Insights · the Fimiliar blog
How consulting and professional service firms win clients.
Practical guides for consulting and professional service firms on winning clients.
Latest articles
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How to choose a lead generation agency for consulting and professional service firms.
Twelve questions to take into any agency pitch, five red flags, and an honest look at channel specialists versus one system.
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How to get your consulting or professional service firm recommended by AI: a practical GEO guide.
What AI engines actually search for before they name a firm, a five-part checklist, a before and after, and how to measure whether AI recommends you.
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How to do relationship-led outbound on LinkedIn (and book meetings without spam).
Find who is already engaging, comment before you connect, and only message when you can name the reason. Six steps, a message check, and an example thread.
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Warm vs cold outbound for consulting and professional service firms: what changes, and what it costs you to get it wrong.
Cold outbound starts from a list, warm outbound from a reason. The same first message both ways, what counts as a real reason, and what cold costs a firm.
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How to grow a consulting or professional service firm beyond referrals: a lead generation plan.
Referrals are proof, not a plan. A 90-day plan to map the accounts you want, get known, capture signals and act, and how to tell it is working.
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What is Fimiliar? Trust-led lead generation for consulting and professional service firms.
What Fimiliar is, who it is for and not for, how the four stages and eleven channels work as one system, and who runs it.
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How to turn your expertise into LinkedIn content that sounds like you.
Don't write from scratch: get interviewed, write from how you talk, and treat every post as documentation of something that already happened.
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LinkedIn ghostwriting agency vs lead generation agency: which does a consulting or professional service firm need?
What a ghostwriting agency and a lead generation agency each produce, where each fails on its own, and six tests for a ghostwriter who sounds like you.
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Personal branding for partners at consulting and professional service firms: why the partner's name wins the work.
Why buyers hire the partner before the firm, and Jono's five-move method, with a one-page exercise, for building a partner's brand that sounds like them.
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Lead generation for consulting and professional service firms: 11 channels and what each one is for.
Consulting and professional service firms win work on Fimiliarity. The eleven channels that build it, what each one is for, and which your firm needs first.
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Fimiliar vs an outbound lead generation agency: which does a consulting or professional service firm need?
An outbound agency books meetings fast. Fimiliar builds Fimiliarity with the people who decide. When to pick each.
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10 buying signals that show a target account is warming up.
Five signals read a person's Fimiliarity, five read whether the account is ready. How to read the two, and when to act.
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Why the decision is made before you get the call.
Nine in ten buyers choose a vendor already on their day-one shortlist. What that means for where a firm spends its effort.
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Why Fimiliarity and readiness are different questions.
Fimiliarity is how well each person knows you. Readiness is whether the account can act. Merging them into one score loses the thing that matters.
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What a buying group actually looks like.
An average buying group is 13 people inside the company and 9 more outside it. Why one warm relationship does not win the deal.
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Sources · Bain & Company and Google, in Harvard Business Review, September 2022; Forrester, "The State of Business Buying, 2026". Each piece carries its source, base and caveat in full.
By category
Pick a starting point.
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Original data, benchmarks and findings.
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Practical ways to improve your growth system.
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Signals, timing and conversations.
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What your market is doing before the meeting.
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Getting your firm named when buyers ask AI (generative engine optimisation).
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Personal branding, story, and content that sounds like you.
Questions
What people ask about Insights.
Short answers.
Who writes the Fimiliar blog?
Cathleen Vermaak-Nisbet, co-founder and CEO of Fimiliar, and Jonathan Peters-Newman, co-founder and Head of Content. Between them they run the work the articles describe: mapping who shapes a buying decision, building Fimiliarity with those people, and judging when an account is ready for a conversation.
Who is the blog for?
Partners and leaders at consulting and professional service firms: firms that sell expertise, where the buying group is large and the decision is often made before anyone calls. If you are working out how your firm wins more of the clients it wants, the articles are written for you.
Where do the figures in the articles come from?
From published research. Every figure in an article is shown with its source, the base behind it, such as how many buyers were surveyed, and any caveat, for example when a number is an average across purchase types rather than specific to services firms.
Can I use these ideas without hiring Fimiliar?
Yes. Each article is written to be useful on its own, whether or not you ever work with us: how a buying group is made up, which signals show an account warming up, which lead generation channels do which job. Take what helps. If you would like to talk your own situation through, book a call.