Why referrals are harder to get

THE PROSPEROUS CONSULTANT

Turn your decades of expertise into a premium consulting practice built around the life you want.

Issue #43

"Is it me?"

A consultant with twenty years of experience told me, "Since 2018 I've had a very full pipeline, all referrals. I've never had to do any marketing. Now my pipeline is empty. What do I do?"

He was clearly worried.

Then he asked something that most of us secretly fear...

“Is it me? Am I still relevant in the age of AI?”

That call was two weeks ago, and I’ve been thinking a lot about this ever since... I've heard the same thing on other calls. It’s the old ‘referrals have dried up’ problem. It’s real and it’s scary.

And no, it wasn’t him. It’s probably not you, either.

So today, three things I want to share:

• What’s changing in the market that has referrals drying up. There are three things and not one of them is skill.
• Why the thing you're proudest of might be what gets you compared on price.
• A little math that takes ten minutes and tells you more about next year than your revenue does.

You’re as good as you’ve ever been at what you do. Probably better after several decades, some gray hair, and a lot of battle scars.

But when the opportunities just aren’t coming your way, it can wear you down.

I get it. I’ve been there. There was a time when I looked in the mirror and wondered if even McDonald’s would hire me.

When we’re in this state, we feel like we’ve missed something. But we’re not sure what. If that’s you, then maybe you knock a little off your fee to stay in the running, and you take the client you shouldn't at a rate they set, because you see the valley of despair ahead.

Every valley makes your brain repeat the question, but louder: Is it me?

That question is the most expensive thing in your business, because it makes you fix the wrong thing. You go to work on yourself, and you were never the problem.

The consultant I talked to had it wrong. Odds are you do too. Three things changed, and not one of them is your skill.

The first one is hiding in your contact list.

Think about where your clients have actually come from. If you're like most consultants I talk to, every single one came from somebody who watched you do your magic... a boss, a peer, a client who changed companies and took you along. For twenty years that was the whole engine. It ran so well you never had to think about it. Never once.

Another consultant said it to us this way: "We live and die on referrals." I think he meant it as a sort of confident comfort. But I heard a countdown to tough times.

Because that engine was built out of professional connections, and connections are retiring. About 11,000 Americans turn 65 every day, and some of them are the exact people who used to send you work. The ones taking their place never saw what you can do, and they don't ask around the way their bosses did.

They ask their network. And they type a search, they look at those profiles, find a few others that stand out (you?) and they build a shortlist. You're either on it or you're not.

Your skill didn't disappear. Your channel did.

It gets worse. Your network was the one client source that kept working while you were buried in delivery. So the valley was always coming. No alarm ever went off. The referrals just stopped.

The second one is about the thing you're proudest of.

Inside a company, your work spoke for itself... people could see your work and your impact with their own eyes. You were judged by people who watched you deliver for years.

Out here, in the cold market, it’s strangers who don’t know (and don’t care) that you're even alive. A stranger gives you thirty seconds, one profile, and four other profiles that look about the same. To that stranger, twenty-five years of range just reads as "generalist." And the generic layer of advice is free now... that's the piece AI took, not your discernment and judgment. A generalist is easy to compare. You end up as a column on somebody's spreadsheet, and the only thing a column really shows is price.

You see what I'm saying? The range you spent a career building... the very thing you'd put at the top of your resume... is the very thing getting you priced like everybody else. Nobody tells you that. So you lead with the full resume, and the full resume keeps you stuck in the resume pile.

The way out is one decision.

A track record is evidence. A position is a choice. Pick the one expensive problem you want to be known for and put it in one sentence. Lead with that sentence everywhere, and let the resume move down to the proof section, where it belongs.

That’s two of the three market changes. The third one cost me the most.

I've sold over a hundred million dollars of business-to-business work. And on my first consulting calls, I still did what thirty years of corporate life trained me to do. I proved I was qualified. I answered every question well, showed the track record, and made a great impression.

I was auditioning. That's not what wins clients. But nobody could have told me that back then.

Buyers don't hire the most qualified person on the list. Every finalist is qualified. They hire the one who saw something in their own business that they'd missed. Proving competence puts you in the applicant's chair. Diagnosing puts you in the advisor's chair, and a buyer can feel which chair you're in within a few minutes.

There's a second half. If you don't have a minimum viable offer a buyer can say yes to... a defined outcome, a set timeframe, a real price... every good call ends in the same four words: "send me a proposal." The buyer sets the scope and the budget, and now you're in a beauty contest with three other consultants' paperwork. A proposal is what you write when you didn't get a decision.

There's a trap waiting at the end of all three. Ask me how I know... I've lit thousands of dollars on fire on marketing that didn't work.

The folks barking at you in your inbox about filling your pipeline will hand you the same solution:

Do more marketing.

Most marketing makes whatever you already have louder. A louder resume is easier to compare. A louder post goes into a feed your buyer doesn't scroll. More calls that end in proposals waste your time and keep you broke.

The order of operations: positioning, trust, outreach, decision. Own one expensive problem. Show the market you’re honest and competent. Reach the next circle of buyers by leading with value, a few conversations a week, even the busy weeks. Run first calls that end in a decision instead of a document.

A client of mine, Brad, did all of these and raised his fee by 7 grand a month, then signed a client at 22 grand a month. Nothing about his expertise changed. What changed was how he was positioned, how he built trust, and how he ran the conversation. Everybody's road runs differently, and nobody can promise you his outcome... but the pattern repeats.

P.S. I didn’t write this from the bleachers. At 61 I ran that same math on my own list, and I didn’t love my count either. So I repositioned my own firm and started reaching the right people, a few conversations a week... the same play I just handed you. Hit reply and tell me one thing: of the people who sent you your last five clients, how many could still do it today? Just the count. I read every one of these myself, and I’ll write you back.

"In a time of drastic change it is the learners who inherit the future. The learned usually find themselves equipped to live in a world that no longer exists."

(Eric Hoffer, Reflections on the Human Condition, 1973)

Want to dive deeper? Check out these related articles:

👉 The Prosperous Consultant | Issue #42
👉 The Prosperous Consultant | Issue #41

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P.S.: When you're ready, here are more ways I can help you...