283. Why Your Consulting Pipeline Problem Isn’t a Consistency Problem

You've said it to yourself more than once.

"If I were just more consistent. If I could do a little bit every week, every day, I'd have a healthier pipeline."

Most independent consultants have run that thought through their heads dozens of times.

Here's the thing: consistency isn't the problem. 

And trying to fix consistency is solving the wrong problem.

In Episode 283, Melisa Liberman makes a case that most independent consultants need to hear: the reason your pipeline is unreliable isn't that you lack discipline. 

It's that you've given yourself the wrong job. 

Melisa explains what the right business development focus actually is, and it's not finding clients. 

She also shares the story of Richard, a fully utilized consultant who understands that “being consistent” isn’t the key to a healthy pipeline, and what he specifically does to keep his pipeline full.

If you’ve been trying to solve your pipeline problem by being more consistent, listen to this episode before you create another checklist, routine, or plan that won’t stick. 

Timestamps for Key Moments:

[00:00] Why consistency isn't the solution to your pipeline problem
[00:03] Agenda overview
[00:04] Companion resource: Lead Gen Sprint at www.ConsultantSprint.com
[00:05] Why the pipeline problem seems like a consistency problem
[00:09] The real root cause
[00:12] The solution
[00:14] "But Melisa, I don't have enough time"
[00:17] Richard's story
[00:20] "But Melisa, I'm not established enough for this yet"
[00:23] The question to stop asking and the one to start asking instead
[00:25] Put this episode into action

Resources Mentioned:

Companion Resource: The Consultant's Lead Gen Sprint. Fall cohort starts September 22nd. Enroll at www.ConsultantSprint.com

Full Show Notes: https://shownotes.melisaliberman.com/episode-283

Want More?

• Melisa's Books, Planners & Journals: https://linktr.ee/melisaliberman
• Get Melisa's Book: https://www.melisaliberman.com/book
• Visit Melisa's Website: https://www.melisaliberman.com/
• Follow on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/melisa-liberman

Want help achieving your consulting business goals? Melisa can help. Click here for more on coaching tailored to you as an independent consulting business owner.

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:02

Welcome to the Grow Your Independent Consulting Business Podcast. I'm Melissa Lieperman, a fellow IC and business coach. On this podcast, I teach you to become a consistently booked independent consultant without becoming a pushy salesperson or working 24-7. If I can do it, you can too. Listen on to find out how.

SPEAKER_01 0:28

As an independent consultant, have you ever said to yourself, I just need to be more consistent? If I were just more consistent, I would have a healthier pipeline. I would have clients lined up to work with me. If I was just consistent, it would solve my problem. Well, today on this episode, I want to share with you why your consulting pipeline problem is not, let me repeat, is not a consistency problem. And then we'll talk about what the problem actually is so that you can solve it, so that you have a healthier pipeline, so that you have clients queued up to work with you, so that you can pick and choose and be selective about the types of clients you want to work with and what they pay you and what your schedule looks like and the that the type of work that you're landing is fulfilling. That's what we're here for on today's episode, episode 283 of the Grow Your Independent Consulting Business Podcast. I am Melissa Lieberman, and today we're talking again about why your consulting pipeline problem isn't a consistency problem, and then what it actually is. All right, my friend. So glad you're here. This is not about having more discipline. This is not about you having more discipline. And you can solve this lead generation problem that you've got, this pipeline problem that you've got, and it doesn't require more discipline. So, so I think that's the good news as we start off here today. On a quick side note, on a personal level, I am back in Colorado. I've been traveling. If you've been listening to the last few episodes, we went to Dallas for a water polo junior Olympics tournament and to New Jersey for a family reunion. And we're back in Colorado. And I'm so happy to be home and almost for school to start and just get back into the routine. The summer's great and amazing. And I realizing now I only have like three more summers left with my high schooler, with our high schooler before he graduates. It goes by so quickly. But I'm also really happy to be back into the routine. So I don't know about you, but I think this is the perfect time to be starting to think about and get really serious about solving these business challenges that you've been having so that they aren't persisting, so that you're not in a position where you feel like, oh, this is not, this is really dicey. I don't want to have to go to back to corporate, but I might need to because I can't figure out how to sustain client over client over client when you're when you're landing them, how to land each one of those clients, right? That it feels really hard to sustain landing clients. It it feels hard to juggle running the business and working in the business, all of these things. But it doesn't have to be so challenging as what we've made it, what most of us have made it. And it doesn't relate to consistency or discipline. And that's what we're gonna talk about here today. So I've got some good news for you, and I've also got some call outs for you. So get ready. All right. Let's talk about the agenda and then we'll dive right in. So, first I'll share with you the companion resource. I can't wait to tell you about that, and then that goes along with today's episode. Then we'll talk about why this problem seems obvious, right? Like, why does it seem that the reason why you have a pipeline problem is because of consistency and the actual problem that's preventing a healthy pipeline for you, if it's not consistency, and then the solution that you can put in place to drive that healthy pipeline, and then ultimately recapping this episode so that you could put it into action. Okay, let's talk about the companion resource. The companion resource for today's episode is the consultant's lead gen sprint. It is back. I'm so excited to report to you. The lead gen sprint is back. It's starting up for the fall. We start in September. However, I want to highly encourage you to go to consultantsprint.com and sign up for the lead gen sprint now. Don't wait like many, many, many of the students do to the last day. Go sign up now so that you can get access to the lead gen sprint method. You can start putting the foundational pieces in place. You give yourself a lot of runway to do that, and you can hit the ground running when we start on September 22nd. So go to consultantsprint.com, the word consultantsprint.com, and you'll find all of the details there and you can enroll. Would love to have you in the sprints. And then also if you're listening to this in the future and it's past September 22nd, go to that page anyway and join the wait list, or it may be even open again when you're listening. So go check that out. This will be an incredible complement to what we're talking about here today and help you to implement and execute what we're talking about today. So go check that out. All right, my friend. Let's now talk about why this problem seems obvious. And the problem is having an unhealthy pipeline, right? A problem, a pipeline where you don't have enough leads in there, a pipeline where you get leads, but they don't go anywhere. They ghost you or they turn into the friend zone, or you're constantly following up and nothing happens. Ultimately, when you don't have a pipeline that supports your revenue goals, you've got a problem. And that's what we're talking about here. And the problem might seem obvious to you. The problem, the source of the problem, right? The root cause of the problem might seem really obvious. I hear it all time and time and time again. And I've said it myself as well. My pipeline would be healthier if I were just more consistent. If I could just balance working on my business with working in my business, with client delivery, with lead generation, I would have a healthier pipeline. I hear that over and over again. Consultants think the solution to their pipeline health is more outreach, more events, more speaking, more follow-up, more networking, more visibility, doing it every day, do, or maybe every week, or at least once a month. Like we think these things are the key to our success. And we get so frustrated with ourselves when we neglect our pipeline because we're busy. We neglect our pipeline because we're not quite sure what we're doing. We neglect our pipeline because, quite frankly, it's not really the thing that we love doing, right? And we think that the solution is to be more disciplined, to be more consistent. And today I want to tell you that that is not the reason why your pipeline, lack of consistency or lack of discipline is not the reason why your pipeline is unhealthy. And therefore, if you're trying to fix this situation of consistency and becoming more consistent, you're not fixing the right problem for yourself. So it's going to feel like you're just scrambling up a mountain of like, you know, of scrambly rock instead of like up an official trail, cultivated trail. So the question then becomes like when we say to ourselves, well, I need to be more consistent. If I were just more consistent, if I could just do these things, I would have a healthy pipeline. I want to ask you, what are you trying to be consistent at? What are you trying to be consistent at? When you say to yourself, I need to be more consistent, for most consultants I talk to, they don't actually know the answer to that question. It's kind of a stump. Like, oh, wait a minute. Well, I think I need to be doing these things. I think I need to be posting on LinkedIn. I think I need to be networking. I think I need to be attending events. Maybe I should join an industry association. Maybe I should do some speaking. Maybe I should do some web, like all of these things, right? We don't even have a plan of what does it mean to be consistent. Most of the time, we don't have a really clear plan about what that goal line even is. But if we were to boil it really down to the point of what are we trying to do? At the end of the day, what I see consultants doing over and over again is that really what they're saying is they want to find their next project. They want to do the activities, they want to be consistent at doing some activities that they believe will lead to the next project. And you might be thinking about that it that way also. I want to do enough activities, the right kind of activities, the consistent activities so I can land my next project, so I can be fully utilized. That's the problem. That's the problem. You're trying to be consistent at finding your next project. And if your job is finding your next project, of course you're going to put it off. Because you're going to deprioritize it naturally when you have plenty of work. If your goal is to find the next engagement and you have an engagement right now, then even though you tell yourself logically, I know that can end early, I know that I should, it takes longer than I think to land a client. At the end of the day, we deprioritize work. When we think the job we have in business development is to land the next project. You deprioritize it when you think you don't need another client yet, or the timing doesn't seem right. Or client delivery feels more urgent, which it does, right? Or your pipeline just seems good enough. This is not a discipline problem. I'll say it again. You're putting it off because you've given yourself the job, some form of the job of I need to land my next project. I need to land my next client, I need to land my next engagement. When we give ourselves that job, of course it's going to be something that you put off. And of course that's a problem, right? You know what happens from this. The engagement ends, a proposal falls through, a client ends early, a client delays the start, the work doesn't materialize when you expect it to. And finally, you know, and suddenly that finding of the next project becomes urgent. And that's the point at which you start then engaging, right? Working on your pipeline, doing business development, then you land the work eventually and you stop the business development because of the reasons we just talked about until you need the work, and then that cycle starts over again. You've heard me talk about it on this podcast before, about the cycle of reactivity. And then you regret this and you give yourself a hard time, you criticize yourself and you say to yourself, I just need to be more consistent. I need to start earlier, I need to be more consistent, do a little bit each day, do a little bit each week so that I don't get myself into this problem again. But consistency doesn't fix the underlying problem. And I've said to you already, but I want to dive into it more. The underlying problem is that you gave yourself the job of finding your next engagement, finding your next client. You've equated business development to finding the next engagement. And that will always take the back burner until it's urgent, right? And it should if you if you think about it that way. Because when you don't urgently need work and your job is to find the next, and you think your job is to find the next engagement, of course you're going to defer to other things. That makes sense. The problem is you gave yourself the wrong job. So let's talk about what that means. The wrong job is that you are thinking you need to land that next job. And you ask yourself, how do I make myself do more business development? Like that's the question we ask ourselves. How do I make myself do bit more business development? How do I be more consistent? Those are the types of questions I hear over and over again from independent consultants. But the job that you want to give yourself is not to land the next project. It's actually to create demand. It's for you to be known. It's for you to be known for what you do as an independent consultant. It's for you to stand out as someone who has expertise in your area, in your domain, in your industry. And the job you want to be giving yourself is to create demand around that. How do you stay? The question is not how do I make myself more do more business development more of the time or more frequently or more consistently. The question is instead related to the job of creating demand for yourself. How do I stay known? How do I stay relevant? How do I stay connected to the people and the market that I serve? That's something you do whether you need a project today or not. When you give yourself a different job, it unlocks your ability to think about this in a different way and therefore to approach it in a different way versus trying to shove a round peg in the square hole, thinking, I've got to get this business development done, I've got to get this finding my next project done. And you just keep deferring it and keep having that self-criticism of yourself for not being more disciplined, not being more consistent. So let's talk a little bit more about what this looks like. Because it's so con like when I say this to you, that your job is to create demand, not to find your next project, it might feel a little bit elusive. And you might say, listen, I understand, like my job is to build a reputation around what I do. My job is to uh uncover opportunities with ideal clients. My job is, this is a relationship business. My job is to build relationships. These things all create demand, right? But at the end of the day, Melissa, but Melissa, one of my favorite segments of the podcast, right? But Melissa, there's not enough time in the week. Doesn't matter what you call this. The reason why I am having a problem with my pipeline is because I don't have enough time. Whether you call it finding the next job or you find call it creating demand, I don't have enough time. But what I want to say to you is you do have enough time to create demand. You might not have enough time to find the next project. That's intensive, right? It's almost like looking for a new job. That can be a full-time job looking for a new job. You know that. You've done it before. You know also what it's like if this has probably happened to you, where someone, where an organization approaches you and says, Listen, we you're doing such a great work over here. We would love for you to come work over here with us instead. They're poaching you, right? It's the same kind of concept here, where instead of you giving yourself the job of finding your next client, you're giving your job of creating your reputation, creating the relationships that fuel this repute, this relationship-based business. And it doesn't have to take up a lot of your time. That's what I want to say to you. When you think I just don't have enough hours in the day, I'm gonna push back on you. First of all, you have a business, you have to find the time. And if you're signing clients that are taking up 40, 50, 60 hours of your time, you've got a big problem. You've got a business model problem that you've created for yourself and you need to fix that. But you have an hour or two in the week. You have an hour or two in the week. It doesn't mean that you creating this demand does not mean that you're spending hours upon hours upon hours to land your next project. What it means is that you're spending that time building your reputation and the projects come from that, building the relationships and the projects come from that. But when you're not desperate for driving a certain timeline, because you've been doing this as part of your job function, you don't get yourself into that pinch that's so common for consultants to get themselves into. So let me give you a tangible example of what this looks like when you are fitting it into your week, even on the busiest of weeks. I'll give it busiest of weeks, busiest of months, busiest of quarters, busiest of seasons. I'll give you this example of Richard. He's fully utilized. He never thinks about I need to go land my next client. He thinks about and operates from I need to, I'm creating demand. I'm creating demand. Not even I need to. It is just part of how he operates. I create demand. Just like for you, I go on client calls, right? That's how you operate. You don't skip a client call. I create demand, Richard. So, Richard, what he does to create the demand, super simple. Two to three strategic conferences a year, three to five speaking engagements a year. And these aren't big stages, these are low regional conferences, local conferences, local meetings, workshops, like different very simple. Some are online. This isn't a huge heavy lift. But you're, you know, it's like anything for for all of us. When we have it booked on our calendar, we do it. So he goes about putting these pillars into his calendar and keeps those on a rolling basis. And then he simply stays connected to his network with a handful of emails and zooms a month and sends a monthly newsletter. That's it. It's so simple. It's so simple. But we make it so complicated because we say to ourselves, I need to be consistent, and we build out this huge plan. If we even have a plan, sometimes, like I said earlier, maybe we just say to ourselves, I need to be consistent. We don't even know what that is, what kind of consistency we're talking about. Or we build something so involved that it's no, there's no way we would ever do it. And even if we had the time to do it, we have that blocker of I don't actually, I'm gonna, I should be doing this, but I don't actually need a project right now. Richard is not trying to quote unquote stay consistent. He's given him each of those activities a job for himself for that they need to accomplish the speaking, the going to events, the association, the maintaining of relationships. The jobs are build relationships, stay top of mind, strengthen relationships, generate inbound opportunities, uncover opportunities, maintain demand. That's it. Consistency is a byproduct of having a reason to do the work beyond I need another client, right? He does these things because they're a natural way of operating, not because he's telling himself I have to be consistent in order to generate a pipeline. And now let's have another butt Melissa. I don't know if I've ever had two butt Melissa's in one episode, maybe, but it's pretty rare. But Melissa, I'm not there yet. I'm brand new at this, or I'm not, you know, I'm just getting to the place where I'm starting to figure out how to generate my own business. I've been relying on my warm, you know, warm network. I've been relying on word of mouth. I'm not where you are talking about right now of quote unquote creating demand. I need to land the first client, the next client first, and then I'll deal with this. Or I need to figure out X, Y, or Z, and then I'll figure this out. Or I'll worry about creating demand when I'm more established. I need clients now. This is something I'll build later. What I want to say to you is creating demand is not an advanced stage business problem. It's foundational. And it starts with changing about changing exactly how you're thinking about the job of business development and your role in that. Think about it for yourself. Pause this episode. What would shift for you if you started thinking about, let's say you're brand new, you don't even have an engagement right now, or maybe you're partially utilized and you need another engagement and you need it quickly. Or maybe you're fully utilized and you don't want to get back into feast or famine. Pause this and this episode and answer for yourself. What would change about the way you're thinking about your business development, the way you're prioritizing it, the way you're executing it, what your strategy is, what your targets are? What would change about all of that if you thought about this as my job is to create demand and trust that demand turns into engagements, fulfilling engagements, high quality engagements versus I need to go land my next project, very transactional. What would change if you approached it in the creating demand? Way. Answer that question for yourself. This is foundational. And I will tell you, you can tell, you can say to me, like, oh, I'm brand new at this. I don't need to worry about this yet. But what I will say back to you is you're just kicking the can down the road. You're actually making your problem bigger and bigger every time you ignore this. Because you're going to get pretty good at acquiring projects at some point, but then you're going to be really frustrated that they're underpaying or that they treat you more like an extra pair of hands than as a trusted advisor, or that you don't have control over your schedule. They tell you when and where to be and when to be on Teams, all of that. You don't have to settle for any of that. But it starts with thinking about this differently and not thinking that the goal of creating or the key to creating a pipeline is consistency. It's just not. The key to creating a pipeline, a healthy pipeline, is knowing exactly what your targets are and how to create demand toward them. Stop solving the wrong problem. Instead of asking, how can I make myself more consistent in my business development? You want to start asking yourself, how do I take ongoing responsibility for creating demand for my business and knowing that that demand turns into engagements, high-quality engagements, that's a much bigger question. That's a much more valuable question to be asking yourself. And it leads to a very different type of consulting business. I want to encourage you as you think about your own business and the types of clients you've been landing, the gaps in revenue you've been having, the challenge that it feels like to sustain acquiring clients and continuing cash flow. There's a better way to do this. There's a better way to do this. Your job is not to go land a string of engagements that add up to your revenue goal. Your job is to create demand for yourself so you can pick and choose ultimately what clients you take on and what you charge them and how you work and how you engage and what the scope is. You decide. And you get to whether this is something you need immediately, a new client, or something you need to address in and have a new client in six months or 12 months because right now you're fully utilized. This is an emergency because this is what fuels your business. You want to stop treating business development as something you turn on when you need a client. Instead, you want to build the capacity to create demand intentionally. That's what the Lead Gen Sprint is designed to help you do. And I would love to have you join this fall cohort so you can look at business development differently. So you can approach business development differently. And so ultimately you're setting yourself up to create demand instead of just to find that next project and keep yourself utilized. Go to consultantsprint.com as your next step to put this episode into action. Uh, you'll see all the details there about what the sprint includes and entails and results in. And I would love to have you join us. And again, I encourage you to enroll early so you can get access to this lead gen sprint method and get yourself started right away. There's absolutely no reason for you to have to keep waiting and enduring this problem. There's a solution to it, and I would love to help you put it in place. I'll see you there. Thanks for tuning in, and I'll see you next week. Bye bye.

SPEAKER_00 25:47

Thanks for joining me this week on the Grow Your Independent Consulting Business Podcast. If you like today's episode, I have three quick next steps for you. First, click subscribe on Apple Podcasts or wherever you listen to make sure you don't miss future episodes. Next, leave me a review in your podcast app so other independent consultants can find and benefit too. And finally, to put the ideas from today's episode into action, head over to Melissa Lieberman.com for the show notes and more resources to help you grow your consulting practice from your first few projects into a full fledged business. See you next week.