Ep 205: 87 Warm Leads In 30 Days with Annie Graziani
She launched her firm with 87 warm leads already in the pipeline.
Not from ads. Not from a viral post. From relationships she’s maintained for 20+ years, and a very manual pass through more than 10,000 contacts.
Annie Graziani is the founder and CEO of Sovera Strategy, a research-based workforce transformation firm that closes the gap between what organizations design and what their people actually experience. She stood up her consulting practice right on the back end of finishing her doctorate, and she was booked out within 30 days.
We talked about where those warm leads came from, how she segmented her network without making it feel transactional, and the mental shift from being the dependable doer to being the expert in the room.
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The research came first
Annie didn’t set out to start a consulting firm. She figured her doctoral research would turn into a publication, or some kind of impact work. But as her topic sharpened, she kept seeing the same thing: people enduring work cultures that were never designed for how they actually live now.
So she asked them. What does success look like? What does an evening after a successful day look like when you sit down to dinner with your family (if that’s even in the cards)?
What she found: organizations know something’s off, so they throw solutions at a problem nobody has actually pinpointed. Sovera pinpoints it, with research that captures what’s really happening under the hood and connects the human reality to bottom-line impact leaders can’t ignore.
And sitting on all of those stories wasn’t something she could stomach. Her participants were brave enough to share candidly. The practice needed to honor their voices.
Your network has pockets
Most of those 87 leads came from people who already knew her work. Like a lot of us, Annie’s career has had a few evolutions, and each one left her with a different pocket of network: her luxury fashion network from her years in New York City, and later, her tech network.
The key? She kept those relationships alive. The people she worked alongside in her early 20s have moved into decision-making roles. They’ve seen her in action. So when they need this kind of work, the conversation is comfortable.
I heard the same thing over and over at the Solo Consultant Summit. Long-held relationships are one of the easiest lead sources you have, because every time someone moves to a new role, they can bring you into the next organization.
One catch: some of those people still remember “Little Annie,” fresh out of college. Part of the work is showing them who you are now.
Download everything, then segment
How did she figure out who to reach out to? Very manually.
Annie downloaded all of her LinkedIn connections and all of the contacts from her various email accounts. Well over 10,000 people. Then she went through them.
Was it rough? Yes. But she wanted that walk down memory lane. She wanted to appreciate where the value was in each relationship instead of treating her network like a list to blast.
From there, she kept narrowing. She hired a marketer to help pinpoint her ICP and sort the list into groups, including:
People she knows and wants to maintain real relationships with (no transactional treatment)
Cold leads, who get a different conversation
Each group gets a different iteration of the same messaging, so every conversation stays as authentic as possible.
Don’t leave your past in the past
Annie once told a professor in her doctoral program that once she’s done with something, it’s in her past. She doesn’t go back and turn it into a story. He told her that was a real miss.
That stuck with her for three years. And it connects to something Kendall Cherry and I talked about a couple of episodes ago: becoming a category of one. You don’t have to niche down to one industry and one service. You can build your positioning around you, weaving your history into the value you deliver today, so you become the only option for the people you’re right for.
Annie calls her approach very Dale Carnegie: do what’s authentically best for everyone involved. If there’s not a match, you can’t force one. Attract and repel marketing at its finest.
From the doer to the expert
For her entire career, Annie was the doer. Give it to Annie, she’ll get it done. (Same, girl. Same.)
Shifting from the person who does everything to the expert on a subject is a mindset transition, and a perception one. If you don’t acknowledge it, imposter syndrome creeps in, or people start to see you that way.
Part of the shift for her was delegation. She didn’t waste time on what she didn’t know. Could she learn it? Sure. Anyone can learn anything. But is it worth your time? She needed to get this work into the world quickly, so she found people to support those functional areas.
Why this work matters right now
Our work structures were designed close to 100 years ago. People have evolved. Technology has evolved. The structure hasn’t.
Then the pandemic hit as the ultimate equalizer, followed closely by AI and all the anxiety that came with it. What does this replace about my work? Will I still have a job?
Add dual-income households, a higher cost of living, and an always-on culture, and you get a workforce operating under duress. That’s why Sovera works on two channels: B2B research that closes gaps inside organizations, and an individual channel for people who are looking for some hope.
As Annie put it, so many people are experiencing this compression that it shouldn’t be hard to get 87 warm leads right away.
The biggest thing to remember
Your warmest leads are probably people you already know. Maintain those relationships, do the (very manual) work of segmenting your network, and talk to each group like the humans they are.
Annie Graziani
Annie Graziani is the founder and CEO of Sovera, a research-based workforce transformation firm that measures how people experience organizational change so adoption holds. She holds an Ed.D. from Penn GSE and spent 20 years in transformation roles at LVMH - Marc Jacobs, Tapestry, and various Microsoft partners.
