Chris Vaughan has been a RevBoss client for a long time. For years, outbound email was a key growth channel for his firm, Sequence Consulting.
But like a lot of professional services firms in niche B2B markets, Sequence started seeing diminishing returns from cold email. Inboxes got more crowded, reply rates started slipping, and the strategy that had been reliable for years needed a rethink.
Rather than doubling down on a declining channel, RevBoss and Chris made a deliberate pivot to shift the focus from volume-based outbound to a strategy built around Chris's expertise, voice, and network. The goal was to generate the same kinds of conversations, just in a smarter, more sustainable way.
The centerpiece of the new approach was simple: take what Chris already knows and turn it into content that his audience actually wants to read.
This works because Chris is a 25-year veteran in the association space – he has strong opinions, deep relationships, and real expertise. RevBoss works with Chris to capture and merchandise that expertise in a process that creates ongoing opportunity.
RevBoss uses a variety of tactics – real-time interviews and asynchronous prompting via email / voice memo – to capture the trends Chris is seeing and the ideas he's developing around association strategy. These inputs become the raw material for the content RevBoss produces on his behalf: LinkedIn posts, long-form articles, and most importantly, the On Associations newsletter – a regular publication that goes out to roughly 1,200 subscribers, all of whom are people Chris has met or worked with in some capacity.
The newsletter is the workhorse. It keeps Chris in front of his core audience consistently, delivering genuine help and insight rather than a sales pitch. His LinkedIn content reinforces the same ideas — clients forward posts to colleagues, peers reference articles in conversation, and the thinking spreads organically through the association community.
That newsletter is gold. I get inbound business from it and I can definitely attribute genuine business to it. It's one of the best things you guys have ever done for me.
With Chris's content presence growing, RevBoss also designed a pilot campaign around a conference he was attending in Baltimore. The approach was low-pressure and intentional: reach out to fellow attendees on LinkedIn ahead of the event — no hard sell, no meeting request, just a simple introduction. Chris walked into the conference with people already knowing his name. Some turned into in-person conversations. Others became warm follow-up opportunities afterward.
It did exactly what it needed to do. I wasn't asking for meetings. I was just getting on the radar. And some of those people I did run into at the meeting.
Within a year, the results were clear – and not just in soft signals, but in real business. Chris can directly attribute new revenue to the RevBoss program and measurable engagement in a way that matters: people reaching out because they read something, wanted to talk about it, or wanted to bring him in as a speaker or advisor.
I've really kind of established myself as the thought leader in my space. People talk about me that way now. They're calling me an influencer, which is embarrassing — but that's what I wanted.
Beyond the pipeline, something bigger shifted. Chris went from being well-known in his space to being the person people reference when they talk about the future of association strategy. Speaking invitations started coming in. And for a firm that spent years searching for the right growth partner, the relationship itself has become part of the story.
We kissed a lot of frogs before we found RevBoss.