What's better: "I get all my business through warm intros & referrals" vs the outbound hustle?

Hi friends, 

This is me checking in at the end of the week. 

My 3 observations from this week:

#1 Outbound & esp. calling is such an underutilized motion

At the beginning of the week I realized I will not be closing June at the revenue where I wanted to be at. 

I decided to pick up the phone and call a few of my past speaking leads as speaking has proven to have 1) quite short sales cycle and 2) I can quickly customize the pitch to different opportunities. 

These were people who had no idea who I was, I had their contact details because they posted them online when they were researching speakers for their upcoming event. 

The second dial picked up! 

When the lady learned why I was calling she apologized that this was not a good time (it never is!) and yet we ended up chatting for another 9 minutes.

I ran a quick discovery on what she’s looking for when, what audience etc. and she told me she’d get back to me after speaking with her boss later in the week. 

And she did!

We had another 30-min-scheduled-turned-52-min call yesterday, the budget, the setup all seems fine and she already told her boss about me. I am pretty confident we finalize the agreement for October early next week and I can also see opportunity for further consulting down the line. 

Encouraged by this, I just finished calling/ voicemailing/ SMS texting all my past leads from this year - in the hope it will deliver an immediate encore! 

What a banger that would be.

But even with one quick outbound-sourced gig this week, I can assure you I will be doing much more outbound (emails & calls alike) in the near future. 

People love to brag how little they have to work to get new business but I have to say - I want to celebrate the good ol’ outbound hustle.

#2 The era of growth without (much) hiring is here

I finished my pipeline visualization tool this week and used it for one existing and one potential client discussion. 

It really opens people’s eyes in terms of how much effort there’s needed to grow their businesses but it also breaks down the big hairy problem (we need more revenue!) into clear manageable steps

• Are you getting enough leads to the top of your funnel? 

• Is the conversion at each step reasonable or is there any step of your sales process where you are losing too many potential customers? 

• And is there a way to accelerate the process (e.g. faster time-to-proposal) while spending LESS time on it? 

In my past consulting life, this would take days, would be much uglier or it would be a tool delivered by some practice and they’d charge a lot for using it. 

With the tools, automations and systems I am building, I can see how I will scale up my impact, help more businesses, make more money without necessarily hiring any time soon. 

#3 You need to throw a lot of spaghetti on the wall and see what sticks 🍝

And lastly, if you ever played the content game, I am sure you will agree. 

I started posting more regularly recently and some of my “best” thoughts got only minimal engagement meanwhile a post I was reluctant to post as it felt silly is something people I meet IRL refer to on a daily basis (the jacket from Rent-The-Runway story). 

It’s funny how some ask me how I came up with something so .. .good/ smart/ insightful - and the answer is I tried a lot, flopped a lot and this one would stick! 

So the lesson from this is - trust the process, keep the reps in because

Onwards from here :) & happy weekend! 

Katka

PS: the title is a trick question - any business that you want to be doing is GREAT. Just let’s stop glamorizing the “effortless” referrals/ inbound only way. I really think it’s setting up a lot of people with wrong expectations on what building any new business feels like.