Companies that offer consulting services tend to deal with difficulties regarding cold outreach campaigns due to the competitive and saturated market. Having dealt with our clients’ cases, we researched and applied different approaches and campaign types. However, we noticed that approaches when applied inappropriately to certain industry affects low replies. Moreover, we outlined the main obstacles restraining the outreach from proceeding with the connection with the prospects: 

• Poor branding
• No case studies
• No reviews
• Wide portfolio of services with no focus

In this article, we’ll show you how different consulting services, their TAs and ICPs impact the bottom line. Below we provide you with approaches and tailored templates that we outlined and divided for specific types of consulting services. Read on to select the one that will best suit your specific use case.

In this article you’ll find out:

• Guide for consulting services to boost their response rates in cold outreach campaigns
• Common obstacles for low replies in cold outreach
• Best practices for making the consulting outreach campaign more viable
• Different email campaign types tailored to specific consulting business directions
• Step-by-step instructions on how to create cold emails with high reply rates

How to make your consulting outreach campaign more viable?

1. First of all, your product has to be extremely relevant to your target audience. In order to find the prospect that will be interested in your product/service, you have to create your ideal customer portfolio (ICP). But the main issue here is that the results can be though insignificant unless you narrow down your TA and specify your product offerings. For this purpose, you can divide your portfolio into small products and promote them accordingly. 

1. Reach out to smaller companies. There are considerably more chances to set up an appointment with your prospects when the company your target consists of 51-200 employees. Obviously, 11-50 employees will drive better results. 

1. Analyze and select the industries that will work best for your specific service. We can name several industries that proved to be the best resonant ones: higher education, healthcare, government administration, manufacturing, IT services, and primary/secondary education. However, your specific offering has to be correlated with the target industry. 

1. Identify titles and learn their behavioral patterns. We can share our insights on what titles best work for targeting your consulting service or product. For targeting small companies, we recommend focusing on CEOs, business owners and founders, and CIOs. Reaching out to big enterprises, select VPs, Directors, Heads, and managers of strategy/analytics/business development/IT. 

1. Adapt your email templates in accordance with your value proposition.  

Serrano 23 Tip: Abovementioned recommendations are geared toward general rules specifically for consulting teams. We shared the insights we elaborated upon during our cooperation with clients in this niche. If you need detailed descriptions and tips on how to craft and personalize cold emails, develop strategies, and how to pitch your products via the incorporation of tailored industry-specific campaign types, check out our blog posts. 

Best-Performing Approaches for different types of consulting services (with tailored templates)

To determine which approach will perform better, you need to consider several factors, including target audience preferences and business needs, the industry you target, demographical and geographical peculiarities, and of course, the title you address to. 

At Serrano 23, we created several email campaign types that we apply for different consulting business directions. We that we mean that to achieve a high level of personalization for each business type we split the consulting industry into three subcategories:

1. Business Consulting
2. IT Consulting
3. Industry-specific consulting

Since the challenges of business consulting and IT services intersect, we apply similar campaign types for both.

Business Consulting and IT services

These consulting business directions are trending and in order to gain traction and stand out from the crowd, your business has to acquire brand recognition among competitors. If your brand is not well-known in the industry, it is recommended to target businesses with up to 200 employees in the company. Furthermore, identify your value and its relevance to the target audience. To yield even more results, sort out your target audiences into smaller categories that will be more likely to consider your particular offerings. 

• Event campaign/conference
  

The goal of this campaign is to invite the prospect to the event and set up an offline appointment to discuss a potential partnership and establish a trustful connection. 

Example: 

Wave 1

Subject line A: {{FirstName}}, your spot at {{EventName}}

Subject line B: by-invitation event for {{FirstName}}

Hi {{FirstName}},

As a {{Title}}, we believe you would be interested to join our list of select attendees at the {{Event Name}}. The conference is just around the corner and we’ve already reserved a seat just for you.

Join us on {{Date}}, at the {{Event Location}} in {{City Name}}. The focus of this roundtable is to help data and analytics leaders understand how to achieve next-level customer experience in a post-pandemic world. Our by-invitation event ensures a productive space where select professionals can network and share expertise.

Attendees are promised to leave with new perspectives and actionable insights for up-leveling their CX, thanks to 15+ industry-leading speakers, 50+ senior-level executives, 40+ Fortune 500 company delegates, 6+ hours of premium content, 8+ hours of networking time, etc. 

{{FirstName}}, we’d love to see you there and have already reserved your spot. Simply reply “YES” to this email to receive your invitation.

Best,

{{Sender.FirstName}}

• Face-to-face campaign

This campaign type is mostly appreciated among the prospects since you invest your time to meet the prospect which makes him feel special. F2F meetings can be transformed into online appointments further. 

Example: 

Wave 1

Subject line A: meeting in {{City}}

Subject line B: lunch in {{City}}, {{FirstName}}?

{{time_of_the_day}} {{FirstName}},

My name is {{Name}}. I am an assistant to the CEO at {{Company Name}}. As our founder is going to travel for business to {{City}} next week, he’d like to meet with you. Could you let me know if you would be available for lunch with him? 

To give you a brief idea, Kabeer Consulting helps 50 000+ mid-sized and small businesses grow faster via SAP B1 ERP. Platform’s deployment might result in an average of +8% revenue growth and +6% gross margin boost for {{Company}}. 

Is next {{Two_days_from_now}} good for a lunch in {{City}} with our CEO and founder? Should we swing by your office instead?

Best regards,

• Taco Tuesday campaign

This campaign type is geared toward setting up a connection between you and your prospect in an informal atmosphere when you invite him to visit your office for a “Taco event”. This is a good opportunity to create a network of interested prospects and promote your product in a delicate manner. This approach suits local businesses only. 

Example:

Wave 1

Subject line B: meeting in downtown {{City}}

Hi {{FirstName}}

First off, please accept my apologies for contacting you out of the blue. I’m sure you get a lot of emails that you have to go through**.** My name is {{Name}}, I’m the founder and Principal Consultant at {{Company}}. We help {{Industry}} companies launch their digital products and are laser-focused on covering any development needs – reducing time to market while sticking to the budget.

I’m extremely interested in personally showing you how we can help {{Company}} with ongoing development projects. I’m willing to travel to {{City}} to give a quick consultation and discuss a potential partnership between our companies.

What day would work best for you?

Best,

Wave 2 A – same thread

Hi {{FirstName}},

Following up, I was wondering if you could carve out some time to chat.

Thought we could meet and have a conversation over a taco lunch – tacos on me 🙂

Would next Tuesday work?

Best,

 

• Partnership campaign

This approach allows for exploring collaboration opportunities rather than promoting or selling your product directly. Mind that companies that are bigger than yours are not your target audiences for offering partnership relationships. 

Example:

Wave 1 – A

Subject Line A: {{FirstName}}, are you still with {{Company}}?

Subject Line B: Any slots on Tuesday, {{First name}}?

Hi {{FirstName}},

I am searching for possible partners in {{Country}}, and {{Company}} caught my eye – visited your LinkedIn profile and was really excited by your experience and expertise in IT. I would like to learn how you handle the development projects at {{Company}}. However, I am unsure whom I’m supposed to get in touch with – would that be you or {{ReferralName}}?

Whether you have your sights on Artificial Intelligence, the Internet of Things, the Cloud, blockchain, or beyond, we are interested in becoming your trusted technological partner as you embark on your digital future.

I would appreciate an opportunity to talk next week and discuss a strategic tech partnership between our companies. Are you open for a call on Tuesday or Wednesday?

Best,

{{Sender}}

Industry-specific consulting

In comparison to business consulting and IT services, industry-specific consulting has a targeted niche audience which makes cold email outreach achieve faster results. The most viable and best-performing approaches we apply for clients that have narrow-profile expertise are referral+case study and F2F.

Referral + case study campaign

The main goal of this approach is to set up an appointment by asking the prospect about a colleague in the company who can be more related to the offering. If you have solid social proof in the format of case studies, it’s a good opportunity to utilize them in your template to pique prospects’ interest. 

Example:

Subject Line: Our data talk next Thursday

Hi {{FirstName}},

Are you the right person at {{Company}} to discuss a bespoke data analytics solution, or should I contact {{Referral_Name}}?

You can gain the insights and intelligence you need to enhance decision-making, automate time and labour-intensive processes, and address inefficient processes, relying on Analytics Engines.

As data experts, we collaborate closely with our clients to identify and comprehend their needs to create a solution that generates value from data. We’ve helped the Northern Ireland Audit Office adopt a data-enabled approach to audit by automating anomaly detection.

Would you or {{Referral_Name}} be able to join a virtual meeting with a data expert next Thursday at 2 p.m. to explore your challenges?

Regards,

Wrap Up

If you are looking for an appropriate approach toward cold email campaigns for your consulting product, first you need to adapt your outreach to the business requirements and paradigm shifts of the company you target. Since nowadays consulting market is competitive and saturated, the main goal while reaching out to prospects is to narrow down the targeting industries and adhere to your value proposition accordingly. If you need help in crafting emails tailored to your specific audience and title, let us know, our industry-specific email writers will help you launch your project or modify existing campaigns that require improvements.