Almost all marketing advice that you’ll read is about marketing to strangers: how to reach new people, how to build an audience and how to get in front of a market that has never heard of you.
It is certainly not bad advice, but it assumes that everyone who already knows you is a closed book, and in professional services that is very rarely true.
I speak to a lot of founders who feel behind on their marketing. When we sit down and work out where their last three years of work actually came from, the answer is almost always the same. It came from someone they had already met. A former client, a contact from a previous firm or someone they had a good conversation with at an event in 2022 and never spoke to again.
The pipeline, in fact, already existed. It was just that nobody was watching it. That is the opportunity, and it is a much smaller job than building an audience from scratch.
The relationship belongs to the person, not the firm
When a client of yours moves to a new firm, most founders treat it as a loss. The account goes quiet, the work dries up and that is the end of that. But it isn’t a loss. It can actually be the single most useful thing that can happen to your pipeline.
That person now sits inside an organisation that has never bought from you, with a budget, a set of problems and first-hand knowledge that you are good. They are, on paper, the warmest lead you will ever have and, most of the time, nobody calls them because the account was marked as closed in somebody’s head.
This is not a small effect in the Channel Islands. Our market is finite and people move around it constantly. The same few hundred people cycle through the trust companies, the fund administrators, the law firms and the family offices, taking their opinions of you with them. Over ten years, a single good relationship can walk you into three or four different businesses.
You need four lists of prospects
When I suggest to founders that they should be tracking this properly, I can see them mentally pricing up software that will be abandoned by March.
Fear not, you almost certainly do not need it. What you need instead are four lists, and you can manage them all in an Excel spreadsheet. Granted, you can upgrade to a CRM system when things get more advanced, but start with building the habit in Excel first before committing to new software that might end up gathering dust.
- Your current clients. Obvious, but write them down anyway, with the individual names rather than just the company. You want to know when they post something, when they get promoted and when they move.
- Your lapsed and dormant relationships. That’s everyone you have worked with who is not currently a client. Everyone you nearly worked with. Everyone from your previous firm. This is usually the longest list and it is almost always the most valuable one, because everybody on this list has decided that you’re competent and has, or had, some desire to work with you.
- People who have raised a hand. Anyone who has come to one of your events, replied to something you sent, downloaded something or asked you a question. They have given you a small signal of interest and most of them never hear from you again. Note what they came to and when, so you have something specific to refer back to.
- Your realistic universe. The firms and the individuals you would genuinely like to work with. Not a fantasy list of every business on the island, but the ones that match the work you are actually good at. On an island, this list is finite, and there is something quite freeing about seeing it written down. Forty names is a market you can get your head around. It is not a vast ocean.
How to open the conversation without it feeling like a pitch
This is the part founders get stuck on, and I understand why. Nobody wants to be the person who only gets in touch when they want something.
The solution? Don’t be. The trick is that you are not opening a sales conversation, you are opening a conversation.
A new job is the easiest one. Congratulations, genuinely meant, sent within a week of the announcement. You are not being subtle or strategic, you are being normal, and being normal puts you back in their mind at exactly the moment their new employer is deciding who they use for things.
Beyond that, the strongest opener is usefulness. If you read something relevant to their sector, send it. If a regulatory change is coming that affects them, tell them what you are seeing. If a mutual contact would be worth an introduction, make it. None of that costs you anything and all of it makes you the person who is worth staying in touch with.
The one thing I would avoid is the check-in with no content. “Just touching base to see if you need anything” is a message that asks the other person to do the work of finding you a reason to reply and, as a result, most won’t.
A note for those of us in finance and legal
If you work in a regulated sector, some of this needs a lighter touch than it would elsewhere.
Keep your notes to things you would be comfortable showing the person concerned. Where you met, what you talked about, what they do. Not commercially sensitive detail about their business and nothing about live matters.
Be careful with public congratulations too. A promotion announcement is theirs to make, not yours to break. And if a former client’s circumstances have changed in a way that has not been made public, that is not a marketing signal, it is private information.
None of that stops you doing any of this. It just means the record you keep is a record of a relationship rather than a file.
Fifteen minutes, once a week
The reason most founders do not do this is not that it’s difficult, but rather that it has no deadline, so it never happens.
The way to make sure this happens is to give it a slot in your calendar, just fifteen minutes at the same time every week, ideally attached to something you already do.
Even better, bring somebody else in the company into it and make it a joint task, and you can hold each other responsible.
Then, follow a script of opening your lists, looking at what the people on them have been up to and sending two messages. And remember to add anyone new you have met that week.
That is it. If you have read my piece on marketing your business in two hours a week, this sits comfortably inside it, and it will almost certainly outperform anything else in that two hours.
Fifteen minutes a week is thirteen hours a year. Spent on people who already trust you, that is a serious amount of business development, and it costs you nothing but the discipline of showing up to it.
Three things to take away
Your warmest leads are behind you. So before you spend money on reaching strangers, work out what is sitting in the relationships you already have.
Four lists in Excel will beat any expensive CRM. Current clients, lapsed relationships, people who have raised a hand and your realistic universe.
Be useful before you are interested. Congratulate, share, introduce. The work follows people who stayed in touch for no particular reason.
James Le Gallez (main picture) is the Founder and Chief Marketing Officer at Edward & James, a qualified marketing consultancy helping professional service providers make confident decisions, execute effectively and grow with intent. Working across finance, legal and beyond, Edward & James helps professional service businesses get to the strategic heart of their work, whether it be the first week of their company or the thousandth.
