How to Fill Your Prospecting Pipeline – In Just 7 Minutes with Ahmad Munawar

Resources/Links:

• How Top 1% Consultants Win 5 & 6 Figure Consulting Deals Every Month (Revealed):Watch this video: 90daypipeline.com

Summary

Ahmad Munawar is the creator of the 90 Day Pipeline™. He is a marketing coach for consultants and professional service providers.

In this episode, Ahmad shares how he help consultants and professional service providers attract dream clients, increase fees and scale their businesses.

Check out these episode highlights:

• 01:06 – Ahmad’s ideal client: “I typically work with consultants and professional service providers who have really deep subject matter expertise.”
• 01:46 – Problem Ahmad helps solve: There’s a point at which the referral pipeline dries up, and everybody who’s sold services knows this, you hang up your own shingle. And then initially you get some deals from the referral. People know you; they like you; they trust you. And maybe you sustain yourself for months, maybe even years doing that but there is a point at which the referral pipeline will dry up and you’ve got to go out and do some actual marketing to drive business. That’s the perfect time for clients to engage me and we get them laser-focused on a specific target market. We position them as the one and only solution on that market and then we get them creating marketing that gets people’s attention and sparks conversations.
• 02:45 – Typical symptoms that clients do before reaching out to Ahmad: Low lead volume.
• 04:16 – Common mistakes people make when trying to solve that problem: “So, the first common mistake is ignoring all of this and hoping the problem will go away. And it happens more than we would care to think. What happens is, you’ll ignore the problem and then you’ll just hope that you’ll land another big client, another whale client, right? That will pay your bills for maybe three months, six months, nine months, and then eventually that deal comes to an end and lo and behold, you’re back to where you started. The second big mistake would be outsourcing this. So, there’s all kinds of people preying on the consultants and the service providers out there and offering done-for-you outsource marketing services, at my experience, rarely work.”
• 05:42 – Ahmad’s Valuable Free Action(VFA): Here’s the big thing, come up with really great ideas and get them in front of your target market. Sound simple. That’s life-changing. That’s game-changing for a business. Come up with some really, really great powerful ideas and get them in front of your target market consistently. Publishing is cheap, and it’s available to anybody in a variety of formats. So, you want to find where your clients are hanging out, right, where they’re consuming information. And get your very best ideas out in front of them consistently, show up, and provide those insights. And if your ideas are good, and the market is there, you’re going to win clients.
• 06:17 – Ahmad’s Valuable Free Action(VFR): How Top 1% Consultants Win 5 & 6 Figure Consulting Deals Every Month (Revealed):Watch this video: 90daypipeline.com
• 07:18 – Q: “How long does it take to grow a Chinese bamboo tree?” A: It takes five years for the seed for a Chinese bamboo tree to sprout. They water this seed, Chinese farmers water the seed, for five years, no signs of progress for five years. And when it sprouts, it grows to 90 to 100 feet in six weeks.

Tweetable Takeaways from this Episode:

“Come up with some really, really great powerful ideas and get them in front of your target market consistently.” -@aamunawar Share on X

Transcript
(Note, this was transcribed using a transcription software and may not reflect the exact words used in the podcast)

Tom Poland: 0:09
Hello everyone, a very warm welcome to another edition of Marketing The Invisible. My name is Tom Poland, joined today by Ahmad Munawar. Ahmad, very good afternoon to you. Where you hanging out?

Ahmad Munawar: 0:20
Toronto, Ontario. There’s apparently a tornado outside so, but I’m safely indoors.

Tom Poland: 0:24
Wow, tornado. Ooh, okay all the best with that. Well, you’re a bit of a whirlwind yourself, ha-ha. Ahmad is the creator of the 90 Day Pipelines. He’s a Coach to B2B Consultants and Coaches. And, Ahmad, we must have met maybe a year or even 18 months ago and we just walk click, click, click. We had so much in common in terms about thinking about marketing, pipelines, what you need to do to get people into and out of them, but he’s the expert specifically on how to fill your prospecting pipeline. That is the subject of our conversation today, “How to Fill Your Prospecting Pipeline.” We’re going to do that in just seven minutes. Our time starts now. Question number one, sir, who is your ideal client?

Ahmad Munawar: 1:06

So, Tom, I typically work with consultants and professional service providers who have really deep subject matter expertise.

So, you got to really know what you’re doing. You got to be able to call yourself an expert with a little bit of pride.

And you got to be selling some very high-value services, very expensive services, but you’re looking for a better way. Better way to attract clients, a better way to charge higher fees, and a better way to grow the business.

Tom Poland: 1:31
And does that bit a way look like not de-positioning yourself by setting up trade show booths and doing cold calling and sending out 10,000 direct mailers? I’m sure it does. All right. Thank you. I’ve answered my own question. Question number two, 6 minutes 20 seconds left, what’s the problem you solve for them?

Ahmad Munawar: 1:46
There’s a point at which the referral pipeline dries up, and everybody who’s sold services knows this, you hang up your own shingle. And then initially you get some deals from a referral. People know you; they like you; they trust you. And maybe you sustain yourself for months, maybe even years doing that but there is a point at which the referral pipeline will dry up and you’ve got to go out and do some actual marketing to drive business. That’s the perfect time for clients to engage me and we get them laser-focused on a specific target market. We position them as the one and only solution on that market and then we get them creating marketing that gets people’s attention and sparks conversations.

Tom Poland: 2:20
And I’m sure while most of your new clients come to you once the referral flow is dried up, the best time to come to you is going to be before it slows up, froze up. Yeah, ok.

Ahmad Munawar: 2:29
If you have that kind of foresight, yeah.

Tom Poland: 2:30
Yes. So, question number three, five and a half minutes left, what are some of the typical symptoms that your specialized B2B consultant or coach are going to be experiencing when things dry up? I mean, when leads stop flowing in.

Ahmad Munawar: 2:45

Well, that’s a big one, right, low lead volume. So, referrals aren’t coming in, now I’ve got this cash flow crisis, a revenue crisis got to bring in some business but I don’t have any leads. I haven’t been generating leads, haven’t been doing anything to bring in conversation.

So, who do I go out and talk to? I’m really good at what I do, not enough people to talk to you. That’s the first thing. The second thing is poor differentiation. So maybe I am going out and talking to some people working my network, so to speak, which is terrible and time-consuming and laborious. And when I do talk to people, they can’t really tell how I’m unique and how I’m distinct. I know I’m unique and distinct. They don’t know that. And we’re just, we’re at an impasse right there right away. The third thing would be what I call input driven engagements. When I do get a deal, it’s all based on my time. It’s like I’ve got an hourly rate or a daily rate, and I’ve got to go and bill for time. That doesn’t scale very well pretty quickly, I’m at a cap. And the fourth being a week sales process, that when I get a deal, I’m essentially showing up, like the barista at Starbucks, like an order taker, right? Client comes to me and says, “Oh, I want a latte.” And then I say, “$5,” right? But it’s, “Oh, I need a workshop,” and I say, “$10,000.” Not a lot of leadership in the sales process, which leaves people taking on projects and deals they probably shouldn’t take on at price points that are far too low.

Tom Poland: 3:58
Well, you’ve mentioned a bunch of symptoms that are very clear and probably quite universal. Question number four was going to be, what are some of the common mistakes that people make when trying to solve this problem before they find you? Were there any others you, some of those symptoms were mistakes as well, but are there any other common mistakes that you can think of?

Ahmad Munawar: 4:16
Yeah, I mean, I’ve got a few, right?

So, the first common mistake is ignoring all of this and hoping the problem will go away. And it happens more than we would care to think.

What happens is, you’ll ignore the problem and then you’ll just hope that you’ll land another big client, another whale client, right? That will pay your bills for maybe three months, six months, nine months, and then eventually that deal comes to an end and lo and behold, you’re back to where you started. The second big mistake would be outsourcing this. So, there’s all kinds of people preying on the consultants and the service providers out there and offering done-for-you outsource marketing services, at my experience, rarely work. It’s very tempting to outsource this stuff to somebody else, but that’s usually a mistake, mainly because you’ve got to own it and you can’t outsource strategy to somebody else. That’s not what they do. Third mistake would be fearing it. There’s a lot of fear associated with marketing, sales, business development. People say to me things like, “Well, I get what you’re doing and what you do for your clients and what they do to bring in business, but that’s not me. I couldn’t do that; I could never put myself out there.” When in actuality they can and they could. They’re just letting the fear of putting themselves out there get the better of them.

Tom Poland: 5:23
Right. Perfect. Thank you. Two and a half minutes left, three questions to go. What’s one valuable free action that someone could take that’s not going to solve the whole problem, but it might take them a step in the right direction?

Ahmad Munawar: 5:34
We got time to spare. I feel like we can just kind of go with me and a little bit now. Tom, I was nervous at first.

Tom Poland: 5:39
You’ve got an abundance of two minutes left.

Ahmad Munawar: 5:42
Here’s the big thing, come up with really great ideas and get them in front of your target market. Sound simple. That’s life changing. That’s game changing for a business. Come up with some really, really great powerful ideas and get them in front of your target market consistently. Publishing is cheap, and it’s available to anybody in a variety of formats.

So, you want to find where your clients are hanging out, right, where they’re consuming information. And get your very best ideas out in front of them consistently, show up, and provide those insights. And if your ideas are good, and the market is there, you’re going to win clients.

Tom Poland: 6:17
That’s marketing, thank you. Question number six, 95 seconds left, one valuable free resource that we could direct people to that’s going to help them even a bit more.

Ahmad Munawar: 6:26
So, I’ve kind of laid bare the entire strategy and framework that we help our clients with inside my program called the 90daypipeline.com/invisible, is the URL. So 90daypipeline.com/invisible, you can go there, there’s a 30-minute training video. I’ll just give it away. Just tell you how to do everything. You want to do it yourself, you’re more than welcome. If you want my help, there’s an option to get my help there.

Tom Poland: 6:47
Well, if you got the money and you’re smart, you’ll get help. But yeah, dip your toe in the water. 90, that’s nine zero, day pipeline.com forward slash invisible. Question number seven, sir, what’s the one question I should have asked you but didn’t? And 50 seconds to answer.

Ahmad Munawar: 7:04

How long does it take to grow a Chinese bamboo tree?

Tom Poland: 7:07
Less than 90 days?

Ahmad Munawar: 7:09
I learned this today, did a lesson on this with my client, so it’s fresh.

It takes five years for the seed for a Chinese bamboo tree to sprout. They water this seed, Chinese farmers water the seed, for five years, no signs of progress for five years. And when it sprouts, it grows to 90 to 100 feet in six weeks.

Tom Poland: 7:31
There is a moral in that story.

Ahmad Munawar: 7:33
Lot of parallels to business there for those who are paying attention.

Tom Poland: 7:37
Ahmad, thank you so much for your time.

Ahmad Munawar: 7:39
Cheers, mate.

Tom Poland: 7:39
Cheers.

Tom Poland: 7:41
Thanks for checking out our Marketing The Invisible podcast. If you like what we’re doing here please head over to iTunes to subscribe, rate us, and leave us a review. It’s very much appreciated. And if you want to generate five fresh leads in just five hours then check out www.fivehourchallenge.com.