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How are you generating new leads while in quarantine?

When the quarantine first started, one of the things I saw was businesses that had primarily sold through networking, and F2F interaction had their top of funnel activity cut off. In quarantine we have; No networking No conferences No meetups No leads! No business can survive for long without regularly putting leads into the top…

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How to generate leads online, without being slimy

When I started selling professional services the process was simple.  Find where your ideal customers gathered. Go to that place and meet them. Follow up after the meeting to meet 1-2-1 for “coffee” Determine if they had a need and if there was a “fit” Schedule a diagnostic meeting (e.g. actual sales call) Close. That…

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What you told me about retainers, the good and the bad.

In my last message, I talked about the problem of retainers, they seem like a great way to smooth out revenue and make delivery more predictable. Still, in reality, they may turn into a bog of over-servicing and under profitability.  I asked you to tell me about your experiences, and you were very generous with…

7 Chicago Small Business Consulting Firms That Can Fuel Your Success
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7 Chicago Small Business Consulting Firms That Can Fuel Your Success

Running a business is so rewarding, but it can also be tremendously stressful and lonely. Business owners get so caught up in the day-to-day of the business that we struggle to see the big picture. We’re not sure why sales have stagnated, why we can’t seem to take a vacation, why we’re still second-guessing every…

Stages in business growth (Part 1)
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Stages in business growth (Part 1)

Just like children, businesses grow through predictable phases. We start life as baby startups, then progress to raging growth companies, before settling into a more stable “adult” phase. Here’s my version of this story focused primarily on B2B service businesses. See if you see any of your own experiences in it. Baby startup  Once upon…

Look for Tourniquet assignments, not vitamin jobs (read time 2min 15sec)
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Look for Tourniquet assignments, not vitamin jobs (read time 2min 15sec)

We’ve talked previously about how important it is to find more significant, scarier problems. My father used to say it this way; ”No one gets hired to tell a client to take his vitamins. You hire an outside firm when you have an artery spouting blood and they need a tourniquet!” Dad had a way…