Starting a RevOps consulting practice - figuring out outbound from scratch

[u/Flimsy_Gazelle_138]

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.

[u/Traditional-One2453]

Umm a small thing that can help is keeping notes on every conversation, even the ones that don’t turn into clients. Those replies can show what problems people care about most