Perfect Process, But Empty Pipeline
As someone who has seen (and been in) the feast-or-famine rollercoaster more than I’d like to admit, something has recently clicked with me. And as of right now, I believe it’s the single-most important piece of the solution.
Your process isn’t the problem. Your delivery isn’t the problem. You could onboard a client in your sleep. The problem is that there’s nobody new to onboard.
So what is this one thing that’s finally going to make it click?
Prospecting.
Prospecting?
Prospecting!!
It’s so easy to get caught up in “the offer” or “the product,” or even “the sales process.” But what comes before that? PROSPECTING (or, marketing, but still).
What does your prospecting process look like? I bet if you’re feeling stuck then your prospecting process sucks.
We get caught up on running ads (an expensive form of prospecting, yes), recording videos (yeah it counts, but it’s a slow burn), or perfecting your website’s CTA so we can get leads instead of actively prospecting.
Not only does this one thing solve your business’ growth problems, it also makes other things you’ve heard a million times make more sense.
For example, “pick a niche.” You’ve heard that countless times before. But why? Sure, the “1 audience, 1 product” thing is true, but it isn’t enough to keep a “generalist” business from making the scary leap toward firing their old clients and going all in on one new type of client.
For technical founders, it’s very difficult to blindly follow instructions. This is often what holds “smart” technical founders back while others are out there winning big. It has nothing to do with how smart someone is, and everything to do with how they take action. Technical founders have a hard time doing something unless it makes sense. Non-technical founders just do, brute force, and get results. To us it looks like they’re winning, but they’re just fighting a different struggle (albeit with more money and clients, at least).
So let me give you the logic. Back to niching.
I believe the most powerful component of niching is the ability to PROSPECT BETTER. You’re already crushing it at systems, you can adapt. You have no problem adjusting the process per client, but you suck at keeping the pipeline full, and niching helps with this. How? Mostly, by making the prospecting easy.
Prospecting is simply having a conversation with people you can potentially help. In my group I call these MFCs, or “Move Forward Conversations.” Not touches. Not impressions. Not “I posted today.” A real conversation with someone who could become a client, that moves the relationship one step forward. A no counts too, because a no clears the board.
When you niche, you have a finite amount of people to talk with and you know exactly who they are. When you don’t niche, you end up trying to pitch your barber and the lady working the drive-through window. It’s a ton of wasted effort.
When you niche, you have a clearer picture of who your audience is, where they are, and you can concentrate your daily prospecting in those areas. This is a game changer.
And when choosing a niche (the other thing that prevents you from actually making progress), leading this decision with prospecting in mind will help you choose correctly. You have to think in terms of “how big is the pool of people I’m going to be prospecting daily?” This is key. Any niche can work, but you need enough people in that niche to prospect EVERY DAY. You need to be where they are and drink the same coffee they drink (you don’t have to like it).
Prospecting is something you can control and do every day, no matter where you are. If you can focus on keeping your pipeline full, ALL THE TIME, you will grow.
The prospecting you do right now will impact your business in 90 days. Which cuts both ways. It’s why this month is quiet. It’s also why 90 days of daily MFCs can completely turn things around.
I was talking with an agency owner last week who told me he thinks prospecting sounds like “an outdated word.” Interesting. Have shiny offers and AI-generated junk lead form ads taken over completely? I hope not, because the people who never stopped talking to people are the ones with full pipelines.
Jeb Blount, who wrote Fanatical Prospecting, puts it in terms of being an active participant in the sale rather than a passive one. Inbound can absolutely work, but only when you stay consistent on branding and content long enough to build a real nurturing system before anyone ever speaks to you. That’s a long-term play. Outbound is the conscious effort to grow right now, instead of the laid-back effort of waiting around for inbound to feed you.
People who wake up with prospecting on their mind, and go to bed with it on their mind as well, will be more primed to grow.
In closing, remember this:
Prospect every day. Five MFCs, thirty minutes, before email. Not after client work. Client work will expand to fill whatever room you give it, which is exactly what a perfect process does.
Have and maintain a clean sales pipeline. If a deal isn’t real, get it out. A pipeline full of ghosts is worse than an empty one, because it lets you pretend.
Keep the pipeline full. Always be filling it up. Always.
Your process was never the problem.