – getting the first conversation with a prospect is often a gigantic, headache-producing challenge.