Referrals · Feast · Famine · Hope
The Leveraged
Pipeline
Your pipeline should not run on you.
How founders of IT services and systems integrator firms build a pipeline that keeps working on the weeks they are heads down in delivery. Seven playbooks. Ninety nine steps. One system.
A book by Ian Markram · Loading Growth · Written in public
The method
Foundations is a gate, not a stage. Nothing downstream works until it clears, which is why most firms who start at Awareness end up running campaigns into a business that cannot convert them.
The argument
Founders get two answers about pipeline. Both are wrong.
Outsource it
Hire an agency, buy a list, hope volume does the work. Most founders have tried this once. It is why the word marketing still makes them flinch.
Referrals are enough
Relationships win, we have always grown this way. Comfortable. It also caps the firm at the size of the founder's address book, and it goes quiet exactly when delivery gets busy.
Leveraged
The pipeline runs on a system. Seven playbooks encoded once, then run by a team and a platform instead of by the founder between delivery days. This book is the playbook for answer three.
Inside the book
Seven playbooks. Ninety nine steps. Built to run in your firm.
Ten years coaching IT services founders, encoded into the growth motion. A worksheet with every chapter.
- The seven playbooks, in the order they have to run
- Why Foundations is a gate and not a stage
- What each playbook costs to run, and what it returns
- The handover point where a marketing qualified lead becomes a sales qualified one
- Where AI helps, and where it is quietly damaging your reputation
- What to build, what to buy, and what you already own
- How to run this without hiring a marketing team
- Your first ninety days, mapped
Where this sits
Book one covers nine keys. This is the deep dive on one of them.
The Leveraged Consultancy maps the whole firm across the Nine Keys. The Leveraged Pipeline goes down one level into the first, and into the three it touches on the way through.
Written in public
Chapter one is ready
Read it now, free and ungated. Join the list and every chapter after it arrives as it is finished, with first access at launch. No noise, no spam.
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For IT services and SI founders. Unsubscribe any time.
The system underneath
The book gives you the playbooks. The rest runs them.
The Leveraged Pipeline
Seven playbooks and the order they run in. This book.
The Nine Keys diagnostic
A scored roadmap showing where your firm stalls.
See the diagnostic →ConsultancyOS
Installs the playbooks into your firm and keeps them running.
Join the waitlist →The IT VA
Runs the playbooks for you when you would rather not run them yourself.
See how →Questions, answered straight
What founders ask
What is The Leveraged Pipeline?
A book by Ian Markram for founders of IT services and systems integrator firms of one to a hundred people. It covers the seven playbooks that take a firm from nobody knowing it exists to clients who refer and expand, and it treats that as one system rather than a list of marketing tactics.
Can I read some of it now?
Yes. Chapter one is free to read in full, no email required. It covers why Foundations is a gate rather than a stage, and why running campaigns before that gate clears costs you more than the campaign budget.
How is it different from The Leveraged Consultancy?
Book one is about the whole firm surviving the AI era across the Nine Keys. Book two goes down one level into pipeline. Read book one for the model. Read this one when you have decided pipeline is the key that is holding you back.
Who is it for?
Founders of IT professional services firms and SIs competing against Accenture, Deloitte, KPMG and IBM. Firms that grew on referrals and technical reputation, and have hit the ceiling that comes with both.
What are the seven playbooks?
Foundations, Awareness, Engagement, Nurturing, Conversion, Onboarding, and Growth. Foundations is a gate that has to clear before any of the other six will work. Ninety nine steps across all seven.
Do I have to run this myself?
No. The book is written so a founder can run it in house, and every chapter has a worksheet built for exactly that. If you would rather not, The IT VA runs the same playbooks as a service, and ConsultancyOS keeps them running either way.