Lead Generation for Business Coaches and Consultants

Smirnov Consulting Group books qualified meetings with CEOs, founders, HR directors and heads of learning and development at small and mid-sized companies for business coaches, consultants and fractional executives, using cold email and LinkedIn.

US business consulting and coaching firm: 204 sales calls in 4 months, from LinkedIn outreach and LinkedIn content.
UK business coach: 6-7 coaching packages sold per week at GBP 4,200 each, four weeks after launch.

Smirnov Consulting Group is a Prague-based B2B outbound lead generation agency that runs cold email and LinkedIn campaigns for founder-led B2B companies and books qualified sales calls. 12 years in outbound, hundreds of B2B companies, 24 countries.

Who this is for

Experts who sell their own time and judgment to businesses, at a high ticket:

Business coaches and executive coaches
Management consultants and small consulting firms, from solo practices to about 20 people
HR consultants and corporate trainers
Fractional CMOs, CFOs and COOs
Professional speakers and advisors who sell workshops, keynotes or retainers to companies (we already run campaigns for public speakers)

The person who hires us is you: the coach, the consultant, the founder or the managing partner of the practice.

The people we book you with depend on what you sell. Executive coaches and HR consultants talk to CHROs, HR directors and heads of learning and development. Sales trainers talk to VPs of sales and sales directors. Fractional CFOs talk to founders and CEOs who just raised money or outgrew their bookkeeper. Fractional CMOs talk to CEOs and managing directors whose marketing has no owner. Management consultants talk to COOs, managing directors and owners of companies with a specific problem to fix.

Deal size: coaching packages, consulting projects and fractional retainers in the thousands per client, often more. The UK coach below sells packages at GBP 4,200. At that ticket, a few new clients a month changes the whole year.

Why outbound is hard for coaches and consultants

You are the product. Nobody buys coaching from a logo. A message that says "our team of experts" fails, because the buyer wants to know who exactly will sit across the table. The outreach has to come from you and sound like you.

Your LinkedIn profile is your landing page. Before anyone replies, they open your profile. A profile with no clear offer, no results and a headline that says "Helping leaders grow" loses the meeting before it starts.

Executives get the same coaching pitch every day. "I help leaders become the best version of themselves." Every HR director has read that sentence a hundred times, usually from someone they have never heard of. Their guard is up before your first line.

You might not have a lead gen problem. You might have a packaging problem. "Leadership coaching" or "strategy consulting" is not an offer. "A 90-day program that gets new sales managers to quota" is. A vague offer sent to a vague list gets nothing, on any channel.

Delivery eats selling time. A solo consultant billing hours has no time to prospect. When the calendar is full, nobody sells. When the projects end, the pipeline is empty and the referrals are slow.

Content alone does not fill a calendar. Many coaches post every week and get likes from other coaches. Content helps, but it does not put booked calls with the right buyers in your calendar on a schedule.

How we run outbound for coaches and consultants

1. Package the offer first. Pick one outcome and one type of buyer, then design a small entry point: a diagnostic session, a team assessment, a half-day workshop. It lets a buyer try you before they commit to a full program.

2. Turn your profile into the landing page. Clear headline with who you help and what result, an About section built like a sales page, case studies with numbers, and a short video if you have one. In the US case below, founder profile optimization was part of the campaign.

3. Build lists around the moment someone needs you. We build lists in LinkedIn Sales Navigator by title, industry and headcount, then filter for timing: a new CEO or HR director in the first months in the seat, a company hiring the role a fractional executive would cover, a founder who just raised a round and now needs a finance lead, a sales team that is growing fast. Every email gets verified to keep the bounce rate below 0.5%.

4. LinkedIn from your own profile, email underneath. For this niche LinkedIn does most of the work. Buyers want to see the person, and the business owners who can afford a high-ticket coach or consultant often skip Facebook and YouTube, but they are on LinkedIn. We run connection requests and conversations from your profile, with warm email follow-ups (an email that arrives after the LinkedIn touch, so your name is already familiar). Cold email runs as a separate layer when the list is big enough, for example HR directors across a region.

5. Content and outbound together. If you already post, outbound puts your posts in front of the right people: the prospects who accept your request see your content next. If you do not post, we can add LinkedIn content to the plan, as we did in the US case.

6. Compliance. Most of our campaigns target the USA, the UK and English-speaking Europe. Business contacts only, a simple way to opt out in every email, and anyone who asks to stop is removed and not re-added. Your current clients and anyone you name are excluded before launch. We follow CAN-SPAM in the US and UK GDPR and PECR in the UK. In Germany, Austria and the Czech Republic, where business email needs prior consent, we do not send cold email without a compliant basis and run LinkedIn instead. This is how we work, not legal advice.

Case study: US business consulting and coaching firm, 204 sales calls in 4 months

Client: a business consulting and coaching firm in the USA.

What we ran: LinkedIn outbound plus LinkedIn content marketing, founder profile optimization, and lists built in Sales Navigator.

The numbers:

39% of connection requests accepted (38 of 98)
Month 1: 27 sales calls
Month 2: 35 sales calls
Month 3: 64 sales calls
Month 4: 78 sales calls (204 minus the first three months)
204 sales calls in 4 months in total

Every month beat the one before, and month 4 booked almost three times as many calls as month 1. Both channels were LinkedIn: outreach and content.

A second result, different client: a business coach in the UK. We ran LinkedIn outreach for a GBP 4,200 coaching package. Four weeks after we started, the coach was selling 6-7 packages per week.

More results in our case studies.

Timeline and price

About 15 days from signed contract to launch: onboarding starts in the first week (usually one 60-minute call plus a few emails), then the offer is packaged, the profile rebuilt, the first list built and verified, and accounts set up.
First 30 days live: first conversations and first calls. In the US case that was 27 calls.
Months 2 to 4: we keep the messages that get replies, drop the rest, and add volume. Same case: 35 calls, then 64, then 78.

A call is not a signed client. Companies buying a coaching program or a consulting project often take months to decide, and in B2B, sales cycles of 6, 9 or 12 months are normal. Calls can come in the first 30 days while the contracts from them close four months later or more. That is why we recommend at least 3 months, and why about 6 months is the industry average for outbound to work fully.

Who runs your campaign. Senior people only, no interns or juniors writing in your voice: lead generation experts, GTM architects, GTM engineers and AI specialists. We work with a small number of clients so each gets full attention, and we take full responsibility for results. A senior team member is your day-to-day contact, and you have a direct line to Artem, the founder. You get a weekly and a monthly report, live notifications every day, and a client portal with live campaign data if you want one. A message in your voice is only as good as the person writing it, so ask any agency who that person will be. With us, you can see them.

Price. From USD 3,000 (about EUR 2,500) per month, up to USD 10,000+ when the work needs more channels, markets or volume. The final number depends on scope, markets, volume and team size. The fee covers all our work: strategy, list building, copy, campaign setup, sending management, reply handling and reporting. Tools, sending domains, mailboxes and data are paid by you directly. If your foundations need work first, such as the LinkedIn profile, the website, case studies or a sales video, a one-time setup fee may apply, agreed case by case. No minimum contract, one month's notice to cancel. Full details on the pricing page.

If you want to run the outreach yourself, we also work 1-on-1 as consultants or in group coaching: we show you how, you do the work, we review it.

Not a fit if

You are still building your first coaching or consulting offer, and nobody has paid your current price yet. Outbound brings buyers to an offer that already sells. It cannot build the offer for you.
You sell to individuals, not to companies. Life coaching for private clients is not what we do.
You do not want your own name and face on the outreach.
You cannot take on new clients in the next 60 to 90 days.

FAQ

Does anyone specialize in booking sales calls for business coaches?

Yes. Smirnov Consulting Group runs LinkedIn and cold email outbound for business coaches, executive coaches and consultants, and books the calls into their calendar. One US coaching and consulting firm booked 204 sales calls in 4 months with us. A UK business coach sold 6-7 coaching packages per week, four weeks after launch. We only work with coaches who sell to companies, not to private individuals.

Is there an outbound agency that works with fractional executives?

Yes. Fractional CMOs, CFOs and COOs sell their own time and judgment, the same way consultants do, so the same system applies. The buying trigger is also easy to see. A company hiring a full-time head of marketing or finance is a buyer for interim help. A founder who just raised a round needs a finance lead. We build lists around those signals and run outreach from your own profile, so the buyer meets the executive they would actually work with.

Should I hire one freelancer or an agency to run outreach for my consulting practice?

If you want one experienced person, work with us 1-on-1: we set up the system and coach you or your assistant to run it. If you want it done for you, hire a team. A freelancer who only sends messages is not a system. Results come from the list, the profile, the offer and the follow-ups together, and one person rarely covers all four.

I am a solo consultant with no time for outbound. Can you run it while I stay on delivery?

Yes. We build the list, write the messages in your voice, run your LinkedIn and email outreach and book the calls. You approve the messages at the start and take the calls. Everything else, from the list to the follow-ups, stays off your desk while you deliver for the clients you already have.

Do you run cold email campaigns for HR consulting firms and corporate trainers?

Yes. HR consultants and corporate trainers sell to HR directors, CHROs and heads of learning and development, and that list is large enough for cold email to work alongside LinkedIn. The offer matters more than the channel here: a specific program for a specific problem, such as onboarding new managers, gets replies. "Training solutions" does not.

Should a consultant focus on content or on outbound?

Do both. When a prospect checks your profile, your posts are what convince them you know your subject. Outbound is how the right prospects get to your profile at all. Outbound picks the 1,000 people you want to talk to and starts the conversation.

What should I ask an outbound agency before choosing one?

Ask for real campaign examples from coaches or consultants, with numbers and time frames. Ask who writes the messages and whether you approve them. Ask who does the work day to day: with us it is senior people only, never juniors. Ask about commitment: we have no minimum contract and one month's notice, and we recommend at least 3 months so the campaign has time to learn and improve. Be careful with anyone who wants a full year upfront before you have seen one booked call.

Outbound lead generation for business coaches and consultants