Are there holes in your bucket?

It's been said by many that generating new business is like making it "rain" (or simply rainmaking).

Think about your leads and prospects like little seedlings that need constant nurturing and "watering" (i.e. follow-up activities).

When you water enough seedlings, sooner or later your prospects will mature into full-blown steady clients.

Take good care of your clients (over-deliver on value and exceptional service) and you'll build up quite a respectable consulting business with lots of extremely desirable, steady, high-paying clients.

However, there's a basic problem with this kind of thinking:

It ignores an EXTREMELY important reality:

Your bucket isn't perfect.

No "watering" method is perfect, because your lead generation, lead qualification and sales call watering buckets all have HOLES in them.

And when you're trying to keep your billable hours bucket constantly filled up with "water", you have to make sure that you're adding water to that bucket AT LEAST as fast as the bucket is springing leaks.

What causes your "bucket" to leak?

"Water" (billable hours) will seep out of your "bucket" (bottom line) because of

** Client attrition through management or ownership changes,

** Completed projects,

** Slow payment history,

** Loss of key employees or contractors

So how do you make sure that you're able to add water to your revenue-generating bucket, time-efficiently and cost-effectively?

You need a kick-butt plan for

1) generating great leads and prospects

2) qualifying leads and prospects

3) conveying value during your initial meetings

4) moving your prospects from free to FEE

5) locking-in recurring revenue with long-term projects and ongoing maintenance agreements

So if you need to make sure that you don't end up killing-off your business during a draught, if you need to make sure you have time- and cost-effective ways to continue "watering" your prospects and clients on a regular basis, make sure you have the right tools at your disposal.

Because, frankly if you try to fill your "bucket" with a fire hose, you'll completely lose control of the "water flow", go broke and fall flat on your face.

If you try to fill your "bucket" with an eye dropper, it'll be like watching glaciers move.


Best,

- Joshua


Joshua Feinberg, co-founder ComputerConsulting101.com
http://www.computerconsultingkit.com/