The Consultant Who Couldn’t Scale Beyond Referrals

For over a decade, a management consultant thrived purely on referrals. His clients loved him, his workshops were impactful, but growth stalled. His dream was to expand into B2B corporate contracts and B2C training programs. But he was stuck in the “referral trap.”

The Challenge

His website looked like a CV, not a sales tool. No funnels, no lead magnets, no authority-building on LinkedIn. When he ran small ad campaigns, nobody responded. He told me, “Kevin, I feel invisible outside my circle.”

The Turning Point

I showed him how a structured funnel could make strangers trust him as much as his past clients did. That’s when he agreed to build both B2B and B2C systems.

The Strategy

We divided the roadmap:

1. B2B Funnel: Lead magnet for HR professionals → landing page → email follow-up → discovery call booking.

2. Personal Brand: Optimized LinkedIn with authority posts, testimonials, and insights.

3. B2C Entry: Free webinars on “Sales Secrets for MSMEs” to build credibility.

Execution

We created crisp, conversion-focused landing pages with professional visuals. An outreach campaign on LinkedIn started conversations with HR managers. Meanwhile, email sequences nurtured leads with case studies.

For B2C, we hosted the first webinar with just 50 signups—but 7 turned into paying clients for his training program.

Results

Within 6 months, he secured 3 corporate contracts, doubled his monthly revenue, and created a pipeline instead of waiting for referrals.

Takeaway

Referrals are great, but systems scale. Authority + automation can take an individual consultant global.