Most consultants I work with have already “done” their network.
They did it the month they left corporate. A LinkedIn post announcing the new practice, a handful of emails to old colleagues, a few coffees. A piece of work or two came from it. Then client work filled the diary and nobody went back.
For many of them that was years ago. Since then they’ve learned more, delivered more and built a sharper offer. Their network hasn’t heard about any of it.
The video above cover the overview and the first two steps of what I call the quick wins sprint. It’s the process one of my clients used to book £173,000 of revenue from a network he’d already “used”. This is the written version, with the scripts laid out so you can copy them.
Why your network comes first
There are plenty of ways to find clients. Market signals, like a new senior hire or an acquisition. A named list of the two or three hundred accounts that would make your year. LinkedIn, webinars, events.
All worth doing. None of them are the quickest.
The quickest route is people who already know you, already like you and, with luck, already trust you.
They don’t need convincing that you’re good at what you do. They need three things: to know what you do now, to understand where it fits, and to see whether it matters to them or to someone they know.
Everything in this sprint exists to get you into a conversation.
Opportunities come out of conversations, and nothing else in the process counts until you’re having them.
Step one: grade your network before you judge it
“I don’t think there’s much in my network” is the thing I hear most. It’s also a guess.
The first job is to swap the guess for a count.
Pull every contact into one place: your phone, your Outlook or Gmail contacts, and your LinkedIn connections. LinkedIn lets you export these officially. Go to Settings and Privacy, then Data Privacy, then Get a copy of your data. It emails you when the file is ready.
For each person, record their name, company, job title if you know it, and whether you have a mobile number and an email address. Then grade them on two things.
Relationship strength. A is strong, B is moderate, C is weak. Only you can say what strong means. Did you work alongside them? Bring them in on a project? Study with them?
Role. 1 is a decision maker for what you sell. 2 is an influencer on that decision. 3 fits your ideal client profile but you don’t know their role yet. Add a 4 for referrers if introductions matter in your practice.
Start with your A1s, then your B1s and A2s. Strong relationships with people who can say yes.
A spreadsheet is plenty. If you already use a CRM, add two drop-down fields, one for role and one for relationship strength, and grade inside it. I built Nynch partly because I kept redoing this grading in spreadsheets, but the method works on paper.
When consultants finish this, they nearly always say the same thing. They hadn’t realised how many people they knew inside the companies they want to work with.
One trap. If you have 6,500 LinkedIn connections, don’t grade every one before you send a single message. Grade your phone and email contacts first. If that gives you 80 A1s and B1s, you have four days of outreach at 20 a day. Keep grading while those go out.
Step two: give them a reason, and keep it short
In 1978 the Harvard psychologist Ellen Langer and her colleagues ran a small experiment at a photocopier. Someone asked to jump the queue to copy five pages. With no reason given, 60% of people let them. With “because I’m in a rush”, 94% did. With “because I have to make copies”, which is no reason at all, it was still 93%.
The word “because” did most of the work. Robert Cialdini made the study famous in Influence, and it sits underneath every script in this sprint.
So your outreach needs a because. It also needs to be short, and this is where experienced executives go wrong. I review client messages every week, and my most common edit is deleting the apology. “I know you’re really busy.” “If this isn’t relevant, maybe we can catch up in a few months.” A four-line message becomes fifteen, and every extra line makes you sound less sure of yourself.
Pick the channel by what you already have. If you have their mobile, text them. If not, email. If not, LinkedIn. Senior people can take a week or two to reply on LinkedIn, so judge your response rate with that in mind.
Past clients, and people who went quiet
This group covers anyone you’ve worked with on something else, and anyone who received a proposal, a quote or an RFP response and then went silent. Most of those didn’t pick a competitor. They picked doing nothing, and the timing may have changed since.
You already know what they were trying to fix. So ask about it, in one line:
Are you still grappling with new client acquisition?
Are you still planning on launching in EMEA?
Are you still being impacted by the new CEO’s directive?
That’s the whole message. It’s a version of what marketers call the nine-word email, written to get a reply rather than to explain anything. Ask about their problem, never about your service. “Are you still interested in HR consulting?” gets ignored.
When they reply, don’t jump in with “I can help”. Send this:
I have a new idea about how you can [remove the pain or reach the goal]. Let’s connect this week if you are around and I’ll run you through it.
If you’re not sure what their problem was, skip the first message and lead with the because:
Hi Steve, I was thinking about you earlier because I have an idea about how you can [remove the pain or reach the goal]. Let’s connect this week if you are around.
Drop the word “new” if the person you’re writing to is cautious by nature. Founders tend to like being first. Plenty of corporate executives would rather hear that something is proven.
Your warm network
Three versions, depending on how clear the fit is.
When the fit is obvious, use the same “I was thinking about you earlier because” message with the result spelled out: “...an idea about how you can reduce time to revenue on your upcoming product launch.”
When the relationship is strong and you want their view:
Hi Steve, I was thinking about you earlier because I’m working on something new and would love your expert insight. How are you fixed to catch up?
When you’re unsure of the fit, or you’re hoping for introductions, write a slightly longer email. Open with a personal first line if you have one. Say you’re building a new offer to solve a specific problem, and describe the problem the way your buyer would, by its symptoms, not by your diagnosis of the root cause. Say plainly that you want feedback and there’s no hard pitch. If they’re more likely to know the right person than to be it, add a line: “If you know any progressive CFOs who could benefit from this, I’d be grateful if you forwarded this on.”
Treat everyone in this process as a potential client, friends included. They deserve the same professionalism.
If you want the next part of the sprint, building the short pitch deck you’ll use on the second call, subscribe here. I write for consultants and fractionals, and most of it is this practical.
The first call lasts ten minutes, and it has one job
A warm reply turns into a call. This is where good relationships get derailed, because two old colleagues on the phone will happily reminisce for 45 minutes and hang up with nothing agreed.
Run two calls. The first is ten to fifteen minutes long and it exists to earn the second, longer one, where you show them something visual.
After the catch-up, move to business with a nutshell statement:
The reason for the call is that I’ve been working on a new solution to [problem]. Before I go into the detail, it makes sense to ask you a few questions to see whether it’s even a fit for where you are now. Does that work?
Then ask three to five questions, each one a little deeper. The first should be answerable in a heartbeat: “Do you have an up-to-date go-to-market strategy?” The second takes a moment’s thought: “Did your team have a hand in creating it?” The third is open: “What’s stopping you from hitting that objective?”
Recap in their words. What they want, why it matters and what’s in the way. Then ask for the second call: “It makes sense to set up time where I can take you through a structured overview. How are you fixed next Tuesday or Wednesday?”
Once the time is agreed, and not before, widen the room. “What works well is getting a few key people involved at this stage. Looking at your team, that seems to be Priya and James. Have I missed anyone?” You’re not asking whether to invite them. You’re asking who else. Every extra person on that second call is a round of internal selling you don’t have to wait for.
If your offer clearly isn’t right but they’ve described a different problem you could solve, don’t quote on the spot. Say you’ll go away and shape something around exactly what they told you, and book the call to walk them through it. Never send a proposal ahead of that call. A proposal should confirm what you’ve already agreed in principle.
And if there’s no fit at all, ask who they know. You’ve still rehearsed the whole motion with someone friendly, which is worth more than it sounds.
The objections I hear every time
“I’ve already done this.” When, and how? Most people did it once, with no process, the month they set up. Your offer has moved on since. Running this sprint every four months is reasonable, and each time you’re the person turning up with new ideas.
“I don’t have a website.” You don’t need one. These people know you. If you own a domain, point it at your LinkedIn profile, and make sure that profile says clearly who you serve and what you do.
“I’m too busy with clients.” That’s exactly when to do it. The calls I dread are from consultants who were flat out for six months and are now looking at an empty diary. Pipeline takes time to build.
“It’ll take ages.” It’ll take a few hours. If you’re in this business for another ten years, most of your opportunities will come through this network. Very few hours in your year will pay back more.
This week
Grade your phone and email contacts. Write your base scripts. Then block 45 minutes a day in your diary and send 20 to 25 messages in that block, with nothing else open.
Don’t wait for the pitch deck before you start. That’s step three, and senior people rarely book a call less than a week out, so you’ll have time to build it.
The workshop. If you’d rather build your offer, your scripts and your pitch deck with me, I’m running a paid workshop at www.5clients.com for consultants and fractionals. It’s where I’m spending most of my time with prospective clients over the next couple of months. Take a look at the workshop.
The full series is on YouTube as well, so subscribe to the channel for the next step.
I’m also taking on 1 new client for private 1 to 1 work where I’ll build out your entire business development process with you. Message me here