What's the very first thing to do when work slows down?
Make the list, then send five messages. That's it, and you can start today.
Here's the order that works, and it's deliberately front-loaded with the thing that pays soonest:
- List 20 people who already know your work. Past clients, former colleagues, people who referred you once, the contact who moved to a new company, the person you had a great conversation with in March and never followed up.
- Reach out to five of them this week. Not a blast. Five individual notes, each one with a real reason you thought of that person.
- Tell people what you're focused on now. Most of your network has an outdated picture of what you do. They'll refer you for the work you did three years ago because that's the last thing they heard.
- Pick one channel and start showing up. One, not three. This is the part that pays later, and later arrives whether you started or not.
- Then, and only then, look at the website. If it's truly broken, fix the one page a potential client would land on. Leave the rest.
The reason warm outreach goes first is the clock. A B2B consulting engagement takes three to 18 months from first conversation to signed contract. Someone who already knows you skips most of the trust-building that timeline is made of. A stranger has to travel the whole distance.
Who should I reach out to first?
Rank your list by warmth, not by how impressive the name is. The person most likely to produce a conversation is the one who already knows what it's like to work with you.
In rough order:
- Past clients where the work went well. Especially ones from 12 to 36 months ago. Their situation has changed, their budget has reset, and they haven't heard from you in a while.
- The champion colleague or client who changed jobs. This is the single most underused contact in most consultants' networks. They know exactly how good you are and they're now sitting in a new organization with a new budget and new problems.
- People who referred you before. They already did it once. They'd do it again, and most of them may have simply forgotten about the work you do.
- Conversations that went quiet. The proposal that never got answered, the call that was going great until reorg season. Silence is almost never a no. It's usually a "not then."
The one to skip: cold strangers. When work is slow, cold outreach is the tempting one because it's new people. But cold emailing and cold calling have the lowest success rate of anything on this list, and they take the longest.
What do I actually say when I reach out?
Say something true and specific, and don't attach a pitch. The whole move is to be useful and let the conversation happen.
What works:
- A real reason you thought of them. You saw their company's announcement. You read something that reminded you of a problem they had. Their name came up.
- Something for them. An introduction, an article, a thought about the thing they were wrestling with when you last talked.
- A clear, low-friction ask, or none at all. "Would you be up for catching up for 20 minutes?" is plenty. Sometimes the right ask is nothing.
What doesn't:
- "Just checking in." It tells the reader you want something and won't say what.
- "I have availability." She now knows your business is slow, and you don't come off as an expert.
- A newsletter blast in place of individual notes. One-to-many is marketing, which is worth doing, but it isn't this.
And if it feels like begging, just observe your "head trash": you're not asking for a favor, you're restarting a relationship with someone who was glad to know you. That's what the shoulder tap is: warm, specific, non-salesy outreach to people you already know. It works because it isn't selling. There's a whole formula behind it, the Shoulder Tap Formula, and the frame underneath it is what makes it possible to hit send: you're offering, not asking. You're inviting them into a conversation, not asking them to hire you.
What should I NOT do when work slows down?
This is where most of the damage happens, so it's worth being blunt.
Don't redesign the website. I call this "fluffing the pillows": It feels like work, and (no judgment, I've done it too) it's more comfortable than showing up. But it doesn't get you in front of potential clients. Tinkering with the site, rewriting the services page, reorganizing the back end where nobody can see you: all of this is "fluffing the pillows." Nobody has ever been hired because a services page got tighter.
Don't discount. In a slow period, the goal is to get potential clients into your pipeline. A discount can't get you in front of new people; it just communicates that you need the work.
Don't build a new offer from scratch. When you need to make a new client happen, that's exactly when a brand-new thing looks appealing. But a new offer means new positioning, new proof, and a new sales conversation. You're adding work when you need conversations. Not having the right service isn't the problem. You can get clients with the service you already have.
Don't go quiet. The instinct when things slow is to disappear until you have good news. Your network reads that as "she's busy," and stops thinking of you at the exact moment you need to be thought of.
And don't panic. This is fixable, and it's a normal phase of a consulting business, not an assessment of your capability as a business owner. It just won't fix itself, and no amount of "waiting one more quarter" changes that.
Leah's take
Here's what I see happen. Work gets quiet, the fear kicks in, and instead of doing the uncomfortable thing that works, we do the comfortable thing that looks like work, but doesn't get us closer to new clients. We tinker with the website, materials, a new lead magnet, a fresh look at the offer. Weeks or months go by, and the calendar is still empty, and now there's less time.
I've done it too, so I'm not judging. It isn't laziness. It's avoidance, because putting yourself out there can feel uncomfortable.
But the thing that changes your next quarter is almost always a conversation with a human being who already knows you. That's it. It's not clever and it doesn't feel like strategy, and it's what works. The women I coach through a slow stretch are always surprised by the same thing: how many of those conversations were sitting right there, one message away, for months.
So send five this week. They don't have to be perfect. Just send them.
If you want a system so slow stretches stop happening in the first place, that's what I teach in The Academy.
