An experienced angler loves a strike. Typically they are not surprised, either, because they expected it.
Fly fishers read the water. They cover the arc. They put the right fly in the right place, at the right depth, at the right time. The strike isn't luck. It's the output of reading the water beforehand (audience intel); tying on the right fly (content that matters to the audience); and creating a presentation that is natural and authentic (trust transfer).
This is Principle 5 of the Fly Fishing Method for Thought Leadership: conversion is a signal, not an accident.
An inbound inquiry. A booked call. A referral from someone who's been reading your content for months. These aren't strokes of luck. They're the natural result of systematic thought leadership.
Once you get the strike, how you play it matters as much as how you earned it:
→ Angle the fish to shore, never reel it straight in. Work with the current your prospect lives in, not against it. Their buying process, their internal timeline, their politics. You're not fighting for survival here; you're guiding, not overpowering.
→ Respect the line that connects you. It's thinner than it looks, and one hard yank breaks it. Neil Rackham's research on complex sales found that premature closing attempts, like asking for commitment before the value case is fully built, correlate with lower win rates, not higher urgency. Mahan Khalsa put it more simply: the healthiest seller-buyer relationships are the ones where the seller visibly cares more about the client's outcome than their own quota.
→ Note the conditions that produced the strike. What content. Which channel. Which cast. This is the discipline that separates a lucky day from a repeatable program. After every cycle ask where the strike came from, what fly was in the water, how deep you were wading. That data feeds your planning for the next series of casts.
Discover Your Score
If you want to know where your current thought leadership signal stands before you wade in, I built an assessment for exactly that. It takes two minutes, it’s free, and no contact information is required. It will tell you which section of the stream you’re in, and which fly to tie on first.
About the author
Mike Harris is a tech CMO with 30+ years leading marketing at technology companies, from Fortune 500s to high-growth turnarounds. He now runs Harris CMO Partners, helping tech executives build the thought leadership systems that get them heard.
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