January 14, 2026
Author: Jason Faber
One of the questions I get asked most by people considering fractional consulting or already doing it is some version of:
“Where do you get your leads?”
My answer usually surprises people.
About 90% of my work comes from two places:
That means that I don't rely at all on tactics like outbound email, running ads, scouring job boards or joining marketplaces.
That doesn’t mean those things won’t work for you, it simply means they’re not the primary growth lever for my consulting business. I'll dive a bit more into those other tactics below with some examples of how they've worked for other fractionals I know.
This brief is about why referrals and network drive most of my work, how that actually happens in practice, and what this means if you’re trying to build (or scale) a fractional consulting business of your own.
The biggest mindset shift fractional consultants need to make is this: You are not selling a commodity. You are selling judgment, trust, and decision-making.
That changes how clients find you. Companies don’t wake up thinking “Let’s browse consultants.”, but they rather arrive at consulting when:
At that moment, trust matters more than discovery. And trust rarely comes from a landing page. It comes from people.
Leads from Referrals and my Network come from the following type of people:
Here's how it usually goes down.
Most of the time, a referral comes from someone I know who is playing matchmaker. Someone they know (colleague at their company, acquaintance, friend, brother in law, etc.) mentions that they are looking for SEO or growth help.
They hear a problem and say: “You should talk to Jason.” In fact, it usually comes with a direct introduction via email or LinkedIn.
What’s important here isn’t volume. It’s precision.
By the time the intro happens:
These conversations rarely feel like sales calls. They feel like problem-solving from the first minute. And since the matchmaker has made their recommendation, there's a baseline level of trust and comfort (both ways) right out of the gate.
This is less talked about, but just as important. In fact, this is where I got my most impactful work in 2025, with 48% of my leads coming from my network.
This happens when someone I know is leading a marketing or growth team, or has started their own business and reaches out to say "we should work together".
As opposed to referrals where the trust is partially transferred secondhand, leads from your network are derived from first-hand experience working with you. They know who you are, what your skills are, how you operate, your communication style, and what your dog's name is. They know they can trust and count on you.
When people hear “my work comes from referrals and my network,” they often assume passivity. "Lucky guy, leads just roll in with no effort". This couldn't be further from the truth.
Just like with SEO, this isn't built overnight. I didn't simply decide to start consulting one day and flip the "referral" and "network" lead switches. It doesn't work that way.
Like an iceberg, most people only see the tip, bobbing above the water, without considering the vast amount that exists below the surface. The fact of the matter is that my referral and network lead engine only works for me because of everything I've done in my 15 year career.
At the end of the day, referrals and your network are based on your reputation. You can't growth hack that.
It's really all about:
Before you dive into consulting, ask yourself if you have a strong network. If you even earlier in your career, think about how you can build a better, stronger network. The earlier you start, the better.
If you've already starting your consulting business, ask yourself: "am I effectively leveraging my network?"
Most fractionals aren't.
Newsflash: they won't!
Any good marketer understands that building a great product or offering means nothing if no one knows about it or can't find it. The great Ross Simmonds is the master of distribution (he even wrote an awesome book about it!)
A fractional consultant can only get leads from referrals and their network if they tell people about it.
Yes, unfortunately my friends, you do need to promote yourself (yuck, I know). And yes, for me LinkedIn is the best place to do this (double yuck).
Listen, there are dozens of effective ways to do this – I'm just going to share what has worked for me.
If people don't know what you do, they can’t refer or hire you.
When I post on LinkedIn, I am very intentional about communicating:
That consistent clarity travels further than any pitch deck or outbound email.
If people don't remember that you are consulting on (insert your craft here), they can't refer or hire you when an opportunity comes up.
A huge part of my strategy is staying top of mind with my network, which I do though
All of this reminds my network that "Jason is consulting" and "Jason specialized in SEO".
My content strategy on LinkedIn is simple: post consistently about SEO and Consulting. No content calendar, no rigid structure. Just share helpful and insightful stuff as much as I can.
This has the following effect:
Often, the content isn’t what creates demand. It’s what validates it when the timing is right.
If you’re early (or haven't started yet) this can feel frustrating.
You might think: “That’s great for you—but I don’t have that network yet.”
Two important points:
The fastest way to build a fractional consulting business is not to chase leads, but to build a trustworthy reputation that travels ahead of you.
Building a network is important, but it isn't the only way. If this is you, check out this amazing article by the talented Gev Marotz: No Network, No Problem: How I Found Clients Anyways
While most of my work comes from referrals and my network, that doesn’t mean other approaches don’t work—especially depending on your experience level, niche, and appetite for outbound.
Here are some of the more common paths other fractional consultants use to find clients, along with when they tend to work best.
Some fractional consultants successfully use cold or semi-warm outbound, especially when they’re tightly niched and highly targeted.
This tends to work best when:
The tradeoff is that outbound often attracts prospects earlier in their decision process, which can mean longer sales cycles and more education-heavy conversations.
Benjamin Watkins, a fractional consultant who works with healthcare brands on messaging and positioning, has successfully leveraged highly targeted cold outbound to land most of his clients.
"LinkedIn DMs generate around 80% of my leads. While there's a lot of terrible LinkedIn DMs out there, I try to simply be conversational and have a conversation. It's worked for me because I'm consistently sending 50-100 messages a day that only take about an hour or so to do. It's not about writing a super long message that's oddly super specific, but rather shouting out something you noticed on their profile, what you're working on that's relevant, and starting that conversation, especially as a consultant in a field that has long sales cycles like B2B Healthcare."
Sponsoring niche industry newsletters can work for consultants with:
This approach is relatively inexpensive, especially for consultants that offer ongoing monthly retainers to their clients. If you only land a single client from $1,000 in ad spend, it pays itself back pretty quickly. Flavio Rodrigues, a paid search consultant, saw impactful results when sponsoring a niche travel newsletter.
"Highly targeted newsletter sponsorships have been one of the most efficient lead channels for me. By sponsoring travel tech newsletters read by founders, CEOs, and CMOs, I consistently generate high quality inbound leads without having to spend hours on outbound prospecting. It is cost effective, highly targeted, and fits perfectly with my model as a specialist consultant focused on deep client work, not constant selling."
Paid search can work for fractional consultants in high-intent categories, but it’s rarely cheap or simple.
It works best when:
I've heard many fractional consultants testing this approach with varied success.
Publishing thoughtful, insightful content is one of the most common long-term plays. After all, that's what I'm doing with The Fractional Brief and my LinkedIn strategy.
Content tends to:
It compounds slowly, but often produces higher-quality conversations over time.
And for those of you that hate LinkedIn, there are many other platform and forms of content you can create:
Fractional and consulting marketplaces can be useful, especially early on.
They work best for:
A key watch-out with many marketplaces is if they might take a cut of your revenue, and how much. For some fractionals this is just the cost of doing business. For others, it is a non-starter.
Some great sites I'd recommend checking out:
If you find yourself scouring job boards like Fiver and Upwork, you're likely a freelancer – not a fractional. That's okay, but a worthy distinction which I'll dive into in a future brief. I freelanced for over ten years as a side hustle when working in house. That experience was invaluable to me when building my fractional practice.
In-person connections still matter! Who would have thought...
This includes:
IRL interactions compress trust-building. One good conversation can replace months of online back-and-forth. And if you can get yourself a speaking slot (one of my greatest fears in life), you can build that handy network and reputation we've discussed.
There’s no single “right” way to find work as a fractional consultant.
Different channels work at different stages. What matters most is choosing approaches that align with:
Referrals and network tend to dominate once trust compounds, but many fractionals mix in other channels thoughtfully along the way.
