Ditch the AI Hype: A Better Way to Win Consulting Clients

Ditch the AI Hype: A Better Way to Win Consulting Clients

 Gary hosts a LinkedIn session arguing that AI is overhyped for consulting client acquisition and that the advantage is being a real, relevant human rather than using automated “personalization.” He outlines a non-AI-dependent pipeline: build a purposeful LinkedIn network, use outreach to book meetings, leverage the network via events/webinars and podcast guesting, and repurpose authentic event/podcast content into clips for LinkedIn. He shares a LinkedIn targeting test that starts with engagement signals (people actively commenting on relevant influencers/topics) and then filters via Sales Navigator, increasing connection rates from about 33% to 67.8%, with caveats about audience activity and fit. He recommends a low-pitch LinkedIn intro sequence, consistent follow-up, and highlights direct mail as a low-competition channel, while warning that missed replies can waste hard-won interest.

Discover:

00:00 Welcome And Setup
03:12 AI Hype Reality Check
03:51 Be Human Be Relevant
06:52 Pipeline Overview
08:03 Signals Based Prospecting
14:19 LinkedIn Sales Nav Demo
18:12 Build Network With Events
21:00 Podcast Guest Strategy
23:20 Outreach For Fast Wins
24:51 Why Ads Still Work
26:14 Cold Calls That Convert
27:42 LinkedIn Outreach Sequence
30:11 Follow Up Without Spam
31:33 Direct Mail Comeback
34:30 Gifts That Get Replies
37:05 Reply Fast Or Lose Deals
40:36 Done For You Pitch
42:01 Q&A And Wrap U

Transcript:

[00:00:00] Gary Ruplinger: All right. Welcome everybody. It is April 23rd, may of 2025. I’m Gary Rup Blinker, and this session is the Ditch, the AI Hype, a better way to get Consulting Clients Session. So appreciate everybody who’s hopping on today. I think last I looked, we had 862 or so people registered so. I know I’m not the only one who, who thinks that maybe sometimes this stuff is getting a little bit overhyped.

I’m not saying AI is bad, I’m not saying it’s not useful, something I use regularly. but I think it’s a lot of times the. Oh my gosh, my mind is blown. Stuff is more like, well that was a neat tech demo, but how do we actually use it for, for, for something here with, with and re regarding our business.

And I think this is especially, relevant in, the consulting space, which I know a lot of you probably are. So, I’ll give everybody here just probably a minute or so to, to get on the live stream, because I know sometimes it, takes a second for all the notifications to go out and the everything to kind of push out.

so, but for me, let’s see here it is, it’s a very nice spring day, 74 degrees here in, Detroit, Michigan. I’m just a little bit north of the city in the suburbs. Where are you guys all calling in from? Is it, has spring, has Spring found your location yet?

Evan, are you guys getting some good weather there in, in West Virginia? Did it make its way to you?

Oh, it looks like he’s on, he’s on mute. So I guess I, I’ll, I’ll find someone else to talk to. 

[00:01:53] Evan: Sorry about that. Yeah, it’s been very hot over here in West Virginia. 

[00:01:56] Gary Ruplinger: Oh, it’s been hot. Really? 

[00:01:57] Evan: Yeah, very hot. And then we had a storm that came through the other day and it was like, destroying some of the houses in our area, so that was rough.

[00:02:06] Gary Ruplinger: Oh, that’s a bummer. Alright, I’m just gonna make sure everything is working here and then we’ll get the event started. I just wanna make sure that it’s actually. Pushed out live ’cause you know, most of the stuff, this stuff all works pretty well most of the time, but, technical difficulties, do come up here now.

Alright. Looks like we are in fact live. So, I will try and keep an eye on the comments over here. I know some of ’em may not always push through to the view I’m looking at here, but I’ll pro I’ll try and check over here on my. Am I right where I’ve got the second screen form here because I see there’s Eric, so Eric’s up in New Hampshire.

spring’s just starting to show up. Excellent. Glad to hear it. So, but anyway, appreciate everybody being on. Let’s, let’s jump into it. I know everybody’s, you probably got a busy day and you want, you want some, some content, not some talking about the weather. If you wanted to talk about weather, you’d probably go on YouTube and watch Ryan Hall, y’all, or something like that.

[00:03:09] anyway. So basically the idea behind today’s session is that some of this AI stuff is getting over hyped to the point where you say, well, what, what should I do? How do I, how do I make my consulting business more AI friendly? And I think. We’re, we’re, we’re kind of seeing that whole people want less ai, they want more authenticity, more you, and they’re getting really kind of sick of, of everything being ai this, AI that.

And we’re just gonna skip all the about stuff today. If you’ve been on my screen before you, you’ve seen it all. You’ve heard my, you’ve heard my dad 

[00:03:50] jokes already. So we’re just gonna, we’re gonna skip right into the content today, but really getting clients on in 2025 isn’t about using AI for, for fake personalization or pretending that you listened to their podcast or, or kind of writing some super generic ideas.

I got one yesterday. Were clearly automated where they had some. Ideas, that they generated for me that were all crap, all garbage, and none, not a single one of ’em were relevant. And I think that’s the, that’s the thing, right? Is you as a consumer or a customer, potential customer, you are not asking for, for more eight more businesses to use AI to reach out to you.

Now, you, if you want to, you don’t, you probably wanna hear from anybody, but if you wanna hear from somebody, you’d rather repeat, at least be a real person. And you want what you’re getting to be relevant, not personalized. Garbage. so my, my take here right now is be a real person. That is your advantage.

That is really the only one you’re going to have is that you’re, you’re going to be a human with experience and wisdom and, and things that you know, that software tools do not. Not have, they’re not gonna have your personality. And I guess at, at that point, once they do and they take over, well then I guess all of this is a moot point.

But until then, be you, be a real person and be relevant. So here’s the thing, a lot of the fundamentals that are needed for consulting businesses are not, you don’t need AI to do them. and that’s what I really wanna focus on today, is you can certainly use tools to enhance some of these things. but if you can’t do the fundamentals right and you don’t have a good grasp on those, adding AI to it is not going to help you.

and I it, when I was prepping the slides for this, I, I had been saving for the past month. I’ve been taking screenshots of all the terrible, messages I’ve gotten that are clearly AI written. And I thought if I do that, this is gonna be like a 90 minute. Session of me just complaining about stuff.

So we’re gonna skip all of those. I’m gonna show you what to do instead. You’ve seen it, you’ve experienced it. You don’t need me to show you more of it. But here’s the thing. You don’t need AI to build your network and build connections and connect with real people on, on LinkedIn or go to trade shows or wherever you are, you know, doing your networking.

You don’t need it to host an event or a webinar. You don’t need it to. Get on podcasts and go talk to other experts and have a real conversation with somebody. You don’t need it to do AI outreach. you can just do regular outreach. and you’ll probably find you get better results, than the, AI stuff.

you don’t need it to have a virtual cup of coffee with somebody or to send direct mail or even to reply to people. So let’s focus in on what we can do. So I know this is a little bit small. So let me switch my view here so we can make that a little bit bigger. Maybe that helps. Just a touch 

[00:06:49] here. essentially kind of the process that we’re looking at today.

And I will send anybody who wants a copy of this, just send me an email with a Gary, a Gart pipeline analogy. I’ll send you this flowchart so that you can kind of take a look at it and, and get familiar with it. But essentially what we’re looking at is ways to. Connect with people and build your network.

Use outreach to get meetings with those people, and then leverage your network and do things like host an event like this or get on a podcast, and then use those. Experiences and those unique pieces of content that you’ve actually created. Not AI slop, but actually unique content and things you’ve said to create video clips, and then you can share those on LinkedIn or different platforms where you are.

So you’re getting unique content with a unique voice and you, and au I guess, authentic. Authentic is really what I’m looking for there, the authentic content, not some digital clone, blah, blah, blah. That’s very contrived and just, just has that not quite real feeling. So, but anyway, let’s jump into next.

I know this flow chart’s a little bit 

[00:08:02] hard to, to see. So the thing I wanna show you here is something we’ve been kind of testing recently, a little bit behind the scenes with, you know, internally and with some of our clients in the terms of relevance. So what I mean, relevance, I mean, is, is finding the right people that you might like to work with.

With the addition of different types of engagement signals. Now this is certainly not anything new. This is really kind of a, a riff on, Google’s in market audiences. So if you’ve been in, if you’ve ever run ads or anything like that, especially if you’ve done it to the consumer facing side of things, you’re probably familiar with the end market audiences.

that’s 12 years old. That came out in 2013. So. Right. Not new. Not, this is not a. Ai, anything. This is just good old fashioned, essentially business development and marketing. So the right people plus signals. So here’s how we’ve been using this specifically on LinkedIn. And this can be adapted to other social media platforms or, or other areas.

for example, the first time I used something like this was actually on Facebook. Lot less targeting, a lot less tools to work with, but essentially finding people that are actively engaging. IE actively commenting on LinkedIn with people like influencers or topics that are complimentary to what we offer.

IE they’re, they’re already in the right ballpark. They might have some awareness or some need for what we, we offer. And then taking those active people and then filtering it down using tools like Sales Navigator on LinkedIn to narrow it down to people who fit, have the right roles. If that’s, you know, a vice president of development or somebody in HR or whatever space that is, they might have have the right job title in the right industry with the right sized companies.

Alright, so basically. Kind of the opposite of the way I would typically do something on LinkedIn where I would start with, here’s the criteria, here’s the ICP, the ideal client profile, right? They’re a founder of this sized company. They’ve been doing it for three to 10 years, something like that.

Basically flipping it, it’s finding first, let’s see if they’re active, and then let’s filter ’em. and here’s been, here’s been the data on it is. Since we’ve been testing that out, and admittedly this is about a month that we’ve been kind of running this particular test. I’m just trying to kinda see if we could reinvigorate some campaigns, right.

That might have gotten a little bit stale. And you can see we’ve seen a pretty big jump. So, on this account here that I’m showing you from, this is one of our internal accounts. so overall we are already seeing a 33% connection rate, which in the world of people you don’t know. That’s pretty good. is, is, that’s been pretty consistent over many years at this point, is that finding people who fit that criteria and then checking the box on LinkedIn Sales Navigator.

I’ll show you that in a second, what that actually looks like. That says they’ve been active on LinkedIn, so people that are at least have logged into their account in the past month on LinkedIn getting a 33% connection rate. Not bad, but by flipping it on its head here and finding people that are actually actively commenting and engaging with topics that are relevant to what we do, we’ve double effectively doubled that.

So 67.8% connection rate. Now you can’t goose the numbers here If you, you’re really, if somebody says, you know, Hey, I can get you. That’s nothing. I can get an 85% connection rate. Yeah, it’s pretty easy. Just don’t filter the people. Just take the people actively commenting. But anyway, so a couple caveats to this, and I’ll kind of show you exactly what this looks like.

So you could try and make it, you know, if you want to try it for yourself, is this does require, I, I probably don’t need to tell you this, but it requires an audience that act that’s active on LinkedIn. so, and there’s quite a few that are. real estate mortgage. a a lot of the white collar industries are there.

Less so maybe restaurants, or, when that came, one I’ve never heard of before, but certainly must exist is biochar plant directors, like people who run the facilities that make biochar, which is like charcoal. Is my understanding. You wanna guess? You had to, to explain to a client that I actually can’t, find those people on LinkedIn.

We’d have to get some external industry lists, which exist. But anyway is so you, it does require an audience that is in fact, active on LinkedIn to use this, this little bit of a trick here. and it does skew, and this one’s very, very important if you’ve got a really bespoke, high priced type of offer.

This type of approach is going to skew towards people who’ve got perhaps a little bit more time than they do money. Not saying they’re broke. that’s not usually the case, but they, they might be your, your bespoke offering might be a little bit, too far advance for them and they might need something that’s a little bit more off the shelf and at lower price, obviously.

and you really do need to filter, as I’ve said here, you really do need to filter the people who are commenting. U unless your goal is just to maximize that connection rate. If you just want to get a hundred, you know, if you, you wanna see that 85% for, for vanity metrics, or you just need to grow a network quickly.

You can just, you can not put that filter in, but really, right? ’cause you don’t, people who comment on, on public posts could be any really anywhere, right? They could be, an intern at a, a company and they’re just trying to, or a student, we see that one quite a bit, right? They’re, they’re professor told them, Hey, you gotta, if you want to be in this industry, you gotta go participate in it.

So, filtering out the students who obviously aren’t a prospect for you, unless that is in fact your audience. something you should probably be doing. So those are kind of the caveats to 

[00:14:18] it. So lemme just kind of flip my, my, view here and I’ll show you what I mean. So if you were to pull up, sales Navigator, so this is the view we’re looking at right here.

And let me just pull it up here. So if you’re pulling up this. Essentially what filter we’re looking at here. So let’s say I wanted softwares founders in North America at companies that have 11 to 50 employees, so at least some sense of establishment, and that gives me 240,000 people. Pretty big list, so right kind of fits that criteria of a big audience.

One trick that we’ve seen successfully work pretty well. Is by flipping on here. This posted on LinkedIn filter, right? It does reduce the size by, you know, by about 60%. So now we’re down to 75,000 people. but overall it’s still a very, very big market and we can do a lot more additional filtering on that, and that’s kind of traditionally how we found people.

and it actually has been pretty effective historically, though, as LinkedIn continues to kind of constrain how much you can do any, any, you know, how many, you know, connection requests you can send to people. It’s, it’s made it a little bit harder. So this is where we’ve kind of flipped it on its head.

So let me go back to. Go back to LinkedIn and I’ll show you the other example here.

So if we were to go and look for signals, so let’s just take Richard Branson here. I wouldn’t actually recommend using this unless you are very sure that this is a place where your audience hangs out. But what you’ll find is that he’s got a large following and he is very, he’s active on the platform.

But most importantly, he gets a lot of activity on his, posts. Let me zoom in a little bit because I, I never realized, I realize as I’m looking at this that it’s small, so it’s probably really small for you to look at here too. But essentially what you do is you would go through this and harvest. All of these names and profiles and then filter them.

and this is actually something AI can do, is it can write the script that if you were to say Push control A, control C, and paste all of these people in it can extract all of them. That’s something AI can actually do is pretty good at, at writing, you know, scripts for Excel spreadsheets. So, just kind of a, a way you could, could attempt to do something like that there.

So, but what, yeah, what I’m trying to say is that, you know, you, you can certainly get a lot more activity there by focusing on people’s signals, right? Where are they active and is it relevant to you? I would, you know, find the influencers who are, are commenting. For example, I’ve got a client where they’re in the sales space, they work with sales teams.

and what we found for them is that HubSpot, if they’re engaging with HubSpot, the CRM platform, that’s pretty helpful for, for them to find the right types of people because they’re already familiar. They, they, they know that they need that type of tool, but often it, but it’s a very, but it can be very complex and onerous and kind of a pain to get set up properly.

So as part of his process, he can help them do that, though that’s not his offer, he doesn’t offer sale or HubSpot consulting. He, you know. So it’s a complimentary, type of post and not directly. He’s not a, he’s not a competitor. He’s not selling CRM systems. So just some things to keep in mind there. So one way to kinda really, you know, engage with 

[00:18:09] that.

So let’s talk about building that network with purpose is one is. I recommend you, you continue to build your network on LinkedIn. One, ’cause it’s kind of a, it’s a long, it is a long-term play. It takes time. you can have up to 30,000 people who connect with you, which is a lot of people. I, you know, I, I think right, you, you might only know a couple hundred people personally, but having these connections at least gives you some type of.

of, of a little bit more than just being a person out of the blue. Maybe not a strong connection to ’em, but something. And it allows you to do things like invite them to attend events or, you know, subscribe to your newsletter. And it also makes it a little bit easier to get contact information for ’em, but it does take time.

So my recommendation is start now. and leverage your network with events. So events like what we’re doing here, like I said, I like this because. It, it, it, it’s not AI slop, it’s not clearly a post written and, you know, just, you know, or, or some of these contrived stories, it’s actually bringing in relevant people and yeah, they may not bring in 430 comments or 3,500 engagements.

but you can take a look here at what I did with, With Scott Moss last year, you can see we had, you know, 8,000 people see it. We had, I think, over 1500 people sign up for it. for this one that we’re doing today. We had over 800 people sign up for it. So, you can certainly get a pretty good, good amount of engagement and good amount of, you know, those types of signals that you’re looking for with, with this type of thing.

So, and like I said, it, it that lets you really engage with your audience in a way that. Is not just, it’s, it’s, it’s more, how do I say this? Is that it’s, it’s more real, it’s more authentic and it really kind of presents you as an authority. And yeah, obviously it can help you get new leads or maybe it can close people who are on the fence.

one of the things I notice about it, probably the thing I notice most often about it is reactivating dead leads is people who, you know. We may, may have talked, we may have spoken, you know, a while ago. I actually see some people in the, in the chat who people I’ve, I’ve talked to over a year ago. but you know, nothing may have come of it, but you, here they are, they’re, they’re engaging again, they’re back.

and it. It gives a chance to, to start a conversation again. So really kind of, kind of valuable for kind of the, all the different phases of your sales pipeline, not just bringing in new leads. Yes, obviously it can do that, but it can also help with the whole sales cycle, which is, is really kind of cool.

[00:20:59] So. Let’s talk about podcasts. this is one of those ones where I’ve, I, I’ll, I’ll admit I’ve kind of slept on this as I’ve been more of the, I’ll start a podcast and, you know, kind of lose, you know, lose interest in, in doing it and recording episodes. which by the way, if you’re interested in being on my podcast, I’m looking to get things going again.

So, we talk about like B2B sales and marketing type of stuff. If you’ve got. A specific topic, feel free to shoot me an email. just put podcast in the, podcast in the title. So I know that you saw this particular part of the session. but yeah, I’m looking to do more interviews, that way. But what I’m actually talking about here is kind of the opposite way, is being a guest on somebody else’s podcast.

’cause it lets you leverage their network. One that you may not be in front of when you may not have, access to in any other way. And what I really like is that it lets you be seen as an expert. It can Elevaate your credibility. And one thing I didn’t put on this slide, but it is in the flowchart. so if you want a copy of that again, just email me.

I will. And I do see you here in the comments here for everybody who’s posted their email address. I will probably go through and delete those. Email addresses so that you don’t get spammed or crap later. but I’ll, I’ll copy them all down. Evan, can you actually make a note to do that is copy those email addresses so we can email them the, the flow chart and then I’ll go through and delete ’em so they don’t get spammed, more than they’re already going to.

But, like I said, it, it really kind of gives you, lets you be seen as an expert in front of people that you would like to hopefully work with someday. So. Definitely a worthwhile thing to do. It can, it can certainly be a grind to get on other shows. right. A a lot of Right. Any popular one is probably booked out months in advance.

I know. We’re, we’re seeing that a lot with, with one who’s, you know, they’re, she’s launching a book, so we’re trying to reach out to different ones that focus on authors and I, a lot of these places are booked out to the fall. Right now. So kind of getting start earlier and start to start to start now.

Again, just like with building your connections on LinkedIn, if this is something you might want to do, start now because it can take some time for that to really pan out. And do 

[00:23:19] it. So let’s kind of move on to something that tends to work much, much quicker and, probably because for some people they’re, they’re a little bit squeamish about it.

And I appreciate your comments here, guys. I will, certainly, be, working on questions here in the, in the near future. We’ll do some q and a here coming up, but, Like I said, I know I wanna, I wanna make sure we get through all, the meat of meat of the presentation for anybody who has a hard stop or has gotta get going here.

so I wanna get through this and then I will do, make sure we do q and a and answer your questions and things like that. But, is outreach, so. I find that especially in, in B, the B2B space, maybe, and maybe you find that you’re not great on camera, which can be a little bit tricky or you know, you’re just, you, you’re not well spoken or you mumble.

I mumble, I do, I do these anyway, even I mumble a little bit. but doing outreach can be a really direct way to get in front of people and find out. If they’re even interested in what you have to offer. and I find this is a really good way to kind of test the market and find out. And if the market says No, you gotta switch your offer up a little bit, but.

So for anybody who’s like, I don’t know about that, I don’t know if that’s right for my, my brand or my, you know, my image or anything like that. So one of the stories I like to tell is about, you know, tv running 

[00:24:50] ads on tv, right? Like, is other than the Super Bowl or, or maybe the Oscars. Is anybody even excited to watch TV commercials?

No. No. They’re, they’re in the way of you watching the content, the shows you wanna watch, But if you happen to talk to a rep at, should say your local new TV station, right? The local affiliate, that sales rep comes and you know, they’re gonna give you this song and dance about how prestigious it is and how it’s viewed.

And you know what, you know, they’re, they’re, they’ve, they’ve got plenty of data that says, yeah, people view companies that are seen on TV as more trustworthy. So even though they don’t wanna see the commercials. Then they’re not interested. They’ll tell you they ignore them, that they’re not gonna pay any attention to ’em.

They’re walking up to go use the the restroom or get a snack when the commercials come on. They’re still effective and they still work. And it’s the same thing with radio or Google Ads. And same thing with outreach is people say they ignore them unless. It happens to be on point and relevant. And that’s kind of the bottom line is nobody’s getting into the office today hoping that today is the day they get your pitch.

But they do respond positively to things they think will help them and their company, right and right. I 

[00:26:13] think. And I, I remember, I remember my first kind of corporate job working at a, as a marketing director at a car dealership. I was very much, when I, I got it, I was like, I’m not ever taking anything sold for you.

Cold, cold calls. I’m not gonna take it. I’m not gonna, you know, and then my boss said, I want. You are in any of these calls, we’re just gonna send to you. So I had to take ’em and I said, I’m not buying any, you know, I’m not recommending we buy anything from those. And what I come to find, find out was for things like direct mail campaigns, which is a, was a, as a, was an effective tool for us at the dealership.

They didn’t really have another presence. That was the, that was their tool to sell their campaigns. You not going to their website, not pay-per-click ads, not LinkedIn or anything like that, is they just had sales reps cold call. And that was how they sold the majority of their campaigns. So if you wanted a campaign from a company, it, it was a matter of talking to them when they, and pick up, pick up the phone when they called, which I know is, is like super counterintuitive.

But they had found that car dealerships have to pick up the phone ’cause they have customers and that if they. Did a little bit of sleuthing beforehand, they could get to the right person at the, at the, the company. So just, just figured I’d share that little tidbit there that all of these things can, can still be effective and depending on, depends on the industry obviously, but you know, kind of figuring out the right one for your industry is, is 

[00:27:41] important.

So when we are doing outreach, I’m gonna kind of tailor this part of it really to LinkedIn. this is mostly. This is somewhat applicable if you’re doing email. so you basically skip step one here with the introduction and you want to kind of jump right into relevance. But with LinkedIn, I’d really like to start with an introduction.

Is I, if I’m gonna message somebody is I don’t start by pitching and I really don’t even start by introducing ’em. It’s more a, hey, nice, nice to connect with you, type of thing. the reason I do that is because so many people, immediately it’s. Well, we have a term for it now. It’s called the pitch slab.

It’s, I’m gonna connect with you and then, you know, 30 minutes, one hour next day, whatever it is, immediately. Hey, hey Gary. Thanks for connecting with me. Hey, you know, I am the founder of blah, blah, blah. We help blank and blank. Can I send you blah, some key studies and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

Right. And then, you know, it’s like, no thank you. Click the little button, disconnect and, and move on. So actually just reaching out and saying hello without asking them for anything. Not asking them to look at anything. You’re sending them, not asking them. One of the big things is, is I don’t even ask ’em questions, I just say it, it, it is just a friendly hello.

And then following up with that. Now I, right. If you’re gonna do outreach at some point, you do have to ask for something. Give somebody the the option to say no. Yes or no. so we’ll do that in the second message as part of an, you know, a further introduction. but that first one we find it does, it does a few things for us is by kind of reaching out without pitching them anything is one, they are more likely to stay connected to you.

Also, we find that they tend to reply to those people will reply to those messages. and probably the best one is that they will go look at your profile. And I, I really like that, that idea, like, ’cause your profile is a great chance to sell yourself and sell what you’re doing. And now when you do reach out, they’ve, they’ve learned about you.

They know more about what you do, they’ve got an idea. So it, it, it feels your, your cold, your cold approach feels a little bit warmer. and that’s kind of the idea here with this, this type of a 

[00:30:09] sequence. And probably after that, it’s, it’s really about following up, which there’s, there is no secret sauce to that.

It’s, it’s just continuing to look at people and, you know, message them back and go back and forth with them, until, you know, they tell you go away or, yeah. Let’s, let’s have a conversation. Now I will mention here, I don’t continuously message somebody who hasn’t engaged. Like if they don’t respond back, it’s three messages.

I don’t message ’em after that. ’cause that’s, that, that just becomes really too spammy at that point. So if they don’t respond back three messages is my max. If somebody does respond back, you know, I, that’s usually like 11 is is where we kind of cut it, cut it off. so. I do recommend give outreach a chance, even if you’ve been skeptical on it, because it, it is, is oftentimes the shortest path to especially validating your offer, having conversations with people.

I think that’s one of the big things is right, and especially in the consulting space, is you, you gotta talk to people. so talk to people and find out, and you can, and by talking to people, you will find out much, much more quickly. If they, if there’s even any interest in what your offer, if it needs to be updated, things like 

[00:31:32] that.

So, kind of as we’re getting towards the end here, I do wanna mention this is that my mailbox is empty. So for this slide, my intention was I was gonna go through and I was gonna say, this is what my mailbox looks like for the past week. And I was gonna show pictures each day. And, I don’t have to, because this is what my mailbox up here at the office has looked like every single day for the past week.

I think I’ve gotten like two, two things this month. ’cause all, all the bills and stuff here, they’re all paperless and on autopay and everything like that. So I don’t get those. And so, other than, you know, occasionally, like from, you know, like a. Business licensing something or, or the IRS, which, you know, gosh, those are my favorite ones to get letters from them.

Hey, you know, your blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. It’s been filed and we, you know, I need more time. Like, thanks. so, but just consider this, is that yesterday I went, I, I counted, I got 27 cold pitches, cold pitches via email, not stuff I’m signed up to, not newsletters, just strictly cold pitches. 23 of them directly went to spam, so they, they didn’t even get.

Acknowledged that they exist. I got four pitches on LinkedIn and seven spam calls, none of which were answered ’cause I don’t take unscheduled calls, but zero pieces of mail. I think more and more we’re, we’re seeing is that that is becoming the forgotten marketing channel is you can get their, you can get somebody’s attention way, way more easily.

Via mail these days than perhaps ever before. And considering how inundated people tend to be with pitches from other, you know, in, in other channels, that’s a chance to, to, to, to show up. Without any competition. and I know right, the, I know the big, big kind of hurdle with that is that direct mail is expensive.

You gotta pay for everything that gets sent out. But I don’t know, I was kind of looking at, you know, internally, like what we pay in software licenses to send things like cold email. it’s. It’s not free, right? It’s not sim as simple as just signing up for going on, clicking a, getting a Gmail account and then spamming the crap outta people.

No, you, you end up, you have to find lists of people and that data can be expensive. you’ve got, you need tools that will let you send cold email and are, are optimized for it. And. Just one license to that can be hundreds of dollars a month, plus all the mailboxes, which, you know, all, all this starts to add up to the point where you look and say, maybe it’s not so expensive to send them a, a letter or, or some type of interesting piece to my, my very best prospects of people I really, really want to meet with.

it might be a way just to show up and. And, and meet with people. just if you’re looking for some 

[00:34:29] ideas here. So here’s one. I have my pens in it today, but one that we tried, this was a, a few years ago, so we haven’t really actively been doing this one recently, but we would send out a coffee mug to kind of a select group of people.

And the pitch was, Hey, you know, I figured before I reached out and asked you to meet, if I was gonna ask you to meet for a virtual cup of coffee, I should at least buy the coffee. So there’s like a little pack of instant Starbucks or something in there, with the coffee mug. So, Definitely a way to kind of get somebody’s attention and kind of cut through all the noise.

and what’s interesting is I think I, I heard from somebody last week, we had reconnected on, on something else and he said, oh, by the way, I still have your coffee mug. Great to, great to reconnect, still have your coffee. And I kind of looked and he’s like, he never even responded. This was three years ago.

He didn’t respond to that, that message, but he, not only did he get it, he remembered it three years later, even though we’d never had a conversation after that, but so. This is the type of thing that gets people’s attention and they remember it. And you know, if you’re looking for one for follow up. Here’s, here’s another one that we’ve been been using recently that I like, is this this little laser pen now?

Right? Let’s see. Right. Little laser pointer built into a pen. ’cause I think pens are useful. I like to send out things that are what I consider mildly useful. And, you know, a pen. This one’s got the little thingy at the end of it, you can. Engage with like a touch pad or something like that. So it’s just useful enough.

You don’t really throw it away, but it doesn’t feel like, Hey, I’m trying to bribe you with, to, to hop on a meeting with me either. So. but you know, in that case the laser, right? It’s, it’s a cheesy gimmick, the whole idea. I, and I even, I lean into the cheesiness of it with, you know, Hey, I wanted to reach out to help you laser target some more leads and get you, you know, some ideal people in your pipeline, blah, blah, blah.

right. It’s obviously that’s, that’s the goal with it. It’s a little bit of a gimmick, but it’s, it’s, there’s no very, very little competition in the mailbox these days. Compared to, compared to every other channel that’s out there. I think that that one has, has got a lot of opportunity to it. So just, just some ideas for you and, and like I said, you wanna pitch me your idea?

There’s, there’s my address ’cause my mailbox is empty so you know how much other, you know, for somebody who wants to pitch me. There you go. You can pitch me via mail. and finally, I just. Just, just want to 

[00:37:04] point this out here. You would think that this, there, there’s no way these are, that this happens is that people just don’t reply to potential customers.

and I’ll like, like for example, three weeks ago, I, we, we got a new house. I’m putting in some, some raised beds in the back for gardening. I need some top soil. So I reached out to a landscaping place, their email address, big and bold in the top of their website. They’re not hiding it. It, it’s like, it’s right there.

So I email them, I’m looking to get a quote for some, some topsoil, which this is a landscaping company and it’s listed under their services, and they got a bunch of testimonials on their page for, for what they offer. So I like this must, must be the place you get it from Three weeks, crickets. And I heard about three weeks, right?

So it’s not just, it’s not just, you know, business people. But here, here is an example from. I think what, two, two weeks ago or so. So when people pitch me right, most of the time I say no. Very few things kind of get enough, my, get my attention enough for me to say, yeah, lemme talk to this person. You know, I, I’m, I’m interested.

This is one of those very exceptions Michael, here managed to get me to say yes. Was I skeptical? Yes, I was. Was, I am a little bit interested, at least interested enough to talk to him. Yeah, I, I was, so, I responded back to his pitch and I said, sure, here’s some times I’m available. And I didn’t copy anything else, ’cause that that was it.

And I didn’t, didn’t hear back. He didn’t reply now. so he managed to cut through all that noise. I finally got back to him, you know, I was like, he, he, he’s the one, he was the chosen one. And we, I, I don’t know Michael ’cause we never met ’cause he didn’t get back to me in a time, in a reasonably timely fashion.

He did, he did. Like a week later finally respond. But I’ve been kind of busy with other things and, and that tends to be what happens is, you know, you respond to somebody, you check your calendar and I’ve got some availability here. And if they miss that window, well may maybe, maybe someday. So my advice is just don’t be like, Michael is reply to people.

If you, if you’ve done, if you’ve managed to cut through the noise, you’ve got a busy person and they’re, they’re gonna meet with you. Oh, please reply back to that. but, but here’s the thing. Michael is not the only person, right? Michael’s not alone here. This is what happens with people trying to kind of self-manage their, their own business development and, and trust me, I get it right.

It’s. It’s, it’s, it’s, it’s, it sounds more cost effective. It seems like a big investment to, to try and hire somebody else to kind of manage it for you. but think of the, all these missed opportunities. And I see this over and over again as they get busy, they, they have meetings, they’ve, they’ve got a life, they’ve got a family and they’ve got other obligations.

Plus they’re trying to run the business. They probably have to work with clients. Business development easily falls by the wayside. It is not uncommon for me to have, when we used to do more, you know, we’ll set things up for you and let you run it, and then I’d come back and check, you know, it’s 30 or 60 days later, you know, come back and check and just see how things are going.

And all of a sudden they’re like, yeah, it’s not really working well. And then I kind of do a little bit of digging and you know, they’ve got 15 people who’ve replied to them and they didn’t, and they haven’t gotten back to anybody. so it’s not that it isn’t working, it’s just that. They, they, they need it to be a little bit, bit 

[00:40:35] easier.

So if that’s you, if you’re looking for something that’s more of a done for you solution, somebody who’s gonna do manage everything for you so that you’re not missing opportunities like Michael, then. Maybe give us a, give us a shot, at least have a conversation. You can schedule a call with me directly at the appointment lab.

That’s my direct calendar. There’s no sales person or, or VP coaching concierge, whatever people call themselves these days. That’s actually my direct calendar. So if you wanna have a conversation with me, you can go there or just email me. Right. Gary at Pipelineology dot com and as long as it doesn’t end up in spam, I will in fact see it.

if you pitch me, Ryan, you’re gonna get an unsubscribe back and you know, like I said, if you wanna pitch me, send, send it something in the mail. but anyway, what we can do is, we’ll, we will put the appointments on your calendar, we will do all that follow up. So opportunities don’t miss if you say, Hey, I’d like to get on some podcast.

We will do the outreach for you. We’ll get ’em scheduled. So you just need to, to, to show up or we, sometimes we need a little bit more information ’cause the podcast host requested. But overall, very much a, a white glove service there. Help you host your LinkedIn events and really do the activities that are going to help you fill your sales pipeline and offer the less than the cost of one full-time employee to, to do it.

So that’s my pitch. So that’s 

[00:42:00] all I’ve got there. So if you do have any questions, now is the time. I will kind of go through kind of in reverse chronological order, the ones that have come, come through, and take a look here. and yeah, just to answer the question here from, from Rick, yes, there’s going to be a recording.

So. Nice thing about this is that once we do the live, these live streams on LinkedIn usually takes like five or 10 minutes for them to process the video. And then boom, same page. There’s the recording. So if you’re on the email list, I will send out an email tomorrow just letting people know that this replay is available.

And I’ll put the link there too. So, if you go to Pipelineology dot com slash events, you can get on the, the email list. For that, or if you’re already on, there’s nothing you need to do, we’ll make sure that you get the, the reminder list there. So yes, there will be a recording. It looks like everything did in fact work.

At least it, it sure looks like it hasn’t crashed today, which is, which is actually, frankly, quite, quite refreshing. I know. Feel, it feels like for the past, probably six months every, maybe 12. Most of last year. Every time I do, when people say, Hey, your screen is frozen. Hey, I can’t see. So today, it’s, it’s nice to see that things are mostly working, for, for everybody here.

let’s see if there’s any other questions that have come in.

So Asad asks, my consultancy specializes in ethical AI and cognitive science across the product life cycle. How confirms like mine stand out on LinkedIn? There is a ton of AI related content. Alright. That’s kind of, that’s, that’s where the idea for this particular session came out was be taking a contrarian view to that because everything, every other post it seems like is ai, this, ai, this, this, you got, that’s a good question.

How do you stand out? And I would probably focus on the things that AI doesn’t. Doesn’t do and can’t create is doing the, doing the human parts of it to let your AI shine, which would be doing things like hosting an event or, or having a, a round table discussion, getting some experts together to do an event and kind of talk about, you know, ethical AI types of things.

Or, you know, being, being a guest on other people’s podcasts. Those would be ways you can probably get attention. right. ’cause it, it is certainly for, you know, for, for people who. Certainly on the mind of a lot of leadership at companies is AI and ethical ai, I think is something people, people want, even if they’re not sure how to, to, to say that.

So. I think the demand is there. But yeah, that would be my approach to trying to find ways to stand out is do the human parts, right. Be you, be the human in the, in this part of it, so that your AI can, can do its part of it. But, that, that would be my approach to kind of try and stand out a little bit there.

let’s see here. Good question. let’s see.

yes. yep. I know Jackie here. You know, having to limit meetings off LinkedIn ’cause people don’t have budgets. Right. I know that’s, that’s always, that is one of those, those tricks here where you start to say, lean into certain metrics that maybe aren’t, don’t correlate to having a budget. Like you go with engagement instead of company size.

right. It. Jackie, you, you are not the only one who’s, who’s done that. We’ve, I’ve, I’ve made that, I’ve made that mistake many, many times where it’s like, yeah, I’m getting in front of all the right people. I finally tapped into the, I finally tapped into this golden, you know, stream of, of prospects and then you talk to everybody and they’re like, what’s your budget?

Well, I don’t have one, but you know, I was thinking like $200. right. So. A little, little bit of a challenge there. But, let’s see here. I think that’s all the questions we have today. Thanks everybody for showing up today. Really appreciate you taking some valuable time outta your day. I know, it’s nice.

It’s a nice day around the country. So, I’m gonna let everybody go, get back to, so you can get back to either work or going outside and having, enjoying the rest of your day. So appreciate it. I will make sure we get back. We’ll send out the, Emails to anybody who put their list in there, like I said, and then we’ll get those, get those deleted out of the chat.

I would recommend just emailing me, Gary@Pipelineology, if you that way, that way, that way your data’s not being so aggressively scraped. But anyway, have a great rest of your day and, we’ll do another one of these again next, in, in May towards the end of May. So hope to see you there. Take care everybody.