One attendee wrote in:

How does one generate leads to serve clients that have enough need and finances to take advantage of me, as a solo practitioner with management consulting, financial planning, tax, and accounting expertise? I am not looking for a large practice, 10 to 15 clients that will spend $15,000 to $25,000 or more a year.

If I were to rephrase this question, it might go something like this:

How do I make a quarter of a million dollars as a solo practitioner in my field?

A simple, but broad question. Broad though as it may be, it got me thinking of the basics of building a solid small practice.

First and foremost, you need to be good at what you do. Obvious point, you say? In my experience, everyone thinks their services and their value are all that and a bag of chips. In reality, they're not that good. Making sure your services are, indeed, top quality is top priority.

Regarding your marketing and lead generation strategy, you need to:

• Know who your target market is, and know as much about them – company by company, buyer by buyer – as possible.
  
  
• Know the value of your services; you might want to charge $15k to $25k per year, but someone might not see the value enough to buy it for that much.
  
  
• Be able to communicate that value one-to-many, such as in a website, and one-to-one, such as in sales conversations.
  
  
• Be able to uncover need, craft solutions, and win business.
  
  
• Understand who your real competition is for your services.
  
  
• Stick with a program to implement your marketing and lead generation. (Most solo providers that I've met haven't been able to stick with anything long enough to make it work.)

In terms of lead generation tactics, there are many ways up the mountain, especially for solo practitioners. People want to know does cold calling work? What about PR? Should I speak and write to establish myself as a thought leader? How about direct mail and email? Search optimization for my website? Good ol' networking and referrals? The answers to those questions are...yes in general. And, for you specifically...it depends.

You need to figure out for yourself a) which tactics you are going to use and why, and b) how to get them done well. There's no simple, good answer or secret lead generation tactic that's going to work for everyone.

If you're interested in digging in more deeply and coming up with those answers for yourself, you can start with: this webinar on lead generation, this white paper on lead generation, and this research report on what's working in lead generation.