Consultants, Do You Know Where The Value in Your Business Truly Lies?
This was originally posted on my Seven Figure Consultant LinkedIn Newsletter. Subscribe today to get insights about how women are building powerful and impactful consulting businesses.
A single line on a spreadsheet transformed my client’s consulting business
Do you know which of your consulting services adds the most value to your business?
Not which makes the most money.
Or which one is the most popular.
But which one turns the most profit for the amount of time and energy you are investing in it?
When I work with my private coaching clients, we set up a spreadsheet for their business finances that tracks where the business revenue has come from so far that year, broken down by month.
I was reviewing one of these spreadsheets with a client recently.
We went through line by line what was going on in her business and she was a bit discouraged. She felt like the contracts weren’t delivering what she’d like them to.
We spent quite some time talking about those contracts.
Then at the bottom of the spreadsheet, there was an entry for a contract that was 10 times the value of the rest of the work she was doing.
When I asked where that income was coming from she said: “oh that’s not really a thing, I just do some mentoring on the side. It doesn’t feel like it counts because it’s different to my main work that I do.”
I left a pause as we looked at each other, so we could let that sink in for a moment.
The most lucrative work she did wasn’t really a part of her business. Her main business was built around other contract types that paid 1/10th of the money.
I looked at her, she looked at me, and then the penny dropped. She said “I should build my business around the mentoring shouldn’t I”.
So often we can be really wedded to the services we offer, and we are so loyal to the wrong lines on the spreadsheet.
In business we can form a real attachment to certain marketing activities, or particular programmes or groups, or even an individual client or company.
We can find ourselves putting so much of our time and energy into one area, and in most cases, if someone asked you – ‘why are you investing so much resource into this one corner of your business’ you would almost feel like, isn’t it obvious?? This is the centrepiece of my whole business.
BUT.
In many, many cases – our instincts can lead us astray here and we’re not focusing on the activities that bring us the most value.
In this week’s episode of the Seven Figure Consultant Podcast we cover:
- What happened when I split my focus across too many activities.
- Why your feelings aren’t helpful when assessing what’s working, and what you should be using instead.
- The highest value activity consultants should prioritise when generating new leads.
🎧 Listen to the full episode here – 027 Do You Know Where The Value Is In Your Business?
And tell me – what is the lowest value activity you could drop right now?
Free Report – The Six Elements of a Seven Figure Consulting Business
I’ve created a free PDF report called The Six Elements of a Seven Figure Business. It’s my most popular free resource and in it I outline the 6 areas of unscaled businesses that need to change in order to move past being ‘booked up and burned out’ and shifting into that higher gear that gets you cruising again.
It’s the framework that helps consultant women like you find their feet and get back to leading the business, rather than being buried in client work and back-end business operations.
Thanks for reading! I’d love to hear your feedback and future topics you’d like me to feature.