Crystal Hincks had been working her lead generation for months.
She tried a speaking tour. She built a white paper strategy. She niched down to a single methodology, launched a webinar, and started posting consistently on LinkedIn. She was getting more conversations with decision makers.
And she still couldn’t turn those conversations into a consistent flow of paid engagements.
In Episode 286 of the Grow Your Independent Consulting Business podcast, Melisa Liberman traces the full journey with Crystal — what she tried, what almost worked, what was breaking down underneath it, and the initiative she built that generated $250,000 in paid consulting engagements in a single month.
About Crystal Hincks
Crystal Hincks is the principal consultant at Uncommon Evaluation. She provides evaluation support to nonprofits in the social and justice sectors, including organizations working in crime prevention, child welfare, re-entry programs, and other complex social issues. Her specialty is SROI — Social Return on Investment — an evaluation methodology that quantifies the economic and social value created by a program, showing funders exactly what their investment produces.
Crystal relocated from Canada to the US about a year before this recording and has been building her US practice from scratch, including her network, her portfolio, and her reputation in the American nonprofit sector.
Website: www.uncommonevaluation.com
LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/crystal-hincks-7217556b/
Three Strategies, Three Phases of Learning
Melisa opens the episode by framing what makes Crystal’s story worth listening to regardless of your niche: it’s not about SROI, nonprofits, or the specific tactic Crystal landed on. It’s about what you do when you’re taking action but not getting the results you expected, and how you figure out whether to keep going, adjust something, or try something completely new.
Crystal’s journey ran through three distinct phases before she found what worked.
Phase 1: The Speaking Tour and White Paper Approach
Crystal’s first strategy was to approach nonprofit executive directors for informational interviews to develop a white paper on evaluation. The logic was sound: get in front of decision makers, create thought leadership content, build visibility.
The problem: the executive directors kept redirecting her. When she reached out to talk about evaluation, they’d pass her to their internal evaluation person or program manager. She was trying to reach the people who make budget decisions, but her messaging wasn’t making that clear to them.
She also came into this without an established US network. She had relocated from Canada and was starting from scratch — no local relationships, no regional reputation, no easy warm introductions to the leaders she needed to meet.
Phase 2: Niching Down to SROI, Webinars, and LinkedIn Content
With Melisa’s coaching, Crystal made a significant decision: commit to SROI as her single focus for one year, regardless of what else came in.
She launched a webinar introducing the SROI concept — posted about it on LinkedIn, reached out to her existing contacts, and got a small but real audience. A few of those attendees reached out afterward, and she landed some work from it. More importantly, it gave her a format to keep going.
She built a LinkedIn content strategy around past SROI evaluations. She posted results: for every dollar invested in this crime prevention program, the systems save $4.50 long-term. That kind of specificity created consistent traction — three to five new followers and connections every week.
She started getting conversations with executive directors. Decision makers, the right level. But something was still off.
“I would have these conversations and I would say, yes, I can help with that. And then I’d jump to, well, let me put together a proposal for you. And then sometimes they’d see the price tag and be like, we don’t have the budget for that right now.”
She was letting clients lead the conversation. Letting them define the scope. Adjusting her pricing to match whatever budget they mentioned. She wasn’t running the sales process — she was responding to it.
The deals were stalling. Organizations were expressing interest but not committing. They were sampling the conversation rather than pursuing an engagement.
The Mindset Shift: Expert and Peer, Not Helpful Vendor
One of the most important turning points in Crystal’s story is the shift in how she saw herself in sales conversations — and how that changed how clients treated her in engagements.
She’d been operating from a helpful vendor posture: asking clients what they needed, adjusting to fit their assumptions, letting them set the terms. In some cases, executive directors were referring to her as a “contract employee” in team meetings. She’d let that slide because the work was getting done and she was getting paid.
But it was costing her. When clients saw her as a contract employee rather than an independent expert, they’d redefine scope mid-engagement. They’d ask for work that wasn’t in the original agreement. They’d make decisions about how the evaluation should look rather than deferring to her expertise.
The shift: move to deliverables-focused engagements from the start, lead the sales conversation with clear recommendations rather than open-ended questions, and stop letting clients anchor the budget before she’d even made her offer.
“I had to really drill down on who I wanted to work with, what my ideal clients look like, what I wanted to be charging. Going in with a sort of just a bit of a plan. Listening for things to help me assess their readiness.”
She also started offering free resources to organizations who weren’t ready for a paid engagement — not as a consolation, but as a strategic relationship move.
“Even if you lose the sale, win the relationship. They do come back around. I’ve had that happen several times now.”
Phase 3: Value Made Visible
The initiative that changed everything for Crystal came from a simple observation about how nonprofits operate: they apply for things. They’re accustomed to filling out grant applications, describing their programs, explaining what they need and why. That’s the behavior pattern baked into how the sector runs.
Crystal built a program that fit that pattern exactly.
Value Made Visible is a grant-style application process where small to medium nonprofits (under $5M operating budget) can apply to receive an SROI evaluation at no cost. Crystal partnered with a colleague at the University of Northern Colorado who runs a social research lab with sociology students. The students would do the evaluations as hands-on learning. Crystal would supervise and deliver the final output.
The application asked serious questions: what’s your operating budget, who are your funders, which program do you want evaluated, what will you do with the results? The format was familiar to nonprofit leaders in a way that a sales email never would be.
She built in terms that created business value beyond the free work:
- Organizations must designate a contact to pull data and be available weekly
- When the evaluation is complete, organizations must introduce Crystal to their funders and do a joint presentation of the findings
- Organizations must post about SROI on social media, naming Uncommon Evaluation
She launched it in mid-July. Applications started coming in immediately. By the time of this recording, about 100 had applied for the fall intake.
And then something happened that she hadn’t fully anticipated.
Organizations who looked at the application and realized they weren’t a fit for the small free scope — because their programs were national in scale, or more complex than the intake criteria — started emailing her directly. They wanted to talk about a paid engagement. They’d already seen the methodology. They already knew they wanted it.
“In the last month, I have secured over $250,000 worth of engagements with these organizations that weren’t a fit for this small little SROI scope. A lot of them were like, I love this methodology. We want to work with you. The answers were just yes at every turn.”
The 100 organizations who applied for the free intake also became a warm audience. The ones not selected for the three free fall spots would be followed up with a consultation offer. And they’d receive Crystal’s future content — the results from the selected SROIs, case studies, and ongoing updates — building the relationship rather than ending it at a rejection.
What Made It Work
Melisa identifies the combination that unlocked this result: something Crystal genuinely loves doing, a methodology she fully believes in, and a format that fits naturally into how her ideal clients already operate.
“When you’re sold on it, it’s so much easier to sell. You approach things with so much more certainty.”
Crystal had tried strategies that were technically sound but felt like a heavy lift. Value Made Visible felt natural because it aligned with her values, her expertise, and her belief in what SROI actually does for organizations.
She also names the mindset shift that allowed her to offer work for free without it being a sign of desperation:
“There’s a big difference between giving it away because I feel like I can’t charge for it, and giving it away because this is an opportunity to build my portfolio in the US and benefit organizations at the same time.”
What Crystal Learned About Experimenting
Crystal’s advice to consultants who are taking action but not yet seeing results:
Try everything, and be honest with yourself about whether you’re actually trying it.
“There were times working with you where I was telling myself I was trying everything, but when I look at it objectively, I wasn’t.”
If something doesn’t work the first time, it doesn’t mean the strategy is broken. It might need a tweak. It might need a different step before it. Or the timing might not be right.
The speaking tour didn’t work for Crystal at the stage she tried it. But she sees it working eventually — once she has the email list she’s building now. The sequence matters.
“I just really realized that I needed to build a reputation, build a body of work, and that’s the priority. I was trying all these other things that were further down the spectrum, as opposed to just being like, here’s where I’m at right now in my business.”
Help it crawl before it can walk.
Put This Into Action
Crystal’s question for any consultant who’s experimenting: are you actually trying things, or are you telling yourself you are?
Look at your lead generation strategy and evaluate it the way an evaluator would. What’s the activity? What’s the outcome? Where is it breaking down? What’s one step before the thing that isn’t working?
And if you want to build the system that makes this process easier, and more likely to produce a result you can replicate, the Lead Gen Sprint. Enroll at www.ConsultantSprint.com.
Resources Mentioned
Companion Resource: The Consultant’s Lead Gen Sprint
Connect with Crystal Hincks:
Website: www.uncommonevaluation.com
LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/crystal-hincks-7217556b/
More Resources for Independent Consultants
- Coaching for Consultants: Click here to apply for your Coaching Fit Call.
- Book: Grow Your Consulting Business: The 14-Step Roadmap to Make Your Independent Consulting Goals a Reality
- YouTube Podcast Channel
- Melisa’s Free Resources, Books, Planners & Journals: https://linktr.ee/melisaliberman
- Website
