Here's something I see constantly with consultants who are genuinely good at what they do.

They're busy.

And still — inconsistent revenue. Months where the phone rings. Months where it doesn't.

So they do more. More events. More content. More outreach.

Here's what nobody says out loud: doing more of the wrong thing faster is not a pipeline strategy. It’s living the life of an octopus on roller skates.

A whole lot of movement with little forward momentum.

There's something you've probably heard me say before — you don't have a leads problem, you have a positioning problem. That's true, and it stays true.

But there's a layer underneath it I want to dig into today, because I see it in almost every client I work with, even the ones who have done the positioning work.

Even consultants who are clear on who they serve and what they solve are still showing up in the wrong places and wondering why nothing is converting.

This isn't a positioning problem. It's a buyer-centricity problem.

Your positioning tells you who your buyer is. Buyer-centricity is what governs every decision about where you show up, what you say, and who you spend time with — and whether those decisions are filtered through your buyer's world, or filtered through your own comfort and identity.

Most people are doing the latter. And it's costing them pipeline they don't even know they're losing.

You've seen these events. Maybe you've been to a few. The local business breakfast where you're next to a chiropractor, a mortgage broker, and a life coach. BNI is the classic version — everyone in local business under one roof, trading referrals, doing the networking thing.

You meet people. You have real conversations. You hand out cards.

You also never close a single piece of business from them. Because not one person in that room is your buyer. And no amount of being impressive in that room changes the math.

This one stings more, because it feels so deliberate. And it shows up everywhere — not just at events.

But ask the question nobody asks is this. Are these your clients, or are these your peers?

For most consultants selling to senior, busy buyers, you've been building an audience of people exactly like you.

Engagement alone is not a pipeline indicator, but engagement from the right people is. Those are not the same thing.

This is the one that creates the most cynicism about relationship building, because people genuinely tried it and it didn't work. They showed up, gave freely, mentored early-stage entrepreneurs, answered questions in communities, built real relationships.

And then… nothing. No referrals. No clients. No pipeline.

So they concluded relationship building doesn't work for their business.

That's not what happened. What happened is they built exactly the right kind of relationship with exactly the wrong people.

But depth with someone who has the problem you solve and the budget to solve it? THAT is pipeline.

The strategy wasn't broken. You were just deploying it with the wrong audience.

The root cause is something I think about a lot, and I'll be honest — I'm not exempt from it.

We default to the rooms that feel comfortable. Events that attract people like us. Content that earns recognition from our professional community. Relationships that are easy because there's so much common ground.

We build our pipeline around our own identity and preferences instead of around where our buyers actually are.

And here's the mechanism that makes this so costly: your buyers are not out there waiting to find you. They are distracted, overscheduled, consuming more content than any of us did a decade ago.

And when they're online — and I mean this with complete affection — they are self-centered, lazy, and a little bit dumb.

That's not an insult. It's a description of every one of us scrolling, including you and me. We're deeply uninterested in anything that doesn't immediately feel like it's about us.

We skim. We barely read. We've moved on before we even know we've moved on.

Which means getting in front of your buyer requires going where they already are, speaking to what they're already thinking about, showing up in the contexts they're already operating in.

You cannot rely on your buyer to do the work of figuring out if you're relevant. That work is yours.

I worked with someone — I'll leave her nameless — who was a brilliant executive recruiter. Her clients were CEOs, founders, VCs. Real senior buyers, serious work, premium fees. She'd done the positioning work. She knew exactly who she served.

But because of how she talked about herself in rooms — her background, her methodology, the angle she led with — she kept getting known as a B2B sales expert. Which meant she kept attracting salespeople. People who wanted advice, conversation, maybe a referral someday. Not buyers.

She wasn't in the wrong rooms. She was positioned wrong within them. And the cumulative effect was a warm, engaged audience of people who genuinely liked her and would never, ever write her a check.

Your positioning doesn't just live on your website. It lives in every conversation, every room, every impression you create. A mismatch there is just as expensive as a mismatch in your copy.

I want to be clear about what I'm not saying. Cold outreach still works. Content still works. Both are viable lead sources and I'm not here to tell you to abandon them.

What I believe — and what I tell every client — is that you need two or three lead sources that genuinely work for you, and that strategic relationship building should be one of them. Always.

Especially when you're selling to senior, busy people who are less likely to respond to a cold LinkedIn DM. Deep relationships with the right people convert in a way that nothing else does.

But "networking" is not "being in a lot of rooms." It means being intentional about whose world you enter and why.

Before you commit to an event, a community, a content series, a mentorship, ask one question first. Are the people there in a position to hire me?

Not admire me. Not refer me someday, maybe. Not learn from me — hire me.

If the answer isn't a clear yes, time spent there can still be helpful, interesting, and rewarding. But it just will not be pipeline investment.

Buyer-centricity needs to go beyond a value you declare. You need to make it a filter you apply to every single decision about where to spend your time and whose attention you earn.

Last week we talked about getting obsessed with your ideal client's situation — knowing their problem at a depth they can't even articulate themselves. This is where that obsession has to show up in your actual choices. You know who they are. Now go be where they are.

In love, growth, and better rooms,
Kasey