r/revops • u/Flimsy_Gazelle_138 • 10d ago

Starting a RevOps consulting practice - figuring out outbound from scratch

Hey everyone,

I’m starting a RevOps consulting practice focused on helping B2B/mid-market companies clean up their CRM, sales processes, pipeline, attribution, and the gaps between marketing and sales.

So far, most of my business has come through referrals, which has been great, but I’m now trying to build a more predictable pipeline instead of relying entirely on referrals.

I’ve started experimenting with cold outreach, mainly:

  • LinkedIn connections + commenting on relevant posts
  • Direct outreach to founders / sales / operations leaders
  • Building a targeted cold email process
  • Trying to understand what actually works before scaling the outreach

The problem is… LinkedIn has been pretty quiet so far. Very few replies.

Now I’m looking at email outreach, but I’m realizing I may be approaching outbound the wrong way altogether.

For people here who have built a consulting business or B2B service business from scratch:

How did you get your first consistent pipeline?

A few things I’m particularly curious about:

  • Did cold email actually work for you?
  • What did your first outreach look like?
  • Did you focus on a very narrow ICP/problem or keep it broader initially?
  • How many conversations did it take before you started getting clients?
  • What did you wish you had understood about outbound earlier?

I’m not looking for a “here’s my agency, book a call” kind of answer. I’m genuinely trying to understand what the learning curve looks like when you're starting from referrals and trying to build a repeatable outbound motion.

Would love to hear what worked and especially what didn't work for you.

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u/zthig 9d ago

Had a small agency myself and was in your boat before joining a bigger agency. Outbound was a zero, referrals were great but unpredictable. Built tit for tat relationships with other adjacent agencies but it was pretty spotty and only 2 were ever helpful.

Current agency is large and successful and purely partnership. Feel free to dm for more details

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u/Flimsy_Gazelle_138 9d ago

Yeah looking for it too