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Intro: I’m Paul Higgins, an ex-corporate executive turned business owner who, for five years, struggled to grow a cloud Consulting business whilst battling a chronic disease. With the help of mentors and experts, I got the business model right, built a sales and marketing engine, and developed a high-performing team that ended in a successful exit. I received a kidney transplant from a mate, and now on my second life, I dedicate my time to helping other Cloud Consultants go quickly with less effort to enjoy life. Detecting an accent, I'm an Aussie working globally from Melbourne, Australia. I interview successful Cloud Consultants sharing their scaling story to give you inspiration and practical tips. I have dedicated experts for Cloud Consultants on the show to save you time and money by working with the right people. If you want to scale quickly with less effort to enjoy life, you're in the right place. Let's get started.

(0:57): Imagine this,  you know that waiting for referrals to pay yourself and your team is a high-risk strategy and the concentration of clients is a time bomb just ticking away. What if one or two of your top clients just left you because of the economy and in particular the downturn that's happening at the moment? It's happened to my clients and believe me, they wish they had have contacted me earlier. So where does it leave you? Okay, you know you have to start to look for lead sources, right? It's obvious that you can't rely just purely on referrals. But what is working and what's going to work really well for you as a tech consultant?

(1:36): Hello,  this is Paul Higgins and welcome to episode 491. I will reveal the little known lead sources for you as a tech consultant and give you a playbook to get you firing right away. So let's dive into the problem at hand. As mentioned in the opening, you are seeking alternative lead sources outside of referrals. It also seems that all roads lead to Sales Navigator, right? Everyone's, you know, sending you inbound messages all the time telling you, you know, it's probably an agency or whatever, but telling you you need Sales Navigator. Whilst Sales Navigator is great and look, we certainly use it for all of our clients. I also use it for myself to gain clients. But what I want to do is unpack some options for you which are free and also there's one paid one that are lower hanging fruit, that you don't have to be an expert on Sales Navigator to generate your own leads. I'll also give you a playbook with all the information that you need. So if you're out walking,  jogging, whatever you're doing at the moment, you don't have to take notes. It's all there in the playbook for you. And you can listen to this episode with the playbook. It'll make even more sense. 

(2:45): So let's dive into it. We've got three key areas we're going to cover. Your network,  LinkedIn actions, and then finally, List. And there will be some tips for second and third connections using Sales Navigator in the playbook. But I'm not going to focus on those today.  I want to focus on those three. Your network,  LinkedIn actions,  and List.  So let's dive into your network first. Now look, there are really two sources that I break into in the playbook. One is your first connections on LinkedIn, and the other is the people in your sales CRM. When I work with clients to define their ICP, which is ideal client profile, I ask them who have they already got. As their ICP in their first connections. And I typically sort of get a blank response. It's like, what do you mean? I've never mined my own connections for the ICP. And I must admit, because it changes a bit, you probably haven't done it, but a lot of people don't do it. And in the playbook, I show you examples of exactly how to do that with screenshots attached. And the trick is to use the filters that are native on the free version of LinkedIn. And what I'll do is just cover a couple of them  and just sort of tell you some ways of doing it. 

(3:51): So the first is connections of, right? So you can type in a person or a client that you currently know well or sell and see if they are connected with you, right? You can also ask for an introduction if that is the case, right? So that's the first one, connections of. The next is followers of. Well, I didn't ever know this was possible, but you can type in an industry influencer and use one of their posts as a prompt to start a conversation. Now, I'm going to go further into influencers later, but once again, set in the playbook. The next is locations. And I really want you to get granular. Now, it's not as good as Sales Navigator,  but it's pretty good. So for example, for some clients, we not just focus in the US, but we specifically focus on Utah as an example. So it might be Utah, Nevada, California, whatever it is. So get as granular as you like. Also, there's one that says talks about, right? And this is where you can use hashtags. So for example, you could use Salesforce as an example in that hashtags. The other one is past company. So this can be useful to see who worked at a client to get a foot in the door. So you might be pitching for a client or got a prospect for a client. You can go in and see who's worked at that company before. And if they've left, they might be willing to share some information with you.

(5:06): The next one is service categories. And to be honest, this can be a better indicator of what the industry is, because industries are pretty generic. I don't love them on LinkedIn. So this service categories is something that the individual is specifically put on their profile. So that can be really handy. Once again, not a lot of people are using that. And the last one is keywords. So I like using founder as an example as a keyword in there, and you can try lots of different keywords. So this gives you many options to find leads. And there's a bonus tip here. If you click on their profile, being the person that you've just found, you can go through and search their connections. Now, this only happens if it's blue, right? And you can see an image in the playbook that shows you exactly how to do that. It also gives you a little video on how to do it, okay? So that's the first one. 

(5:59): So we've covered your network and we've covered LinkedIn as your network. Now, what we're going to do under your network is cover people in your CRM,  right? So what I always suggest is people search past clients and past prospects in their sales serum to see if there are any people who they can reach back out to. Because especially if you're working with someone, you might got a new office. Like people are so busy, they're not going to remember your positioning exactly what you're doing, right? So you might have spoken with someone for six months or an old client. Like for example, I just ran into an old client last week and we're going to start working together. Now it'd been three years. I got him a fantastic result, but his business has changed. So has mine. I reconnected and we're back talking again because he's got a specific problem I can solve. So you can go and do that. 

(6:43): Now, this is a manual process and I suggest you start by filtering contacts, I should say from oldest to newest contacted, right? Because once again, there's a high chance if someone hasn't spoken to you for a while, your business has moved on, it's improved, but they're blissfully unaware of it. As you go through the list, you can tag people also to put on your email list as well. So I'm not saying directly send them, but what I do is every week I go in and the people that I've tagged to go on the email list, then I send them a message or a bulk message along those lines. And then in the playbook, there's a video showing you exactly the custom fields that I suggest that's going to make this exercise so much easier in the future. And I also use the potential client field expertise and then sort by their last contact. But that's all in the playbook. It'll all make sense when you look at that. So we've covered so far your network.  

(7:37): Let's now go and tap into the power of LinkedIn Actions, right? We take for granted how beneficial the free version of LinkedIn is. Like, you know, for some of you, like I'm 53 or soon to be 53, you know, it's, if I had have had this when I was a lot younger, I probably would have left corporate sooner to go and tap into it, right? It's enormous, the benefit we got, but we don't always use it that well, right? So what I want to do is show you nine examples that are in the playbook of exactly how to use the free version of LinkedIn, right? And like I said, most of these are little known secrets that are going to make a big difference to increasing your leads list, right? And they include influencers, groups, events, hashtags, profile views, people who also viewed. And that comes up in the right hand side of your feed. Company posts, posts, and mutual connections. Now, it's too much to go through in a roughly 10-minute episode today, right? So I'll go into the detail of the nine examples in the playbook. Well, what we're going to cover is three of them now. That's influencers, events, and hashtags. 

(8:40): So under influencers, an industry influencer, also known as a thought leader and industry expert, is a person who has established themselves as a predominant and authority figure within the specific industry and niche,  right? Some industries it's very easy to find, others aren't. But these individuals are highly knowledgeable and experienced and often have a strong online and offline presence. Now, it's the online one that we want to tap into, right? And we tap into this by looking at their followers, right? And who have liked and commented on their posts. So I'll give you a quick example. So Dan Tyre,  I don't know if you've met Dan if you're in the HubSpot ecosystem, but it's T-Y-R-E. And he's one that use. He's got 28,000 followers and gets lots of likes and comments from my ideal clients who are HubSpot partners on his posts. So there's an example that I got on the playbook where he got 71 likes and nine comments to his posts, right? So what I did was looked at all the people that liked, checked them against my ideal client profile, and then I went and reached out to them, right? 

(9:44): And think about the influencers in your industry and then add them to your sales CRM so that you check their posts on a regular basis, right? So I have a repeating action in my sales CRM, which is copper CRM, and I have Dan and about five others that I go and do that, right? So that's a great way to find your clients. It's free, and what you'll also find is you dig into different people, you go into their connections, and it just becomes a fantastic way of getting leads. And you can process all of this, do it once,  and then get someone in your team to do it, right? I recommend you do it once, but then the team members can take it off you. Okay, so that's going through the influencers. 

(10:22): The next one we'll talk about out of the nine is the event. So events are a big part of our industry. You know all the big ones, Dreamforce and all of those, but post COVID, a lot of them are now moved online, right? Or they're a hybrid. So you can search on LinkedIn and then mine the comments and likes on people that are attending events, right? So in the playbook, there's a screenshot of exactly how to do that. Also, you can go and attend an event, and then you can see who else is attending, which is another great way of mining it down, okay? The next is hashtags. This is the last one in the second section, which is LinkedIn actions. So you can search for hashtags used by your ideal client, and then you can see who's post liked or comment on those posts using that hashtag. If the hashtag doesn't appear in the search, don't worry, I'll show a screenshot of it in the playbook exactly how to do that, because there is a little trick around it. But you can also search your followers hashtags at the bottom of the homepage as well. So once again, I've got a screenshot of that, right? But it's a brilliant way of actually seeing who's posting on a particular hashtag that's big in your industry. 

(11:27): So so far we've covered influencers, events, and hashtags. So check out the other six in the playbook. And I know I've gone a little bit long,  but I've just got one left. So we've covered your network, we've covered LinkedIn actions. Now what we're gonna do is cover lists, and we'll do that very quickly. So what we have done is basically been free. Yes, there's a cost of LinkedIn licenses and a bit of labor, right? But it's ultimately free. But sometimes that's not the best way to find your ideal clients. And what you often wanna do as a tech consultant is actually find what software or technology someone's using. And to be honest, sales navigator’s not the best at that. So what we do is we buy lists with these people and we can really source them in two areas, tools and people.

(12:08): Tools, there are many tools on the market, but the ones that we have experienced with and have used is Apollo.io, Sales Rocks, and Built With. Now Apollo is probably the more affordable and the one that we default to. Built With is a little more expensive. But there's more detail in the playbook about that. And the next one is people,  purchasing lists of people. So the rates vary from around three cents USD per verified lead from any source. So that might be LinkedIn,  Instagram directories, etcetera, or even in some cases, Apollo. And you can also get Apollo at say, $30 for around 10,000 leads. Now, once again, the quality of Apollo isn't always the best. So just be a little bit careful of that. But I've got all the details. I've got people that can help you with it. You can just email me at [email protected] to get those.

(12:55): So three key actions.  One,  please download the Self-Generated Lead Sources Playbook. Just go to paulhigginsmentoring.com/leadsources. The link is in the show notes to make it easy for you. The second is take action. And the third is ask me questions. Bottom line, referrals and high-client concentration is incredibly risky. And there are three ways to self-generate leads. Your network, LinkedIn Action, and Lists. And I'm pretty sure that you aren't doing some of the ones that I've suggested in here. So,  time for action. Go and grab the Self-Generated Lead Sources Playbook. It's at paulhigginsmentoring.com/leadsources. And ready, set, go. See you next time for more quick and simple ways to grow your tech consulting business and live more of the life that you want right now. 

Outro: Learning is just one piece of the puzzle. it is now time for action. Head to Today's show page at paulhigginsmentoring.com/podcast, get the links, and put it into action. Head to your favorite podcast platform, subscribe, rate, and review the show. Suggest topics for me to cover at [email protected], and don't wait one more minute to gain access to content, especially for you, a cloud consultant at paulhigginsmentoring.com/newsletter. This could be the difference between wasting time figuring it out yourself or scaling quickly with less effort to enjoy life.