Most business owners, when they want more revenue, look outward. They think about new leads, a bigger ad budget, a better website, a new service line. All of that takes time and money you may not have right now.
Here's what I've found after 26 years of working with small and mid-size businesses: the fastest path to new revenue almost always runs through the people who already know you, already trust you, and already said yes to you once before.
The strategy I'm about to walk you through is one I call the Dormant Client Conversation. It's covered in Rapid Results, and it's one of the most consistently effective tactics in the book — because it costs nothing, takes less than a week to execute, and tends to surface revenue that business owners didn't even realize they'd left on the table.
What a Dormant Client Actually Is
A dormant client isn't a lost client. They didn't fire you, they didn't leave angry, and they don't require a win-back campaign. They're simply someone who did business with you at some point — maybe once, maybe several times — and then went quiet.
Life got busy. Their priorities shifted. They assumed you were too expensive, or too occupied with other clients, or that the timing wasn't right. In most cases, none of those assumptions are accurate. But nobody corrected them, because nobody reached out.
Silence isn't rejection. Most of the time, it's just silence.
— Rapid Results, 2nd Edition
Go back through your records — invoices, old emails, your CRM if you have one — and pull a list of every client or customer you haven't heard from in six months or more. That list is your starting point.
How the Conversation Works
This isn't a sales call. That distinction matters, and it needs to shape how you approach it from the first sentence.
The goal of the Dormant Client Conversation is simply to check in. You're not pitching. You're not sending a promotional offer. You're reaching out as a person who valued the relationship and wants to know how things are going. The revenue follows from the connection — not the other way around.
What to actually say
Keep it short. Something like: "Hey [Name], it's been a while and I realized I haven't checked in. How are things going with [their business or the project you worked on together]? Anything on your plate right now that I might be able to help with?" That's it. No pitch. No offer. Just a genuine question.
Phone calls work best for this. A real voice carries weight that an email doesn't. If you can't reach them by phone, a short personal email is fine — but keep it conversational, not templated. If it reads like a newsletter, it'll get treated like one.
What to Do with What You Hear
Some conversations won't lead anywhere immediately, and that's fine. You've rekindled the relationship, and that has value on its own.
But a surprising number of these calls will surface something: a project they've been putting off, a problem they haven't solved yet, something they assumed you didn't do. This is where you listen carefully and ask one more question before you say anything about your services:
- What's held them back from moving on it?
- What would it mean for their business if they did solve it?
- What does the right solution look like to them?
Those questions do more work than any proposal you could send. They help the client articulate the problem clearly — often for the first time — and they position you as someone who genuinely understands their situation before offering anything.
The takeaway
Ten dormant client conversations a week. That's the starting commitment in Rapid Results. Most business owners who work through this strategy find that two or three of those conversations turn into active opportunities within the first month — with zero ad spend and zero new lead generation required.
Why This Works When Other Tactics Don't
The Dormant Client Conversation works because it's built on something that already exists: a real relationship. The trust hurdle is already cleared. The client knows your work. The only thing missing was someone making the first move.
That's the pattern you'll find throughout Rapid Results — not clever hacks or growth tactics that require a big budget, but straightforward strategies that work precisely because most business owners skip them. They're too simple to feel like strategy. But simple is what gets done, and done is what produces results.
If this approach resonates with you, the book goes much deeper — covering seventeen additional strategies for uncovering hidden revenue, most of which can be put into practice within a week of reading them. You can download it free at the link below.
And if you'd rather just talk through your specific situation — what your client list looks like, where your biggest untapped opportunities might be — that's exactly what a virtual coffee with me is for. No agenda, no pitch. Just a real conversation.
