Thought Leadership Rapid Revenue Acceleration program
In 120 days, transform your existing thought leadership practice into a business with:
Are you leaving money
on the table?
Does all the revenue you generate
require you to be in the room
or in the Zoom?
Do you have untapped opportunities for growth?
The Thought Leadership Rapid Revenue Acceleration program is designed for people who have entered (or want to enter) the world of thought leadership and increase their revenue cost effectively without adding substantial fixed costs or overhead.
Thought leaders can focus on the work they love instead of being frustrated with marketing, sales, procurement, client management, negotiating, and all the other tasks unrelated to spreading their message.
This program is led by Peter Winick, and Bill Sherman (CEO and COO of Thought Leadership Leverage). Peter and Bill have each worked with thought leaders and their businesses for over twenty years. And they have pretty much seen it all. In addition to helping thought leadership clients accelerate their revenue…
Thought Leadership Rapid Revenue Acceleration
This program is designed to move from one-off, unpredictable transactional engagements to multiple streams of revenue by properly productizing your thought leadership activities.
We work with people who have good IP and are committed to putting in the effort to get their business on a growth trajectory.
Does this sound like you?
You’ve entered thought leadership—authored a book, given a TED, done primary research, are a consultant, academic, or coach.
You feel you’re leaving money on the table with existing clients.
You have proven demand from organizations that want your IP.
You aren’t a natural marketer, salesperson, or CEO, but you wear all three hats because you don’t have sales and marketing teams.
You’re overwhelmed and confused by social media tactics, PR, and the like.
You dream of recurring, passive revenue, maybe with an exit.
Why Thought Leadership Leverage?
We have been in the thought leadership world for over 20 years, and we have worked with more boutique TL businesses than most anyone. We are recognized and acknowledged as leaders in our space. We’ve helped grow small opportunities into six-figure, high-margin engagements. In many cases, we’ve helped clients close their largest deals ever.
We act like business partners. You’ll get direct, honest advice from us.
On the go-to-market side, we have:
Common Questions
- Onboarding/Due Diligence and Goal Setting (30 days)—we take on the role of business consultants. We review the items you bring to the project. We meet virtually and ask questions to understand your ideas, your offerings, and the current state of your business. We discuss your goals, needs, and constraints.
- Targeted Outreach (90 days)—we help you craft and test a new go-to-market approach. We help you activate your network through disciplined outreach and lead generation. We put processes in place to ensure you do it effectively and often.
- Sales Support (ongoing)—once you identify a lead, we work it on your behalf. This includes scoping conversations, negotiations, proposal writing, pricing, and procurement.
Meetings are held virtually via Zoom (in-person option available upon request).
- The investment for this program is $16,000, due upon inception.
- We (TLL) receive a 20% success fee for opportunities that we work with you—and if we start on a deal with you, we will work alongside you to help you close it—even if the program ends.
- Samples of your core IP
- 4-5 clients (or potential clients) that you’re willing to speak to during the program
- Any historical sales data, including pipeline reports and account plans
- Samples of your products and offerings
- Financials for the current and past year or two
- Sample proposals as well as win/loss ratio and pipeline
At the start of the project, TLL will work with you to establish responsibilities. We’ll each commit to doing “x” by “y” date or at “z” frequency.
A common ask of our clients is that they conduct regular outreach (with our support) to their network of contacts. We’ve learned that a thought leader is often excellent at opening doors. We want to see a regular cadence of outreach.
We do that for some of our clients. We take on the roles of sales, sales engineering, and account planning. But to do that we need to be aligned long-term towards the same goals.
Here’s what we’re looking for.
- Thought leaders who have quality IP that has been (or can be) validated by data and research.
- Thought leaders who have or want to grow their business to $500,000 to $5,000,000 in annual revenue.
- Thought leaders who want to build a long-term partnership based on trust.
- Thought leaders who are willing to do the work to help grow the business. (We can’t care about your business more than you do.)
We might part ways. If so, that’s ok. You retain ownership of your IP. You’ll be equipped with new sales and marketing plans. And if you land a big opportunity (perhaps the biggest you’ve ever run into) you can always ask us to help you win that deal.
We might also help you with some fee-for-service work to help strengthen your go-to-market processes and offerings. But that’s getting ahead of ourselves. We’re going to focus on your growth first.
Here are some examples of the increased value that we have created for our clients
- A pharmaceutical company approached a keynote speaker to speak at an event. This would normally have been a one-off engagement, but we turned it into a seven-figure deal for the client.
- A clothing retailer approached an expert and asked them to provide free advice on a matter urgent to the company. We turned this opportunity into a $250,000 retainer.
- An energy company’s executive received a reconnection email from his former coach (our client). This reactivated relationship turned into $700,000 in revenue for our client.
- A tech giant had used an expert’s content for years. The expert had sold a license at less than quarter of the market rate for the IP. We stepped in to negotiate the renewal on behalf of our client. We closed a three-year renewal at market rates.
- A broadcast company reached out to one of our clients for a keynote. We expanded this opportunity into an enterprise-level diagnostic with a report to senior leadership (in addition to the keynote).
- A global financial services client requested a keynote. We helped turn the opportunity into a mid-six-figure engagement through the CFO’s office.
- A financial service reached out to an expert for a keynote. This opportunity expanded into a custom train-the-trainer, certification, and licensing of the IP
- A technology giant requested an expert to deliver a webinar. We grew this opportunity into a multi-year licensing deal for our client.
- An equipment manufacturer contacted an expert wanting a webinar. The deal expanded to a multi-year license of the IP, custom integration, as well as certification.
- An electronics manufacturer had embedded a client’s IP into their high-potential program without licensing it. While our client was flattered, they were also frustrated at the missed revenue opportunity. We helped the client negotiate a 3-year license agreement for their IP with the manufacturer.
- An airline requested an academic to deliver a single webinar. We helped our client expand this opportunity into multiple in-person and remote sessions.
- A law firm wanted to draw upon an expert’s ideas for their in-house legal and administrative teams. We negotiated a deal to license the IP.
- An online university wanted to embed an expert’s content into their MBA curriculum. We served as the expert’s representative, and we negotiated a licensing agreement for the IP.
- An expert had written a best-selling business book and wanted to do a multi-city book tour. We identified potential sponsors for the book tour and successfully negotiated a seven-figure sponsorship deal for our client, more than funding the costs of the book tour.
- A training company was selling presentation skills at market rates into HR. We helped them reposition the existing offering to their existing media clients and win premium pricing. Instead of positioning presentation skills as a skill development program, we created “Presenting During the Upfronts” (the event where television companies pitch their shows to advertisers to sell ad blocks). These high stakes were considered “can’t fail” events and we crafted a solution to provide pre-event and onsite event support to ensure their Upfront events reached their advertising targets.
