Making It More True
Known For Podcast - Ep. 004
“We need more leads” often points to the wrong problem. Erin explains what to focus on instead.
Three Things You’ll Learn:
Why “we need more leads” often points to the wrong problem, and what the right question is
How to find the direction your business is already pointing, and what it means to make it more true
What it looks like to turn the volume down on something without walking away from it entirely
Many client conversations Erin has start the same way: we need more leads. Her argument is that it’s usually pointing at the wrong problem.
What is in your pipeline today reflects decisions made six to eighteen months ago. If you don’t love what’s coming up, the work on your plate is getting intentional about what you’re planting now.
[00:01:17] “The harvest you’re looking for today actually reflects what you put in the ground last season.”
The reframe Erin offers is something she calls “making it more true.” Most established consultants already have a pattern in their best work: a type of client and a type of problem where everything clicks. The work is to name that pattern and commit to it publicly.
That usually means a decision. Turning the volume down on something: not off, but down. The learning design firm she describes stopped leading with lower-cost, one-off projects. Not because those were bad projects, but because they were pulling attention away from where the firm wanted to grow. That one call clarified the direction inside the firm and out.
[00:07:11] “Every yes to the old thing is a ‘not yet’ to that new thing.”
Transcription, Episode 004 - Known For - Make It More True
Host and Speaker: Erin Braford
(0:04) Hi, I'm Erin Braford. Welcome to Known For, the show for seasoned boutique consultants who are ready to get focused, scale your systems, and take control of your pipeline by attracting next level, best fit clients.
Today, I want to talk about something that I hear underneath almost every conversation that I have with a new client. What they say or feel is we need more leads. And I totally hear that. We have to have people coming into our business in order to be a business. That is a real thing. But what I want to offer today is a slight reframe, because I think we need more leads is actually really often pointing to the wrong problem. So here's what I mean.
(0:45) What's sitting in your pipeline right now is the result of decisions that you actually made 6, 12, sometimes 18 months ago, depending on your sales cycle. And for consultants like us, we tend to have a longer sales cycle when we're selling into other businesses who have multiple decision makers, etc., etc. And so the analogy that always comes to mind as a gardening nerd is, you know, you don't plant seeds in May and then walk outside on June 1st and feel frustrated that there's nothing blooming yet, right?
The harvest you're looking for today actually reflects what you put in the ground last season. And if you don't love what's coming up, the answer isn't necessarily to panic about the harvest, but it's to get really intentional about what you're planning right now so that the results are different when you come back next season. So today I want to talk about how to do that.
And we're not talking about a rebrand or a content strategy overhaul. It's really something more foundational and really more useful. It's something I call making it more true.
So here's the thing about building a reputation, which is how we help firms attract those best-fit clients build that reputation for your expertise, become known for something that you are excellent at for a specific audience, aka positioning yourself. And so the thing about building a reputation, like a real one where clients like that hear your name are in the right rooms, they already get what you do and understand how you can help them before you've ever even met them or said a word that that work doesn't happen fast. And it doesn't necessarily happen in a straight line.
(2:28) It is really uncomfortable for consultants, though, because you're so used to being really good at things and seeing results right away. Client delivery works like that.: You do great work, the client is happy, you get a referral. That feedback loop stays pretty tight, and you know it's working.
(2:45) But marketing doesn't work that way exactly. The gap between effort and response is longer. And it's not a signal that your strategy is broken. That's just how it works, because we're talking about building relationships. And relationships don't typically happen at the snap of a finger, right? We know that logically in life, but we have kind of a different expectation when it comes to how we market and promote our business.
(3:10) So the question I want you to hold as we go through this episode is, where am I already moving in the right direction? And what would it look like to keep making that more true?
Most of the consultants that I work with are further along than they think.
Not in a you're doing a great give yourself a gold star way, but in a really practical look at the actual data kind of way. When I ask a new client to walk me through their last five or six engagements, the ones that paid well, energized the team, felt like a genuinely great fit—the pattern almost always emerges. There is a type of client, a type of problem, a type of context, where they do their best work, and everyone knows it, including the clients.
(3:52) The problem is they haven't named that yet. Or they've named it subtly, but haven't committed to it in a public way. So you're still showing up in a lot of different conversations trying to speak to your old audience and the new one at the same time. And what comes out is kind of like nothing, or you hesitate and fumble around, because you're not really sure how to bridge that conversation. “Well, we came from education, but we really are experts at learning design and blah, blah, blah, right?” We'll get to that example in just a minute.
(4:23) And so what happens is you start trying to post on LinkedIn, because you realize you want to be attracting a particular kind of client. Or you search for and write a blog post or form new strategic partnerships, but you quickly lose confidence because everything around you feels a little stale. It doesn't quite sound the way you want to to those new, next-level clients, because it doesn't really reflect the caliber of the work you're doing. And so that's not really like a content problem. It's really a clarity problem.
A client example:
(4:50) As I was saying, I have an example of a learning design consultancy that I'm working with right now that really knows this experience. Over the last few years, they've built some incredible relationships with major philanthropy foundations. They do genuinely great work. It's a great fit. They have really strong contacts. And it wasn't a strategic pivot to get into this space that's such a great fit for who they are. It just happened the way good business happens: one relationship at a time, doing great work and then getting referred. But at some point in the last year or two, they kind of looked up and thought, you know, this is where we belong. We would love to get 10 more clients just like this.
(5:30) And that moment of recognition for a firm that's established, you know, but just kind of finding their real groove, that's not the finish line. It is actually the starting line. So here's where it gets real. You can't make it more true without making a call or making a decision. And I'll explain what I mean.
(5:51) Making a call usually means turning the volume down on something else in your business. (5:57) So in a way, it can feel like a loss. I want to be honest about that. A lot of folks kind of wrestle with this when it comes to turning down the volume on ‘we're going to stop talking to the kind of client that got us started.’ Or ‘we're going to stop offering the service that got us here for the last three years, but has been tapering off.’ It can really feel like you're walking away from revenue or closing a door or, you know, shrinking back from kind of like your origins or where you came from. But what you're actually doing is getting focused. And focus is what makes the signal clear enough for the market to respond to it.
(6:37) The learning design firm that I mentioned, they made a decision to stop leading with lower-cost, one-off strategy consulting gigs. Those had always been part of the mix, and they weren't bad projects, but they were pulling the team's attention away from the work they actually want to do to be growing. And so they turned the volume down, not off, but down. And that was a signal. Internally, it clarified that they wanted to build and were building towards something a little bit different. Externally, it also started to shift how they showed up in those conversations.
(7:11) So every yes to the old thing is a quiet not yet to that new thing. (7:16) I'm going to say that again. (7:17) When you keep saying yes to the thing that you've always been doing, or that maybe feels like it's getting stale, but you are holding on to, you might be saying not yet or holding off on the thing that really is going to be part of this next stage of transformation for your business. And the decision does not have to be dramatic to say yes to the new thing, but it does have to be intentional.
(7:40) This matters especially if you want your whole team out there networking and speaking and building relationships and eventually selling the work. Like if you want your team members to be as effective as you are as the founder selling your consulting services, these are the kinds of decisions that have to be made and aligned on so that everyone is singing from the same hymnbook, as they say
(8:04) If the direction isn't clear, everyone's going to tell a slightly different version of the story. And none of those stories is going to land with the clarity that you really need. So once you've named the direction and made the call, the work becomes a series of small moves that compound over time. This is what I want to emphasize. You know, we're talking all the time about sort of testing and learning our way into alignment based on your past experiences. So you're not just taking a guess at where the business is going.
(8:37) Like we talked about earlier, you already have an inkling, you already know or have some successes under your belt. Now we're trying to make it more true. None of the changes that you're going to make are just going to, you know, whole hog, that's a funny phrase, change your reputation.
(8:56) You don't wake up and have a new reputation because you decided to focus on a different audience. You still have to keep building it step by step. And so for that learning design firm, for example, here's what that looks like right now.
We're getting really specific about who that perfect fit engagement really is and what parts of, or what kinds of aspects, what are the attributes of a perfect fit engagement? Why does it work so well for this particular team? What about who we are and what that client needs is really a great fit. And that's what we can then decide to try to work toward repeating, right? So we're building a case study, for example, that reflects exactly that kind of work, since they've made a move in the business to focus on a different type of client.
(9:38) Then they decided to name when actually this really is a perfect fit for us, and we're going to go for it. And now we're starting to put materials out into the marketplace that reinforce that message and then build their credibility and competence when they talk about that perfect kind of work. We're making language choices that signal it clearly to the audience, “We are for you. If you are trying to do this kind of convening, we're the people who understand the complexity at hand.” So none of that is a really big swing.
(10:07) There's no like big launch moment per se. It's just about making it more true iteratively over time, one decision at a time. And that's the whole idea.
Before we close out this episode, I just want to give you something really practical that you can take into your week if this is resonating with you.
Here are three questions that you can just sit with, even if you don't have all the answers right now. (
So question one, looking at what's already happening in your business, where is your momentum already pointing?
Look at your last five or six engagements, which ones paid well, felt like a great fit, lit your team up, got them excited to do the work. That pattern is data and we need to trust it.
Number two, what are you still saying yes to that contradicts the direction?
You don't have to cut everything out, but name the things that are muddying your message or splitting your team's attention. Just name them. That's important data too.
Number three, what is one thing you could do this quarter to make it more true? Not a rebrand, but maybe it is a case study, a talk, a conversation with a referral partner about the specific kind of client you're trying to attract. One move, that's it in an intentional direction.
You don't need a perfect message before you can go to market. You don't need a finished strategy or a new website or total certainty about where you're headed. You need a direction and the discipline to keep making small intentional moves toward it.
That is how reputation gets built. Not in a launch moment, but rather in like a hundred small decisions to make it more true.
This week, find one place where you're already moving in the right direction and haven't even given yourself credit for it yet. That's your starting point.
I'm Erin Braford and this is Known For. You can find me at Erin @ heydreamboat.com, and I'd love to hear what came up for you and what this resonated with you.
Bon Voyage!
