Ep 202: Relationship-Led Pipeline with Jessica Lackey [Originally Live AMA]

Welcome And AMA Setup

Sarah Noel Block 0:32

Hi, I'm Sarah Noel Block, and welcome to the final episode of the Solo Consultant Summit series. We're wrapping up this season with a special Ask Me Anything featuring Jessica Lackey. Jessica is the founder of Deeper Foundations and an expert in relationship-led pipeline building. In this session, she takes your questions and shares her best strategies for growing your consulting practice through genuine relationships. Let's dive in. Jessica Lackey is the expert. She is the person I had in mind first when I was, like, figuring out who I wanted to invite to be a speaker here because in, we are both in Old Girls Club, which I think a lot of you are also, and it, her name is bounced around all the time on if you are looking to build your solo consultant practice, go talk to Jessica.

1:31

So she's here today to talk about relationship... Oh, we have a, a couple OGCers. Um, relationship-led pipeline, and I'll let you introduce yourself, and then I'll go into some questions that we had pre-submitted, and we have some questions in here too Hello. It's so nice to see you. And Neil, hi, 'cause he's one of my Deeper Foundations members. It's nice to see you, too. Um, so my name is Jessica Lackey. My business is Deeper Foundations. I help experts become expert business owners through the foundational practices that not just span relationship, um, relationship-led marketing, but also authority building, operations, time management, and business design. I have a, uh, membership where we do the work. I have a six-month cohort that is an accelerated business boot camp, and then I have one-on-one advising. Awesome.

Which Business Models Fit Relationships

2:25

So first question: what business model is relationship-led outreach best suited for? So when I think about business models, I call them... There's the delivery-based business models, where you are selling a service, and creator-based business models, where you are monetizing an audience. In Jessica's point of view, I think relationship-led outreach is actually the foundation of both. Most people would say that social media and YouTube and kinda broadcast-based mechanisms are the foundation of a creator business 'cause you need more people in it. You need, y- you know, 3 to 5 percentage of your list is gonna convert to a course, a cohort, or a membership, depending on, um, the size and the amount of touches that you do. But I think what's missing now is that a lot of the growth and visibility, a lot of, you know, getting those more high-profile collaborations that lead to more visibility is coming from relationships. Now, it's the natural thing to do if you are selling high-touch services, if you are selling consulting or coaching, or if you are running an agency model. Those are the three d- delivery-based business models on the, on, on that side of the fence. But I think relationship-led outreach, unless you are incredibly compelling at social media, which I am not- I think it's the foundation of all the types of businesses. Like, if you're trying to do a paid Substack, which I would consider as an edutainer business model on the creator side, you're still gonna get most of your subscribers through recommendations, collaborations, and guest appearances, and the only way you can get those is through relationships Yeah, I would say like the majority of my early work came from people I met through podcasting. Mm-hmm. Exactly. Okay.

The Four Stages Of Pipeline

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We have, how can relational outreach be used at every stage of the marketing funnel, not just top of funnel? So there are f- you know, I say four stages of the marketing and sales process. There's first s- uh, first stage is connection. New people need to get to know about you. The second is consideration, where you are building know, like, and trust, but more importantly, people see what problem you solve and how you solve it. The third stage is sales, so inviting someone into that, uh, conversion process. And then the fourth is champion, which is staying in touch with clients, collaborators, and connectors to create that amplify flywheel effect Connection, you know, yes, guesting on podcasts gets you connection. Being a part of communities gets you connection. Old school network building gives you connections. Asking for introductions give you connections. In the consideration phase, most people think that it's a newsletter or an email, you know, a newsletter, email list, or podcast, or some kind of, like, social, um, outreach. But I don't think it has to be. You know, my, one of my clients is a literacy educator. She sells three to four customers a year on long-term engagements. She doesn't need a newsletter. That's not how she builds her business. She runs, you know, she has networks dinners. She has, um, she brings coffee to people on their first day of school, 'cause she's working with teachers. She does a lot of personal follow-up. She sends cards. She sends gifts. She sends articles. She's going to conferences and personally following up with everybody, which is the connection and consideration, uh, things. And then she is, every quarter, reaching out to past clients, prospects, people who she's met, and saying, "This is what I do. This is what I work on. Is this a situation your school is facing? And if you wanna talk about it, let's get on the phone." Um, so she doesn't need a newsletter to sell three cl- she doesn't need social media. She needs, you know, relationships with 5 to 10 school districts, relationships with three to five big conference organizers, and then personal outreach at every stage of the sales process. Can you walk us through, like, what kind of outreach would make sense for each of those different phases? So the connection phase, it depends on if you want, are trying to go be platformed or if you are trying... So in the, in the training that, um, was released today, there's three ways to sort of get introduced to potential new clients. There's direct outreach, uh, there's brokered, and then there's platformed. So direct outreach, you know, if you are selling B2B and you can target who your clients are, nothing says you can't reach out to those clients directly to say, "I see what you're going through. This is a solution I have." I wouldn't do it all in a single email, but, like, you can start building relationships. You can start seeing, where are they showing up? What, who's in their network? Can I get an introduction? So you can directly ask for an introduction there. Brokered, you're building referral partnerships. You're targeting who you want to be ref- you know, trade, trade business with. And then platformed, you're asking for opportunities, like I asked for Sarah, to say, you know, "You have an audience. I have a message. Can I say my message to your audience through, again, a guest podcast conference appearance like that?" It's the authority transfer. So sometimes you're asking f- you're going direct to people saying, "I'd like to meet you." You know, for, for, for w- for work. I'd like to meet you because you're gonna help me expand my network. I'd like to meet you because, you know, you h- you're, you and I have complementary audiences, and I think we can support each other. So that's how you can use relational outreach to gain access to the densities of your audience. I know that sounds really transactional. Um, it's like, but how can we say long term, this is what I'd like to happen, but short term, how can you help them? How can you be as interested in them and what their goals are and who they're hoping to meet and how you can help them as you are as thinking, "This is a part of my network that I need to intentionally cultivate"? Mm-hmm.

Relationship Marketing Channels That Work

8:30

Okay, I'm gonna pause the questions that were pre-submitted and get to some of these in the In the chat. So one is, what are relationship-based marketing channels? Which ones would you recommend for, like, service professionals I mean, relationship based, again, it's really, really when I say relationship based marketing channels, I'm talking about personal outreach. So, you know, to meet new people, it could be joining communities and making friends with people in those communities. Um, email, it, like personal email is a relational outreach strategy. Gifts, cards, hosting dinners. When I, um, I went on a book tour, I, I am an author, and I went to seven, eight cities this summer, and I invited every single one of my people that live there, past clients, present clients, friends of friends, and I bought them all brunch or drinks, and that was a fantastic relationship marketing activity. So it's supplemented by like broadcast channels. It's supplemented by an email newsletter perhaps, a LinkedIn, um, Instagram, YouTube strategy perhaps. But I always find that as like content as proof of life and proof of thinking versus relationship forward outreach. Yes. Um, can second that. Whenever I travel, I just go through my LinkedIn first degrees and I'm like, "Who's in that city that I can actually meet up in real life?" Yes, I was in Columbus for a family wedding, and I reached out to every single person I knew, and we had brunch for six of us, and, you know, it was a wonderful activity. And now it's a write-off. Now it's a write-off. Genevieve, that was, that was one of Genevieve's questions. She sent another one too. How scalable is relationship based marketing for those of what, of us who want to scale their service based business? I think there's this perception that relationship marketing isn't scalable. Um, over four years, 'cause I tracked it in my tracker, I did 50 guest appearances, so guest teaching, podcast, um, or summits like this. It's increased a little bit now since the book la- launched. I did 50 of my own guest teaching, um, so I did like, like a free class. I was in 17 different communities, and now I have a membership of, you know, I have had, you know, a few, you know, dozens, maybe prob- I didn't count the number of one-on-one clients, but I've got a full roster of my one-on-one clients. I have 225 people in a monthly membership. I've had seven sold out cohorts of a program. So I think there's this concept of like it's not scalable, and I'm like, well, one, what is scale? How to scale it. One, what is scale, but two, um, I did all this with a list of like 2,000 people, right? But those lists you get like 10 to 20 people at a time over and over. Mm-hmm. Um, and I've never had more than 1,500 people in my Instagram. My YouTube has like 500 subscribers. I have, I just cracked 5,000 people on LinkedIn. But what I did was very intentionally build relationships, you know- One, one appearance at a time. It was slow, but now, you know 10% of my list buys from me every year, like every month, um, because it's- Yeah recurring. So I think the t- the q- question is, like, that's how I chose to scale. It can, it can work, we just have to create those dedicated rhythms to stay in touch with people even when we're busy in our delivery. Yeah, and the membership she's referring to, that that's what she does isn't it, is she helps you create those rhythms. We have a question from Janelle. She said, let's see, "One question I had for Jessica

Making Relationship Marketing Scalable

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was around whether you had a CRM that you use or if you personally use your lightweight tracker to keep up with your probably super large network. Four Cs." I'm guessing she's in your program. She is not, but I love that- No? She's using a lot of your vernacular. She watched my presentation this morning. Um- So there are two types of CRMs. Well, there's three, but one I don't consider a CRM. There are pipeline deal management CRMs, so like Pipedrive, Copper. Um, you'll see them look like they have, um... It looks like a Kanban board with a pipeline. So you have a deal, um, you have a project, it goes in there. Um, there are what I call transactional CRMs, which is like a HoneyBook or a Dubsado, where really they're helping to manage the administrative side of processing a inquiry to a, um, contract or proposal. I don't consider that a CRM, I really consider that more an administrative workflow function, because it doesn't have the ability to manage relatio- I don't find it has the ability to manage relationships that aren't sales or any type of long diagnostic consultative sales process. So the, the ones I prefer are Folk or Adio. So Folk allows you to have the, this is super technical, but the deal object and a person object, and it allows you to have lists. So in both those systems you can say, "Here's all my referral partners, and what do I need to know about them as a person when they are in the referral partner group? Here's all the people that are potential prospects that haven't yet inquired yet but I still wanna make relationships with. Here's all of my connectors and collaborators." So, um, Folk and Adio allow you to create lists of useful designations that help you with your relationship building process, and have traditional pipelines like deals. You can do this in Notion, you can do this in a lightweight CRM. The benefit of Folk or Adio is they integrate with your email and your calendar, so you can see all that in one place, but that doesn't... Most people in the membership tend to use, like, the tracker just to get started, because it's much less important, this is Jessica's philosophy. I don't necessarily need you having a date to follow up with everyone in your network. I need you having a date to follow up with prospects, and I need you to have anyone that's inquired, and I need you to have a date to follow up on visibility opportunities. Everybody else, we can be overly as- uh, assertive in thinking about the cadence in which we can stay in touch with a given person. So I say, like, it's important to know when you last talked to someone, but unless it's a hard deadline that I need to follow back up with them, I tend to decre- I tend to, like, not set reminders and just be like, if I'm talking to five people every week and I'm trying to talk to five different people every week for a different reason, I'm gonna hit most of my network in a year. Um, I can supplement that by some, you know, client newsletters, referral partner newsletters that I send out maybe quarterly. But, um, I don't personally find it to be... You know, I tend to be like, "Oh, I should follow up with all these people. Snooze, snooze, snooze, snooze, snooze, snooze, snooze," and then I, you know, the due dates don't, aren't working for me. The only due dates I put in a CRM are when I need to follow up on a sales opportunity or when I need to follow up on a visibility opportunity. So Charlie asked a related question. He just watched your presentation, too. So it was a question about CRMs, but he wanted to talk more about existing customers. Um, so is there one, a CRM focused on managing existing customers as you described? I'm guessing it's the system that you're referring to with the lists in Folk. Yep. So you would have, you know, yes, you can have your pipeline that shows active deals, but then you would have a list for all of your active and past clients. I think it's important to say every six to 12 months, depending on their, you know, how frequently you're in conversation with them, if they're past clients, what are their goals now? What are they still working on? What's your land and expand opportunities? Um, do you know what are their biggest priorities, regardless of whether or not that's working with you or not, right? But how can you be someone that helps steward the re- your, your clients getting to or their goals, regardless of whether or not that's with a paid engagement with you? 'Cause they're gonna remember that. So there's a, you know, I really say how can you, outside of the context of a, of a active project or an active deal, be aware of what's happening for your past and present clients outside of the immediate opportunity? Um, the other p- perk of, like, uh, Folk or Adio is that especially if you work with larger organizations, you can have multiple... You can start to do multi-threaded sales, um, so you're not just, like, you know, connecting to one person in the organization. You are looking to say, "Who else do I need to be connected with in that organization should my champion leave? Should I wanna expand my work?" So I can see all the relationships with that customer, even if there's not more than one deal happening at any given time. Awesome. Yeah, he says that he has 100 active short-term clients each year, and he needs to manage how to intentionally follow up with them for the following project. So I think that answers that. Let's see. Okay, we have a question from Genevieve here. "What do you feel is easier or faster to convert

Cold Outreach Versus Borrowed Audiences

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to new clients? Cold direct outreach to potential clients or borrowing audiences?" I think each of them can be fast, but, um... So cold outreach, if you're going direct and you have a particular problem that you sell, um, I've always heard it's, you know, like, you know, if you se- if you send out 100 cold messages, you're probably gonna get one or two clients out of that. So if you can find, target... And that's after a substantial amount of follow-up. Um, so if you're able to handle that kind of volume and do that kind of follow-up sequence, you know, volume is a great play there. Um, I think you can make it even more targeted. You can make it even warmer as you go. Um, you know, why go cold when you can go warm, if I'm quoting Sarah from this morning, right? Um, you know, but, like, you're having to, unless you're catching them at the right time when they're like, "Yes, this is the number one thing on my list. Yes, I have this problem. Yes, I have the budget and I'm ready to solve it," that can be, if you land on someone super qualified, that can be a pretty short sales cycle. But you have no trust built up. You have to build all that trust. If you are being, you know, platformed, borrowing audiences, the, you, you come in already warm, um, so you, that trust transfer happens. Now, there might be less people in that room perhaps, so the, you know, chance of someone in that room being exactly what you need or what they, you know, you being exactly the fit for their problem that you solve may not come from, like, a single engagement. But if someone in, in that room is more qualified, um, then they're, you're already, you know, they're, you're already a head start. It's already a head start. Um, so I don't think of it as, personally, I would not do one or a... I would not do either one. I would do both, right? I would say, like, how can I, um, go warm when I can and use the trust transfer when I can, and yet if that's not happening quickly enough, how can I supplement that with more direct outreach? Yeah. I think it's really important though, um, if you're gonna do direct, you need to be very explicitly clear with the problem you solve. And, you know, we're all, we're all getting the slop. We're all getting pitch slapped with what we don't want. Um- So I think it's an opportunity to say, how can I do less volume but make it more intentional? I got, I got DM'd someone that says, "Have you ever considered build- building a course to, like, hit your six-figure revenue?" And I'm like, did you even bother to look at my profile or my website for, like, a minute? If you had, you would never have sent me that message. Um, and so I think if you're gonna do cold outreach, it can be done really, really well. Um, it just means that it's, again, like, you know, more research, more thought in advance. But I- I'm really of the opinion that, you know, you, if you activate your network before you need people, you don't have to do a lot of cold outreach Yeah. It's, it's so much easier if, like, just to look and see, do you have any connections or communities or anything that you have in common to get some sort of way to warm. Um, Trania, is that how you... Can you define relationship building? What activities are involved- Mm especially when you first meet someone? And I'm sorry if I pronounced your name wrong. Hi, Trania. Um, when I say relationship building, it is, um, you know, when you first meet someone, so I'm looking to say, how can I build a relationship at the speed of trust? So I'm looking to say, um, okay, on step one, do I know who they are? Do I seem... Do they seem like someone who, one, I have a, a shared interest in getting to know better, and then two, we might have shared goals that are really helpful. Um, I got this phrase from Mo Bunnell. Um, if someone happens to find that, he wrote the book Give to Grow: The SNOWBALL System, and he calls it the campaign of helpfulness. So a lot of times when we have a call or we meet someone at a conference and they're- we say a couple things, we tend to want to fire hose them and be like, "Here's, like, the five resources that, that we talked about during our conversation." And his thing is, don't do that. His thing is follow up with one thing that's useful to them. "Hey, so much thanks for our conversation. Oh, by the way, this was the, one of those resources that you asked for." And then in two weeks follow up with, like, a second resource, and not in a, you know, a f- funnel type way, but say, "Oh, you know, we were... I was thinking about this, this... continued to think about our conversation and it s- you know, reminded me that this was a useful resource." And oh, you know, two, two weeks later, "It was so great meeting you. Where else are you going this fall?" So you're f- you're building, when you have someone new, you're building a couple touchpoints in advance or, like, right after you meet them to be helpful over a two to s- you know, a, a concentrated two-month period, um, versus a one and done connect and then we'll follow up at some point. Um, so I thought that was really helpful when you're meeting them, but I think there's an opportunity to say, do I know what's important to them? Do I know who they're looking to meet? Do I know what problems are important to them? Do I know where they like to spend time? And how can I, you know, I don't know if y'all, if y'all, any of y'all saw The Office where Michael Scott had his Rolodex, but it was, like, color-coded reverse. It's like green is like don't go there. Yes, he had all these little facts about people in it. Yeah, so how can you start to do that with your best clients, connectors, and how can you start to, like, look and be like, what does this person care about? How can I be supportive of them? And then do that work regardless of whether or not they're paying you. Um, Katie says your membership is fantastic. Thank you. Um, let me see here So the trust transfer strategy doesn't require building an email list. The trust transfer strategy is, um, again, we don't need to have a, we don't need to have a newsletter to collect email addresses, so I wanna dispel that. You could have a resource and have them submit a form to get a resource, but not necessarily need a email newsletter. You could collect those forms and do personal outreach to a list on a regular basis. So we don't... Getting an email address and sending a newsletter are two different things. Um, and for those who don't convert im- immediately, if you are looking at, you know, this person might be qualified, they fit my ICP quarterly reach outs is not, um, quarterly reach outs, quarterly invitations, hosting workshops and things like that, but you don't have to have an email list in order to invite people over email. You're just trying to get their email in- information. Um, and then I think, you know, right now in the age of, like, AI world, um, I'd rather see you have, like, you know, a, I want you to have a point of view, and I don't know, um, like Sarah, I'm not sure whether or not this is covered in, in any of the days, but what is your angle? What is your positioning? What are the two to three topics that you are exploring, that you're curious about, that you're pushing your own scholarship forward on, and how are you then communicating that to your clients? I'd rather see, like, a relatively in-depth thought leadership piece, regardless of your feeling about the word thought leadership. I'd rather see that on a monthly basis than I would a weekly or biweekly newsletter that's more just marketing. One of my clients, um, who works in the nonprofit and conflict management space, she ha- she wrote, like, an amazing se- like, one or two articles that were sort of like a manifesto condensing everything that she had talked about, um, in some, like, in some workshops she'd done, uh, recently. She then put those on her blog, emailed all the people in her network and said, "I wrote this piece about rethinking conflict in the workplace. Would love your opinions on it." Those people shared it in their networks. It got passed around, um, not as a newsletter, but as a blog. That article got passed around. Hmm. That has since resulted in $50,000 of workshops because that article and her name got passed around through networks, not through email list. That's wild. I was just scanning through, and we don't have a training on that one, on that topic specifically here today. Um, okay, so I have a few questions that came in. Ben wants to know, is it best to chat in comments, like comment on LinkedIn

Where To Build Relationships First

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to start building that relationship to initiate it? It depends. I mean, it depends on how you meet them. Um, I think if you meet them off platform, you can have that conversation in email if you can get it. Um, you could have it on LinkedIn. You could have it... I think it's a question of, like, how are you meeting people, and if you're meeting people off platform, I wouldn't necessarily move it on platform unless you have to. Um, but like, you know, DMs are a great place to have the conversation. Public comments are a great place to have the conversation. Depends on where you meet people. Um, and I see Amy's question, "And doesn't it seem absent-minded if I talk to someone and mention three things?" Like, I think there, if you mention three things and you're like, "I'm gonna send you these three things," I would send them those three things. But, um, I don't, you know, especially if you're meeting someone at a conference, you can, you know, send them the thing that's most salient and then follow up later with, um, additional things of insight. Um, so I don't think you have to string them along, but I think you can, you know, especially if, if you're meeting people at a conference, everyone's so overloaded after the conference, it can be helpful to follow up with, like, you know, an additional thing you meant to send them or an additional thought or something like that once conference, you know, once you meet people and the conference is over. Um, oh, you know what? I just remembered. For people who are here today who have the Booked Out bundle, there is positioning resources in there from Katie. Okay, next question. "The trust transfer strategy requires building an email list then, right? For those who don't immediately convert." Um- Yeah, I answered that one, um, already. Oh, you did? Okay. Um, okay. So feel free to add more questions. I'll go back to the ones that were pre-submitted. Um, why do some activities work better for certain types of businesses? For exam- for example, something like a summit like this one. Like, how does, how do you choose what kind of activities to do based off of your business? So the, you know, a Fortune 500 CEO's never gonna come to a summit. Like, we're, we're online entrepreneurs selling to other online entrepreneurs. So I think it's important to say does... How senior is the audience? How sensitive is the problem? And what is their likeliest mode of communication? So if you were selling to, um, high touch services to, you know, again, like fractional or, you know, HR representatives, you know, larger marketing firms and things like that, you're gonna wanna go not through, in my opinion, not through, like, a lot of public marketing, but you're gonna wanna go through private networks, private and secret networks. Um, you know, who are they talking to already? Who gains entry? Who... And a lot of those are paid and private networks that, you know, it's like ex-McKinsey alums, ex-ex-Nike, ex-Google, ex-so and so, right? Um, that's one of the nice parts about, um, communities like, you know, the Old Girls Club and other, and other memberships where, you know, it's paid, so there's a bit of a barrier to entry. But, you know, that's where, you know, going with your existing clients and saying, you know, "Who else do you talk to on a regular basis? What are the not publicized gathering opportunities?" Social clubs, you know, private WhatsApp threads, intimate, you know, dinners and things like that that you can't even buy a ticket to. Those are gonna be your way into a lot of those more se- uh, what I call secret networks where a lot of business gets done. Yes. Prayer hands on that because niche communities is the best place that I have found to, like, meet and nurture relationships with clients. And start asking your clients, "What communities are you in?" I love that, and I love that you call it a secret network. It's fun. You have fans of your book in the chat, so just for anybody who hasn't heard, Leaving the Casino: Stop Betting on Tactics and Start Building a Business that Works is her book, and people really love it. Thank you. And the community is Deeper Foundations if you wanna join that. Um, here's another question that came through in the chat. So, um, let's see. Sorry, as people go in, it moves up. Um, I meet most of my clients at dinners. Sometimes we'll talk for 30 minutes and they'll say, "Let's meet."

Follow-Up That People Actually Answer

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But when I email them two to three times, I don't get a reply. What do you do in those situations? So one, it ha- it's, you have to look at the email as well. Um, what I've discovered is that sometimes if we ask them to do too much, um, people get overwhelmed and don't respond. So depending on, like, what the email is, if you're sending them, like, "Here's some times I can meet in the next two weeks," and they look at those times and they're like, "Oh my God, I'm so over- I, I can't, I don't have any of these times," people ghost you. So, um, I would say how can you make the ask even smaller? And I always like to have, you know, I, I... There's some sales experts in the, in the chat, um, so I'd be curious to get their take. But, um, I always like to say, like, you know, "Hey, wanted to follow up on getting a time. You know, should I, who should I loop in to get a time on the calendar?" Or, like, you know, a- giving them a question where they can answer yes or no to keep the conversation going. Um, so that's one. Um, the second is if you've emailed them a couple of times, um, and to, to meet, then I would follow up on a r- on a quarterly basis. Be like, "Hey, based on our last conversation, this is what was really important to you. I saw this article, found this resource. That might be, that might be useful for you." Follow up in three to six months. "Hey, we, you know, last time we talked this was what was happening. Is this still happening for you?" So you're adding value at every time you follow up, not just, like, let's, let's meet up. Um, because it, you know, at some point, you know, they might be overwhelmed. Your, your job is to make sure you're adding value. Um, de- definitely check out Liz's training on the, from hunter to host on- Yes how to follow up in a way that is invitational versus, um, the... Yeah, I watched it this morning, Liz. I, I was like, I have to see it. Um, but definitely, like, the follow-up, how can you make sure it's, it's adding real value and treating them like the, you know, instead of you making it about you, as she would say, make it about them and how can it be, uh, supportive in that. But, you know, again, s- you know, like I have, I have clients who have said, "I have told them I want to buy this," and then they send me the link and I don't buy it. And then, like, you know, they're like, "Hey, you said you wanted to buy this." I'm like, "Thank you for reminding me." And I have to, I have to be reminded- Same. for things that I said I was going to buy. Like, I'm like, "I told you, yes, I wanna do this," and they had to follow up with me mul- like, multiple times. Um, so yeah. So those are, um, a couple of ways to, to think about, uh, follow-up in a way that's not just, like... You know, that's gonna move the c- the relationship forward. And I'm with Jessica too. I do that all the time, and I'm like, "I didn't mean to ignore you. My inbox is just drowning me right now." Um- If someone emails me on a day I'm out of the office, there's like, it takes me like a month to get back to people because by the time I clear out the inbox, I'm like, I feel bad and I know it's in there. Yeah. And I'm like... But then when they email me again, and I'm like, "Oh, thank God, it's at the top of my inbox." Yeah, it got pushed up, now we're good. Um, John says, "How do you think about pruning your community of relationships that don't make sense anymore so that you can focus

Tiering Your Network Plus Snail Mail

35:18

limited energy on those you wanna develop further?" So I don't necessarily know if I prune as much as I focus. So, um, Dunbar number said that you can have, like, a, relationships with up to 150 people. Um, I'm always looking at the, the 80/20 rule of, like, the 20% of my relationships that are gonna bring 80% of the results. Um, so I'm looking at the health of those relationships, probably 20 to 30 VIP, what I call gold tier, which sounds, again, transactional, but it helps me focus. These are the people that I want to treat like gold because they are my biggest advocates, they're my fans, they're my friends. Um, and I will do, I will move heaven and Earth to support them, and I know they'd do the same for me. Um, so they get, like, a different tier on my, um, in my CRM, like, when I think about, like, my networks, I'm like, they're tier one. Every holiday they get, like, a gift or something like that from me. They get special cards and, and things like that. I'm a big, I'm a big snail mail person. Then I have my tier twos, which are sort of like, you know, the 75 other people who I think are, like, most useful and, and relevant on my network. And then every year I go through and I look at, I evaluate the health of my tier one and tier two relations- tier three is everybody else. I'm not gonna, like, categorize all my tier three people. Um, but I'm looking at the health of those, especially my tier ones, and I'm really looking at the m- health and the maturity of that network because if your best referral partners and your best connectors stop marketing their business, if you are, um, you know, if a community you are a part of is maybe less active, um, you know, or a ref- a client, a client contact moved organizations, you're gonna wanna be really laser focused on the activities of those partners because if you are not cultivating new ones and only relying on the tier one relationships that you have, at some point they're going to be less fruitful than you need. So I'm always thinking about, like, okay, who are the other partners that are maybe not sending me as much business as I'd like to, who I wanna cultivate a better relationship with? Who do I wanna spend more time getting to know, follow up, make more connections for? Um, so I'm really looking at, like, the health of my tier one and tier two relationships. Emily wants to know more about your snail mail. Can you share more about what you send through the snail mail, through snail mail, and how you approach client gifts? So I use Postable to collect email and to collect physical addresses. And, um, I send welcome to the membership cards, welcome to my program cards. I send welcome... I send birthday cards, and I do this all during sacred sales hour, so once a week with my membership. Now I have a dedicated time to do this. Um, I, with new client gifts, they either get a copy of my book or they get a copy of a book that someone else wrote that I think is really useful for them. So like I had a new member join and I sent her, um, the book called Whale Hunters or Whale Hunting. I can never remember exact, but it's all about like proactively targeting B2B sale, large B2B accounts. Um- Ooh, that sounds great. It's great. And I learned a lot about whale hunting, which is- 'cause it's very heavily on the metaphor. Um, so I have dedicated time to do this. Um, and, um, I don't have a team to do this. I... But I'm thinking in terms of campaigns. So, um, I'm doing client gifting once or twice a year, but I'm doing it for everybody at once or when they enroll with me. Um, I'm doing membership, um, birthday cards one week a month. So I have reminders in my task management for some of these more repeatable activities. But, you know, I think about, I'm really big in batching in campaigns. So instead of just like whenever I think of someone, I'm like, "Okay, yes, and?" Whenever I think of someone, could be all at once for all the people. That's why having the list is really important to be like, okay, all my referral partners, how can I do something with them all at once? All of my best collaborators and connectors, how could I do something with it at once? All my past clients, do something with them, them at once. And that way I'm, um, reducing the executive functioning on my end by saying these are repeatable activities that I know I wanna do. Uh, I also use Postable. It's really easy to use. I it's a good one. Um, let's see here. We have Jennifer. How- however, I do wanna say for Jennifer, um, like having in a, like an account, like a, you, you know, a virtual assistant where you're like, "These are the SO..." I hate to say the SOPs, but these are the sales oper- you know, sales tools that I use. So you could have a, um- You could have a, um, person who every time you're going to an event or going out of town, your as- assistant, you know, three weeks, you know, three to four weeks before you're gonna go be like, "Scan through my CRM. Put together the list of people that are in this part of the s- the town. Help me organize a dinner." Um, you could say, "Hey, referral partner, your, you know, assistant, we're gonna do our, um, outreach campaign to referral partners. Can you make sure that everyone's email ad- or everyone's s- snail mail address is updated?" You can say, "Hey, as- so, uh, admin, do some research on niche communities that I could join. Do some research on five to 10 other people on Substack that I can collaborate with." So you can, um, provide kind of recipes, um, and repeatable, you know, tasks that you can have someone else support you with this, with this work. I love that idea. That also kind of goes back to that scalable question. That's a way you can scale this. Yeah, I liked the idea of recipes too, Jennifer. Um, we missed a Jennifer question up earlier, too. Who hel- oh, who helps you with all of this? Is that what... Were you answering the question ahead of time? Yes. Okay. So nevermind. We did not miss it. Um, we have about five minutes. You guys can drop more questions if you want. I will go back to the questions that were pre-submitted, so we get as much of Jen- of Jessica as possible. Um, what strategies would you use specifically to at- to attract executives and corporate clients?

Winning Executive Clients In Secret Networks

41:41

So that's all about those secret networks. Um, it's about, you know, intimate niche dinners, conversations. You know, this is not like a let's get 20 people on a thing and have it be recorded. It's how can you curate the room- Mm-hmm for them, um, where it's very tightly woven. Um, I also think that going to conferences and going to, like, speaking at associations is a great way to get access to those individuals, but it's all about, um, again, like, you know, following up, building that relationship, um, and that network. Again, that's where, you know, what rooms are, what rooms are they a part of? Um, but I also think, like, we forget that, like, you know, s- like social clubs, Mahjong, hobbies, wine clubs, you know, we are all online, but a lot of, like, that, those relationships are done interpersonally offline. Yeah, actually my town has both of those, has both of those clubs. Um, Ben, a Slack group. Slack is an app where communities exist. That's what Slack is. Um, okay. We'll do... We probably have t- time for, like, two more questions. Let's see. If someone's network feels small, scattered, or mostly former coworkers, where's the very first place you'd have them start in rebuilding relationship-led pipeline? So the big question is, um, are the clients you wanna serve in your network or not? Um, if they're in... if they're one degree away from that network, start with who you need to have in your network, both clients, collaborators, referral partners. Um, you can be saying strategically, "These are the people, you know, these are my clients I'd like to meet, but these are the referral partners I'd like to meet." And you can go to those relationships and say, you know, "Thank you for the support over the years. I'm doing a new venture, by the way. Here's who I'm hoping to meet." Um, it's a lot easier for sometimes people when you say, "This is the, this is the ask that I have." Not just clients, but, you know, especially in the B2B world, who are the people that are likely to run across your clients? Don't ask for, you know, you can ask for introductions to your client, but you can also ask for introductions to specifically the people who might be most likely to come across your clients. Mm-hmm. So one of, um, you know, my, one of my, um, clients, she is a management trainer. Um, she reactivated her network, but also got introduced to, like, an exit consultant. They help on the business side, and she helps, um, get their next level prepared for succession. You know, so she's actually been brought in as a, as a, you know, as a partner, not necessarily brought into the, like, not ac- not necessarily won that relationship on her own. So she didn't have to be introduced to clients. She just had to be introduced to, like, cl- you know, the referral partner. Yeah, someone who would need the other half of that problem. Okay. Um, how do you evaluate... This is Inga. How do you evaluate whether it is worth it to put in a lot of work from your end to keep someone in that tier one and hold onto it, revive the relationship, or let them go? Well, they only get to tier one if they've, if they've sent me business before or it's a vice versa relationship. Um, but I think, like, sometimes, you know, I wanna make sure that the re- that the relationship is re- re- reciprocal, but a lot of times, you know, we can put in re- like, we can put in work that feels really helpful for them but doesn't take that much time for you. Sending out a mailing card once a year, you know, that's what? Five minutes to put someone's address on a, on a card or a quarterly- Less if postable. I know. Or a quarterly email. So I think, like, it, we don't necessarily have to have, like, connection calls with all these people all the time. We can really say, like, what's a meaningful It's what's a meaningful personal touch we can add to our relationships, and that doesn't take a lot of time, and also I don't think it needs to happen as frequently as we think. We're like, "I don't need you having, like, some, like, big showy personal touch every single quarter." Like, you know, do, do you remember what... January felt like s- like yesterday. So I think if you're able to do something that's, like, meaningful once a year, sometimes you don't even have to do it that frequently, um, and people will remember because no one else is doing it. Yeah. So, you know, like I, I mailed, like couple weeks ago I mailed 20 books to, free books to people, um, 'cause I want- I'm trying to get my, my numbers up. 20 free books. That took me about three hours, and those 20 people are thankful, they spread the word, and it took me not that much time. Thank you so much for doing this AMA. It was incredibly powerful, and I think most of you probably already listened to

How To Work With Jessica

46:47

or watched her training, but if not, do that. It dropped today. And another one that would be really good that paired with this was Amalie, who did one about how to get five decision-makers in a room, and it had a lot to do with what Jessica was talking about today. Yeah, that, that small group one, right? Yeah. Mm-hmm. Yeah, so exactly. Yeah, that's like those private events. You're not recording it. It's how you can get those higher level executives to come together. Um, before we close up, 'cause I know we're one minute over, I'm sorry, guys, um, tell people how you- they can work with you. Yes. So, um, you can buy my book, Leaving the Casino. You can, um, s- subscribe to my newsletter, deeperfoundations.com/newsletter, or you can join the membership, deeperfoundations.com/membership. Yes. I have heard so many amazing things about her, actually all three. Like, I seriously stalked her a little bit and forced her to collaborate with me.

Sarah Noel Block 47:45

Thank you so much for listening to this episode, and thank you to Jessica Lackey for being here. If you enjoyed this conversation, make sure to like and follow wherever you listen to podcasts. Stay tuned for next week when Season 6 kicks off. I'll see you then.