I sometimes get asked, “what's the most common marketing problem you see?”.

Out of all the potential issues, not having enough leads is by far the one I see the most frequently amongst professionals – especially sole practitioners. And it's also the most debilitating one.

When I'm having initial discussions with potential clients, almost half of them say something along the lines of “if I can just get in front of the right clients, I can almost always sell”.

Now sometimes they're wrong. They're overestimating their selling skills.

But very often they're right.

You see, selling for consultants, coaches and other professionals is not that far removed from our “day jobs”. It involves talking to clients about their issues, diagnosing what the cause might be, understanding the impact, and proposing solutions.

That's not a lot different from what we do when clients have already hired us.

Some professionals have big psychological hangs up about selling. It's beneath them, It doesn't fit with their self image. But often, when push comes to shove, they're not that bad at it.

And if you've worked for a professional firm for any length of time, you'll inevitably have been involved in a number of initial client meetings. You'll have built up experience in it, even if you don't like it.

Lead generation is a different kettle of fish though.

It involves activities like presentations and “pitches”. Asking for referrals. Writing sales letters or doing email marketing. Stuff that's very different from our day jobs.

And if we've come from a large professional firm background the chances are that those activites were done by someone else. The marketing team or the firm's star rainmakers.

Now suddenly we have to do those things. And many of us struggle.

I know I did initially. Even though I'd learnt how to be pretty darn good at selling when working for big consulting firms, when I went solo, lead generation was new to me. I had to go through a painful learning curve very fast.

The first area most people struggle with is knowing which marketing approaches will work to generate high-quality leads in their specific situation.

But even after they've got this sussed, many professionals then fall into a huge trap.

They just don't fill their pipelines with enough leads.

Because they don't (yet) enjoy lead generation activities, they do what they feel is just enough to get them the business they need. Then they stop and focus on delivery.

But, of course, they overestimate their chances of landing each client in their pipeline. So when they don't all come off, they're left feeding off scraps.

My advice is to always “overfill” your pipeline. Generate at least twice as many leads as you think you need.

Because having an overfull pipeline generates some wonderful side-effects:

-> You can cherry-pick. With a surfeit of opportunities you can choose the best ones to work on. The best clients, the most interesting work, or the most lucrative.

-> You can establish the right peer-level relationships with clients from the start. When you're not desperate for business, when you can take it or leave it, then you immediately elevate your status and can work with senior clients as a peer right from the get-go.

Conversely, if you really need to win a deal you can very easily drift into a subservient relationship that damages your ability to advise and guide your client.

-> You can be highly ethical. You can turn down work you're not perfectly suited for if you don't need to win it to pay the bills.

-> You can negotiate from strength. You don't have to make unfair concessions just because you really need the work.

-> You can relax. You'll be surprised how much better this makes you at selling.

Of course, building an overfull pipeline isn't easy (that's why clients pay me the “big bucks” ;) ).

But it absolutely is possible if you use the right approaches and keep going beyond the point where you think you have “just enough”.

Because, believe me, “just enough” is not enough.