Tired of Riding the Revenue Wave, Take These Actions

Tired of Riding the Revenue Wave, Take These Actions

You are really good at what you do as a consultant. You have years of experience helping business owners achieve superior results with the aid of your services. But, you are not acquiring enough of your ideal clients on a recurring basis. This leads to a business that is much like an ocean wave, up and down. I refer to this phenomenon as riding the consulting wave and it does not provide for a sustainable long term business model. If you are tired of riding the consulting wave, I have three recommendations that will help you move the marketing needle forward and make it a core strength of your business.

First, you really need to spend some time thinking about your target market. Most consultants state that they work with small businesses, mid-size businesses, or Fortune 500 companies. This is not a particularly helpful definition of your target market because one person’s small business may be another person’s mid-size business. In essence, these definitions do not allow you to erect a proverbial fence around your target market to guide your marketing efforts and inform those strategic partners that want to help you grow your business. 

A better approach may be to define your target market with respect to the pain or problem that you solve. For example, I help business owners that are struggling to fund their desired lifestyle and retirement. All of these business owners have one thing in common. They are not generating enough cash flow from their business to live their desired lifestyle and set aside adequate funds for retirement. These business owners may have trouble paying their personal bills and expenses, they may worry that they will not be able to retire, and they have not engaged someone to help them create a sustainable business model that they can sell to help fund their retirement. This definition allows my potential clients to self-identify themselves easily (they are struggling to fund their desired lifestyle, they are worried about retirement, and they do not have an exit strategy) and it gives my strategic partners a clear picture of what type of business owner that I am seeking to work with.

Someone who wants to help me can simply ask a business owner two questions, Are you earning enough money to create your desired lifestyle and are you putting sufficient funds aside for retirement? If the answer to either of those questions is no, this is someone that should be introduced to me. This is much more effective than saying I am a business consultant that helps small business owners achieve optimal results. This leads to questions such as what does a business consultant do and who do you help. Unfortunately, I hear a lot of the latter description when I attend networking events with thirty second elevator pitches.

Second, you need to spend your networking time talking with those people that work with a similar type of clients. This is extremely important because you want to work with strategic partners that want to work with similar clients to you. When this type of synergy is present, it is much easier to develop a mutually beneficial relationship. For example, I work extremely well with branch vice presidents of banks because they often become aware of situations where a business owner is having difficulty paying their business debts. I can help the client and the bank for that matter by helping the business owner build a more sustainable business model that will allow for debt repayment and a more disposable cash flow. As the business grows, the owner will also inevitably demand more of the bank’s services. 

I also work extremely well with financial planners because they know when a business owner is not putting enough money away for retirement. If there is a gap between a client’s savings and their desired level of retirement, I can help them achieve more business cash flow to close the retirement gap. The financial planner benefits from making the helpful introduction and the enhanced cash flow will create more investible assets. These are just two examples of how you can develop strategic partnerships with complimentary service providers. The important point to remember is that you must be talking with those people who are talking with the people you want to talk with. If you want to talk with business owners, you must be networking with others who are talking in depth with business owners.

Third, you constantly need to strive to meet new members of your target market. This is really the essence of marketing. If you do not find that you are meeting enough of your ideal clients, it is time to reevaluate your prospecting, your networking, your writing, and your public speaking. With some experimentation, you should be able to research your target market and develop a compelling message that allows the potential clients to self-identify with a need for your services. If you do enough prospecting and have a good enough message, you will have a pipeline full of prospects and clients. If you do not feel that your networking efforts are productive, you may have to revisit who you are networking with. 

Networking is a give and take relationship that should be based on mutually beneficial referrals. If this is not the case for you, you need to do a better job of evaluating your potential synergies with strategic partners. If your writing and public speaking are not generating new prospects and clients, you need to work on tailoring your content so that your target clients can identify themselves as clients in need of your services. The main lesson here is that you have to constantly be working to develop new client relationships. If you only evaluate your marketing methods or pursue your marketing methods when you are looking for work, you are doomed to ride the consulting wave.

If you are tired of riding the revenue wave, it is time to take action toward building a more consistent and robust business. We have the resources available to help you achieve your business development goals. Please feel free to email me at bkerrigan@whcpa.com for a complimentary evaluation of your current prospecting activities.