How to Land Your First 5 Clients Without a Big Audience (5 Proven Steps Revealed)

0:00 Most people think you need 10,000 followers, a polished brand, and a killer website to land your first five clients. Well, that's exactly what's holding you back. The truth is that your first five clients are already in your network. You just don't know them and they just don't know that they can hire you. I'm Sangram and I have built twound million dollar companies, written three books. One of them is a Wall Street Journal bestseller and trained over 70,000 professionals through our courses and advisory work. In this video, I will show you five proven steps to land your first five clients without a big audience or a personal brand or spamming the heck out of everybody. So, if you're someone who has 10 plus years of experience in B2B, building your own fractional business or wanting to think about building your business, then this is for you. One of the biggest challenges that people have and they think about or the myths if you will be that you need a,000 plus LinkedIn or YouTube followers. You couldn't be more wrong from that. And let me just show you that for an example. Here's Don.

0:59 He's a GTMO certified partner and he doesn't have he has less than 2,000 uh followers right now. But in the literally last 30 days since he became a certified partner, he has 7 to eight meetings done and ready and now he's able to generate revenue out of it. Here's Sue Foley, who's actually from Australia, was 30 years as a CMO, and she had to make a decision between having a mortgage payment or actually figuring out if you should pay for a program that actually might make her successful. And guess what? She closed four deals in 30 days. These are real people, folks. Go on LinkedIn, look them up. I'm actually putting the link in the bottom as well if you want to because this is no joke. So, you don't need thousands of LinkedIn or YouTube followers. As a matter of fact, you even don't need a polished personal brand in the very beginning if you want if you can use somebody else's brand and which is one of the things we'll talk about and you don't even need a fancy website with all the bells and whistles. The truth is your first five clients, believe it or not, will almost always come from your network. Another way, your first five clients will almost never come from strangers. They will come from your network you already have.

2:07 they they will probably know you and they probably don't know exactly what you do today. And that is literally the reason why you don't have your first five clients. Today, I'll show you a simple approach to landing your first five clients without needing a big audience or a viral post. Step number one, mine your warm network. Here's what I want you to do. I want you to to look make a list of past colleagues or bosses. I want you to look at clients you may have helped before. I want you to list out the partners or vendors you have collaborated with. And I want you to list out who already trust your expertise. Aim for about 25 to 50 50 names. And even if some of them feel like, oh, it's a long shot, remember you're not pitching, you are reconnecting. That's step number one.

2:49 Which brings me to step number two. Create a simple value first offer. What I mean by that is before you reach out, get clear on what problem do you solve, how do you help, and what is the first easy step they can say yes to. Let me give you a couple of examples. You could say in I I do a 90-minute go to market diagnostic workshop. Very simple, very clear. Or I do a simple assessment to identify your growth gaps. Or you could say I'm doing a short-term road map engagement and and you can say well tell me what your top three go to market problems are and I will create a short-term roadmap engagement. These are very simple entry-level offers make it easy to understand. It feels low risk and very outcome focused. That's how you create a simple value first offer. Which brings me to step number three. Reach out personally. Forget the mass email.

3:40 You need to send individual messages. If you're on LinkedIn, message them individually. They probably have never heard from you in a long time. They don't know what you're really doing. You have all the credibility in the world. You have 10 plus years of experience building something for some other company. So, you're not another SDR or a cold caller or emailer. Your email actually has weight and value. So use that. LinkedIn is not just to see what others are doing. You actually is for DMs. If you do the right kind of DM, it will work. Your DM could look as simple as that. Hey, I want to let you know that I've started a fractional business and here are the three offers that three things that I'm going to do for companies. It's very outcome focused. Is this something that you might be interested or know somebody that might be interested? Don actually did just that. Dawn did the go to market assessment and sent it out to about 20 25 people and over the fourth of July weekend by the way and got eight meetings. The point I'm sharing this is that these things actually feels human not spammy and it literally works which brings me to step number four. Use content as proof not promotion. You don't need to go viral. You just need to show you are credible. So think about posting maybe one or two times a week and and and and the the post could be simply this your point of view on go to market or any other niche market that you're in. So for example, here's Lydia who talks about legal tech. She's been a CMO for a while and now she is all focused on legal tech companies. So guess what? In the legal tech industry, she is the queen and she's able to use all the frameworks that we offer and able to sort of get the books and the programs and and she's able to do this really really well. Think about case studies or lesson learned. Think about frameworks you have used with a recent client. So some of your post could literally say I was talking to a CEO of a $37 million company and here's what we talked about. The point is do one or two times keep telling how what you're thinking about. Stop thinking about pitching. Start thinking about sharing as the way this builds trust with the people you have already reached out to.

5:39 And if you want more like you just comment below before I get to step number five. Five clients that will be the best way. If you put five clients I will send you an access to a course that literally gives you a way to build your entire million-doll fractional business on an operating system how it's done that. So just comment step five and and we'll send it to you. So going back to step number five, follow up with generosity. Most deals don't happen in the first message. So don't be discouraged if you send a message and like I sent 20 message. You might feel like, man, I'm in an SDR. I have built $30 million pipeline. I've built businesses. I've had companies exit. But guess what? You haven't had an exit yourself because if you did, then this wouldn't be the right business for you.

6:22 But because you're trying to build this, it's not about sending first message and expecting results. You wouldn't ask that off your SDR, would you? So think about that and say the most important thing for you is follow up with generosity which is keep showing up. Share resource helpful resources with those 2550 people. Celebrate their wins and when you see something let them know. Offer introduction. See if somebody needs help. Stay visible without being pushy. I'm promising you that the first five clients that you're going to have are going to come from the people in your network, nowhere else. And if they comment, they like or whatever it is, those are the people you need to follow up on. You don't need again a 100 different companies in your pipeline.

7:03 You need three to four paying you 30 40k a month. Uh and and or 10 even 10K a month, but you can go up to that. But let's say 10K a month, three to four clients. You're actually making half a million dollar plus business. When you think about this in real world, this is how it looks like. And one of our GTMO certified partners just booked five meetings. All they did was send 30 personal LinkedIn messages, hosted five free go to market diagnostic. We give the assessment and they're able to do that and they're able to share three post with her framework and that framework is our framework with her two cents on it for that particular niche.

7:37 We literally help you do that. This is with no ads, no big audience, just intentional action. So here are the big takeaways and again if you drop the comment five clients we will show share with you the entire course and all the details and recordings around it because you can literally do that tomorrow if you actually go through the process. So here's the big takeaway. You don't need a massive platform to build momentum. Start with the people you already trust you. Number two make a clear valuable offer. And number three, show up consistently because your next client isn't waiting for your follower count to be like 10,000 or 50,000. They're waiting for you to start a conversation.

8:17 Just think about that. You're not pitching, you're having conversation. So stay tuned for the next one. We are going to sharing more on this. Common client five or five clients and uh we'll send you all the details around it. But you can build a million- dollar book of business. There's nothing stopping you from it and you don't need a big audience to do that. These are the five proven steps to get your first five clients.