Land & Expand: the Strategy to Winning More Work

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Hi there!

The lifeblood of any solopreneur business is client acquisition.

It is, quite literally, the first and only thing that matters.

You could be the best consultant, designer, engineer, or marketer in the world.

If you can’t land clients, then you don’t have a solopreneur business.

We’ve talked about a couple of different strategies to do this, including:

• How to land clients on Linkedin

• 5 Unique Ways of Marketing Yourself

• How to impress your clients

One strategy we haven’t talked about before but has been worth a few hundred thousand dollars for me, is “Land and Expand.”

Here’s what you need to know about Land & Expand

What is Land & Expand and why does it work?

Land & Expand is a technique used frequently in the software world.

First, the software company will “land” a client with a small initial purchase. It might even be free.

But now, the software company has a relationship with the client. And they’ll slowly look to “expand” their reach within the client.

Before long, everyone in the client is using the software.

It sounds theoretical, but it works well. Check out this graphic from Salesforce.

The key thing to look at here is the middle and right columns.

What this means: a client who signed on with Salesforce in Fiscal Year 2007 had 1.2 clouds at the time. Now, those clients have 5.8.

Read it this way:

• Salesforce landed 1.2 clouds

• Salesforce expanded to 5.8

This strategy works because most companies are creatures of habit.

If they get used to a specific piece of software or a specific solopreneur, then they’ll keep using it.

How do you do it as a solopreneur?

You’re a solopreneur who just landed a client. Let’s say you’re doing a marketing project for the VP of Marketing.

You now have a perfectly valid excuse to meet with the VP of Sales, the VP of Product, the Chief Revenue Office, or anyone else relevant in the organization.

My strong guess is they will all meet with you since you are now an insider.

If you had just emailed them cold, you’d be lucky if one of them even read your email.

This is to your advantage now as a solopreneur. Meet with them. Build relationships with them. Get them excited to work with you again for their solopreneur consultant needs.

I’ve constantly sold solopreneur work to co-workers of my initial clients. This strategy can work extremely well.

Implication: Bring your A game

There are a few implications we need to talk about, though.

You can’t half-ass the meetings with the co-workers. You are there to do a job for your existing client. You also won’t sell any work if you don’t impress the other team members.

You need to be on your A-game every meeting. Every meeting is a sales opportunity.

Implication: Fight the urge to please

A huge trap most solopreneurs fall into is trying to please your clients to the point of fault. Solopreneurs are especially susceptible to this fact when trying to Bring their A Game to impress other client team members.

If clients ask for something that doesn’t make sense, the say something.

Your life will be easier, and you’ll impress the client more as the one consultant willing to speak up and say “I don’t think this makes sense, and here’s why.”

Implication: client size matters here

As you can imagine, this only works with larger companies. I’ve never seen this consistently work with a client company below 100 people.

Optimally, you’re doing this at companies that are 500+ people.

How can I help?

If you reply to this email, it will come directly to me & I’ll respond as quickly as possible.

To head off a very common question: I’m sorry but I don’t have any quickstart guides or courses. I am helping one individual build their consulting business in exchange for a monthly fee as a test. We’ve already gotten him a 100% review score on UpWork. If you’re interested in testing this too, let me know!

What would be most helpful to read about next week?

Let me know what would be most helpful for you :)

What am I up to these days?

This newsletter isn’t about me; it’s about you. However, I keep getting asked, so I’ve added this little section.

Scholastic Capital

I’m now running Scholastic full-time. My business partner and I buy single-family homes in elite school districts and rent them to tenants for 3+ years. We aim to distribute monthly proceeds to investors and then sell the portfolio in 10-15 years for investors to get appreciation.

We’re well over 7 figures of raised capital and show no signs of slowing down!

If you are interested in following along, click here!

Or, if you’d like to talk about potentially joining us as an investor, click here

Skin-in-the-game consulting

Skin in the game consulting is where I consult for a company, but instead of a fee, I’m paid in equity. That way, our incentives are truly aligned to make sure the company succeeds.

Things are cooking here: one of the companies I advise has seen huge revenue growth over the past ~3 weeks.

The biggest change we made: simplifying things. They had way too many products and focus was spread too thin. They’re now focusing on just one thing, and it immediately led to revenue growth.