I spend more than 50% of my time on growing my business - on marketing and sales. I used to be aweful at sales - I couldn't sell cold water to a thirsty person in the middle of the desert - and chose to spend the majority of time on marketing activities.

The good news? this focus helped me develop my voice, my ideas, my message. The bad news? It did almost nothing for my pipeline. Not because my ideas were bad, but because ideas take a long time to percolate, spread, and gain enough critical mass. But when you need short-term revenue, time isn't a luxury that you have.

I was forced to learn how to sell, and through some coaching and A LOT of trial and error I became pretty good at it. I started actually enjoying sales conversations. But prospecting? That was a grind. I still cringe a bit when I think about the cold InMails I sent to "prospects" back in 2018. I've never sent a cold email, and have never made a cold call. I am not here to preach to you about the good/bad nature of those disciplines. All I can tell you is that I personally detest them, and never want to do them myself.

I went to networking events and conferences, but it was still a grind. It was hard for me to turn a casual conversation into a business conversation. But through the entire time that I was learning to get good at sales, I was continuing to hone my ideas - my intellectual property - my methodology and frameworks. But I was always conflicted about whether I should be spending more of my time on sales activities or on marketing activities.

But one day, I was talking to someone at a networking event, and as we got introduced, he said to me "I just want you to know that I've been reading your articles for the past few months, and have sent a few to my partners. I am glad we are getting introduced." That's when it hit me - thought leadership is business development.

The Misconception of Thought Leadership vs. Business Development

A Managing Partner at a client recently told me during the discovery phase of the engagement that they don't have time to spend on thought leadership and would prefer to spend their time on BD. This is a common refrain I hear from partners. Their time is being split between client work, business development, and people management. And they all generally carry a sales quota. So it's no surprise they want to focus their time on BD.

But the problem is that they are playing a zero sum game where thought leadership and BD are mutually exclusive. They see the time spent on thought leadership as time they can't spend on BD, which decreases the liklihood of them hitting their quota, and getting their bonus.

Now here's the thing - in the short-term, they are right. But in the long-term, they are dead wrong. Because thought leadership is like going to the gym. A single gym session won't do much. Neither will two sessions, or 10 sessions. But 100 sessions, or 500 sessions? That's where compounding results from consistency start showing.

The same is true of thought leadership. Writing a few whitepapers and speaking at a few events likely won't do much. But communicate your IP, in the right formats and channels, consistently over a sustained period of time, and you will significantly increase your opportunities to turn casual conversations into business conversations. And that's not to mention the increase in inbound conversations as well.

All of this happens because thought leadership builds up your credibility.

Credibility is Your Currency

It's hard to sell when you don't have credibility. When your firm doesn't have a critical mass of awareness and credibility in the market, it's hard to sell. When you personally, as the partner in the firm, don't have credibility with the person you are selling to, it's hard to sell. Without credibility, you are just a vendor. Without credibility you are forced to convince the prospective client of your value. And it's really hard to convince someone of something they don't already believe.

That's where thought leadership comes in. The purpose of thought leadership is to become known, dare I say famous, for your ideas in the market. Becoming known for your ideas creates an immense amount of credibility.

Becoming a thought leader gives you the ability to build credibility at scale. And when done right - when the thought leadership is built on intellectual property (methodologies, frameworks, data, assets) - it also builds your inbound flow of conversations.

Compound Interest of Consistency

I am now becoming known as "the de-risking positioning guy". I now have weekly inbound flow where consulting firm founders and partners are reaching out to me because they are already interested in the idea of de-risking. But it's taken 12 months of solid, consistent effort to get to that point.

I had a client that started a podcast to own a core idea in their market. The first 10 - 20 episodes didn't do much, but over time they were able to leverage that asset to start conversations with senior leaders in their target accounts - people who never would have talked to them prior.

The problem is two-fold: developing a system that makes content development less time intensive for partners and founders, and creating an incentive system that drives partners to prioritize content development.

The Real Trade-Off

The trade-off isn't between some revenue and no revenue. It's between some revenue now and the prospect of more revenue later. Yes, if you are starting from scratch, in the short-term you need to be very focused on traditional BD activities: warm introductions, conferences, referral coffees, etc. But if that's all you do, you'll be giving up the long-term benefits of organic inbound, higher-value conversations, and lower discounting.

Building the System

Most consulting firms have the exact same laborious process for content development - marketing comes up with whitepaper or webinar ideas and reaches out to the partners or managing directors to help develop the content. These people do the work begrudgingly because they don't ever see the benefit from it and because they are busy. The content comes mediocre. It gets promoted on the website, which nobody reads. It gets posted on the company social channels, and reluctantly or automatically reshared by several of the partners. And then nothing happens.

Rinse and repeat.

It's painful.

But it doesn't need to be this way. What if there was centralized IP (methodologies, frameworks, data, and assets) that were at the core of the firm's positioning? What if the partners who are consistently having business conversations come up with timely and relevant topics? What if the marketing team sets up quarterly interviews or roundtables with the partners, and records these conversations with high quality video and audio? What if the marketing team then repurposes this content into a variety of mediums and formats? What if the partners then promote this content and use it as part of their business development activities?

I have a client who recently went from spending a bunch of time and resources to churn out a small volume of boring social content and newsletters every month, to now spending only 4 - 6 hours per quarter recording high quality video that then gets turned into an insane volume of content that can be promoted across channels and mediums. As this client has become more well known for their IP because of this high volume of content, they have been getting invited to speak at events and on podcasts, and these opportunities are in turn driving inbound conversations.

So here are the steps you can take today, to build out this system:

1. Audit your existing IP - how much of it is documented vs. lives in people's heads? How much of it is contextually relevant to the problems that your ideal clients are trying to solve? Are there any gaps?
2. Choose your channels and formats - newsletter, LinkedIn, podcast, webinars, workshops, etc. How can your people best evangelize this IP?
3. Set a cadence - quarterly or annual big bets (e.g. research studies, hosted events, etc.), weekly touchpoints (e.g. podcasts, webinars, newsletters), daily micro-insights (e.g. social posts)

This system not only creates credibility at scale, it also allows you to scale your rainmakers.

But your system should be tailored based on your growth stage, existing resources and skillsets, and existing thought leadership presence (or lack there of). For example, if you are just starting out, have zero thought leadership presence, and little to no skill in content creation or public speaking, then your focus should most definitely be on shaking hands and sending emails.

Incentives Matter

The best system will fail without the right incentives. If the partners have a quota, they will do whatever they believe will get them to attain that quota, no matter the thought leadership system that's been put in place. Because it takes a while for the thought leadership engine to bare fruit, you will need to create incentives in the short-term, to encourage thought leadership activity even in the face of sales quotas.

Build Firm-Level Stickiness through Shared IP

I hear something all the time when I interview my clients' clients. They tell me that their relationship and loyalty is to the consultant, not the firm. Now sure, there are non-competes, but those only last for so long. Your clients don't build relationships directly with your firm. They build affinity to your firm through relationships with your people, your ideas, and relevant groups.

But developing a consistent thought leadership presence across the partner group, and basing it all on centralized IP, creates a situation where affinity starts being built with the firm, not just with the individual consultants.

Want to know if your firm is positioned for growth? Take the Positioning Risk Assessment.

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