How I source 3 new deals in <10 minutes a day

How I’m sourcing 3 net new deals every week to scale my Fractional GTM consulting business

Mar 07, 2023

I was scared to death.

Sitting at the Thanksgiving dinner table, finally deciding I was going all in on consulting.

The only question that haunted me for the next 6 weeks: How would consistently find enough deals consistently to replace my income?

I wasn’t sure there was a way.

At least not a way that anyone was writing about.

I tried, couldn’t find anything.

I had 3 months to figure it out.

I had already taken 5 months off at this point and was draining our savings.

But I had assumed I was getting a full time job in January.

So when I decided, just 35 days before January that I wasn’t going to get a salaried job…

The pressure was on.

Context

I’ve consistently sourced 3 net new leads a week since the first week of December.

For context, I think it’s important I define what I’m calling a ‘lead’:

Someone who I have engaged with that has scheduled a first call with me. I don’t call anyone else leads, until they have scheduled a call with me.

I convert my leads to an opportunity when:

A lead shows up to an initial call, is within my ICP (in early December I had to take more calls to better learn my ICP so I disqualified a lot of leads) and has a burning problem to solve someone pertaining to GTM in the coming 3-6 months. If the founder does not have GTM on top of mind in the coming 3-6 months, it’s DQ’d.

If a lead meets the above criteria I’ll convert it to an opportunity and add the appropriate pipeline with expected close dates.

Quick Summary

I haven’t sourced a single cold outbound deal.

100% of my deals have come from word of mouth.

But I bust my ass to make this happen.

Here’s how:

→ Top talent want to find great early stage startups to join

→ Great startups want top talent and need funding

→ VCs have funding and want top talent at the startups they fund

This is the milkshake that brings all the money to the yard.

If I can be the blender that mixes it all, I’ll find money.

Let’s dive in…

Founders

I’ve had an enormous amount of referral business from founders.

Referrals are pivotal in consistency. Here’s what I’m doing with Founders…

Create something of value

I take calls with any founder I can. Anyone that reaches out, I will take a call. It’s my way of prospecting. Even if they are not in ICP, I know they have friends or networks that I can find more customers in my ICP.

When I take these calls, I bring something to the table every time.

Ask yourself ‘what do founders (or your buyer) need the most at the stage they are at? You’re the expert, create something valuable and let them know you’ll give it to them for free.

Give that ‘something’ away for free

Initially, I didn’t have much to give away. I didn’t have ‘frameworks’ or cool cold call outlines that I could give to people I had calls with.

90% of the time I can offer candidates. Founders are ALWAYS recruiting and it’s something I happen to have a close pulse on. I can pretty easily introduce them to 3-4 reps / leaders in a matter of minutes.

I’ve even recently saved a founder a $100k executive search fee for introducing them to their VP of Sales.

This type of ‘give’ opens the door for me to ask…

Ask consistently

Once I’ve given my ‘something’ for free, I reply with a simple:

Who else do you know from HBS that is in a similar stage or in need of some GTM help?

I try to be specific in my ask as it is more relatable and reduces the thinking burden.

Give away more

I can consistently get 1-2 names or introductions of people I should reach out to.

These calls don’t always turn into deals, but it allows me to spiderweb my way into countless calls with founders.

But it doesn’t stop there.

The founders that have great networks (raised with larger VCs, went to HBS, have a larger LinkedIn following, or just seem to be well connected) are ones I consistently circle back with. Any time I have something ‘free’ I can send their way, I shoot them an email and run the process again.

Ask again.

Founders are constantly meeting new founders.

The more I meet, the more leads I’ll find.

LinkedIn has been a life saver. It’s such an easy way to source, engage and convert leads.

I’ve been fortunate to have built a following over the course of 10 years in tech.

I currently have ~30k followers.

My content has been the #1 source of lead flow for me since day 1.

But it’s inconsistent. Especially over the past 3 weeks, the change in the algorithm has crushed impressions for many people, including myself.

Regardless, I didn’t want to open this post with ‘well, just post more content and people will reach out’… because it’s a daunting task when you’re starting out with 1,500 followers.

With that said, I wanted to figure out a more systematic approach to leveraging this content to drive inbound leads.

I’ve averaged 2.5 inbound leads each week for the last 10 weeks on LinkedIn.

I’ve tracked these meticulously in Salesforce for myself.

But I also put a lot of effort into continuing to build my awareness on LinkedIn.

Here’s a breakdown of inputs:

Post 1x each day
1. Monday, Tuesday, Thursday, Saturday’s are ICP focused posts. Learnings on early stage content
2. Wednesday, Friday, Sunday are more casual posts or specific to this blog, my newsletter, etc
I connect with 25 founders in my ICP every single day.
1. I’ve realized my sphere of influence is mostly around the western states. Many founders in NYC have never heard of Lucidchart, so the story doesn’t relate as well. I target Founders in the surrounding states that would know who Lucid or possibly Workstream are.
2. I’ve also built lists of founders from previous VCs I’ve been part of. This also reduces the wall of familiarity. More on this later
I engage 20 new posts every single day.
1. I’m trying to more ‘everywhere’ I can at all times. See this example below. When you engage with content, you will show up in people’s feed a lot more often.
2. When you engage with people that have larger following than yourself, you’ll expose yourself to more impressions immediately.

I‘m still unclear as to how sustainable this will be in the long run.

I’ll plan to share more learnings in the coming weeks as to what’s working.

Venture Capital

I’ve been fortunate enough to have developed relationships with a handful of VCs that have been an incredible resource of lead flow.

In all my interactions, I ask myself the same question as before, ‘what is something I can bring to the table that is extremely valuable to this person’…

VCs want and need deals.

They want to get eyes on early stage companies and meet early stage founders as frequently as possible.

Turns out, many of the founders I meet also want to meet VCs.

I’m a matchmaker.

When I’m on calls with any founder, I always ask when they last fundraise and when they were planing to fundraise again.

I have a good sense of what VCs are looking for (if you are unclear of what to look for and want to try this method, go search what top quartile metrics look like at a saas company) and can quickly vet if it’s worth asking for the founders pitch deck to get in front of VCs for them.

It’s a simple ask:

“Are you raising right now or looking to raise soon?”
“Great, I have access to quite a few VCs including some tier 1 VCs, would it be helpful if I sent your pitch deck to them, see if I can get any bites?”

Then I have my list of 5-6 trusted VC partners I’ll send decks to.

I can consistently send 1x a week.

This does 3 things for me:

It keeps me top of mind of the VC partner frequently
Build trust and momentum for the VC to think ‘Blake’ anytime they are also talking to founders that are struggling with GTM
In a few cases I’ve negotiated a founders fee if the VC actually leads on the round. This hasn’t worked out yet but on a Series A, this could be quite the kickback (>$200k payout). Some day this will happen, only need it to happen 1x a year ;-)

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Continuum

I was introduced to Continuum about 2 years ago. They were JUST getting started and I knew it was something I could use down the road.

Continuum connects executives to founders for full time, fractional work and project based.

The best part: they handle all my back office. Contracts, SOWs, invoicing, payments. For Free.

They also bring me deals.

At least 1x a month they have brought a deal to the table for me.

I created an in-depth profile, established my offerings and they have a team of people vetting founders for their needs at all times.

Check them out in the link.

There’s other firms like this but I haven’t found that these firms do a great job in high ticket consulting engagements that are niched down.

Wrapping up

To recap, I have 4 main sources of lead flow:

Founders - I usually bring them candidates, frameworks or advice for free. Then ask for referrals
LinkedIn - I post daily and can 1-2 inbounds a week from LinkedIn content. I’m trying more so to ‘be everywhere’
Venture Capital - From the founders I meet I’ll share fundraising decks with VCs and make intro’s. Then I can ask my VC parters for referrals into their portfolio
Continuum - A marketplace for connecting fractional execs to founders.

Consistency is key.

I plan to try ‘outbound’ soon simply as I want to be able to write the playbook on how to build an outbound sales motion for a consulting business and I’ll share those details.

If you enjoyed this, I’d be so grateful if you shared it with anyone you know with similar experience!

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If you want to connect, please don’t hesitate to reach out. Shoot me an email: me@blakeharber.com

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