Consultant Marketing The Essence
Time is of the essence.
It is.
Contracts for consulting may include this phrase followed by specific goals that must be met by a certain time.
BUT Time is of the essence in multiple ways for a consultant. Here are a few:
- Billable hours
- ·Task schedules
- Appointment setting
- Completion agreement date
- Available hours
Let’s take those one at a time starting with the last.
Available Hours
As a consultant, running your own business, you can determine how many days a week you are gong to work and how long each day. You may be willing to put in a lot of time to become successful. That’s okay if you don’t have a life outside your business. But, over time you will find that a life of joy is doing the work you love at a tempo that is comfortable and allows you to pursue other interests.
Let’s figure out how many hours are actually available.
Days in a year 365 Days
Total hours in a year (24/day) 8760 Hours
Actual Working weeks per year 52 less
Federal holidays (20 days or 3 weeks,
2 wk vacation(10 days)
and 5 sick days (1 week) 48 Weeks
Standard working hours in USA @ 40Hrs/wk 1920 Hours
Billable Hours
Here is a dose of reality. None of us deliver work for all the standard working hours. Even expecting to average 8 hours a day is not viable. You need to eat lunch or your capabilities tank. You are not plugged in every minute of the rest of the day. A bathroom break or two is essential. Just like warming up that cup of coffee. Not to mention the administrivia of running a company (which I’m not going to subtract here) Here are the numbers:
Real working hours in week
less lunch 1 hour and Admin 1 hours/day 30
Actual available billable time at 5 hours/day 1440
Doubt me? Here’s away to figure out reality.
1. Print out a week’s calendar pages from your CRM, one day per page. Usually they will be marked in 30-minute increments and are easy to schedule meetings starting on the hour or half hour.
2. Starting Monday morning record what you are doing in 15 minute increments. All of it. The coffee break. The trip to the bathroom. Going out to the mail box. Doing a report for a client. Doing a proposal. Whatever.
3. Do it for the week.
4. Now go through the week and highlight the activities you could bill a client for.
5. Total up the numbers day by day and for the week.
Most of us bill only about half our time at best.
Task Schedules
As secondary benefit of the above exercise is seeing how long it takes you to accomplish a task. Suppositions are fine in fiction but you’re building a business based on getting results. Your profit, or lack thereof, is directly linked to your ability to estimate the time it is going to take to accomplish a task versus what you can bill the client for the work.
All of us think we can get things done faster. It just doesn’t happen that way. At best we’ are off by a factor of 1.5 to 3.5.In other words, if you put 10 hours to do something in a proposal and it takes 15, 25 or 35 hours to do it you could be out the difference, particularly if you use project pricing.
Appointment Setting
You schedule a Zoom meeting inside your Outlook or other software calendar. It asks you for a start and an end time. That lunch you can finally have with a client as Covid restriction ease get put into your calendar. You carefully note the place and the time. If you are writing it in you don’t note and end time. Noting the occasion in your phone forces you to put in an end time.
End time. What a concept. Meetings of all sorts start late and drag on when a stake in the heart is the most reasonable thing to do.
In order to be at the restaurant on time you need to leave early. The end time is set to precede your next meeting or task but travel time eats into that. When you set an appointment look at the time it takes you to get there and get back. Every appointment needs a realistic start and end time. Unless it is directly client related it is not billable.
Completion Agreement Date
You can’t dodge this bullet. Your job is to deliver the results you promised when you promised them. Earlier if possible
Time is of the essence:
- The time you estimate to solve the problem
- The time it actually takes
- The time you can bill for it
- The time you spend getting to, in, and getting back from appointments
- The timely delivery of what you promised
And so it goes.
Jerry Fletcher is a sought-after International Speaker, a beBee ambassador, founder and CEO of Z-axis Marketing, Inc.His consulting practice, founded in 1990, is known for on and off-line Trust-based Consultant Marketing advice that builds businesses, brands and lives of joy.
Consulting: www.JerryFletcher.com
Speaking: www.NetworkingNinja.com
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Comments
Jerry Fletcher
3 years ago #17
Thank you Stephan, I try to tell it like it is. And so it goes.
stephan metral 🐝 Innovative Brand Ambassador
3 years ago #16
Fay Vietmeier
3 years ago #15
Jerry Fletcher Warmly welcome Jerry I appreciate your wisdom.
Jerry Fletcher
3 years ago #14
Fay, thanks for your insight.
Fay Vietmeier
3 years ago #13
Jerry Fletcher A "pearl" ... Cost does not equal value. "The time it takes to make a significant difference for a client has nothing to do with the value to the client." "Value" at times is hard to quantify. One person might find something of extraordinary "value" ... that others may not even glance at. ... and to quote a famous bee: "and so it goes" ;~)
Jerry Fletcher
3 years ago #12
And therein lies the continuing challenge of how to get paid for expertise. I have literally charged thousands of dollars for strategy change recommended to and adapted by a client. The time it takes to make a significant difference for a client has nothing to do with the value to the client. the assumption that consultants must have an hourly rate is based on some invented "right way to do it" propounded by independent professionals that I personally believe Have no confidence in themselves. And so it goes.
Fay Vietmeier
3 years ago #11
John Rylance You have a keen eye: "The crucial phrase to me is "not billed directly", which to me seems to suggest the non-billable hours are in some way tacked on to billable ones. "Someone IS footing the bill. Nothing is free in business someone somewhere is paying for the service." The magic & mystery of numbers ;~)
Jerry Fletcher
3 years ago #10
#9 John, Thanks for the continued dialog and to Ken for answering in my absence. I hear you John. If a service is being performed, If someone is laboring they deserve to be paid. Unbillable and Non-billable are shorthand methods to refer to how fees are assessed in consulting operations and have nothing ot do with whether or not an employee gets paid. And so it goes.
John Rylance
3 years ago #9
Thank you for your response. I was aware. My point was unbillable is a misnomer since as you rightly say unless such costs are factored in the business wouldn't make a profit. Someone is footing the bill. Nothing is free in business someone somewhere is paying for the service. Now whose going to pay for my lunch? Oh me, well is it tax deductible?
Ken Boddie
3 years ago #8
What you may not be awae of, John Rylance, is that every consultancy of more than a few people, has a certain proportion of administration or support staff, such as accounts, payroll, marketing, human resources, safety, legal, quality control, IT. These generally do not perform work which is billable to the client and hence comprise your referred “non-billable employees”. When the charge rates are determined for employees who perform a directly billable service to clients, the outgoings associated with non-billable employees time has to be factored in, along with all other outgoings and dead time, or else the consulting organisation will not have income in excess of outgoings and wIll not survive.
John Rylance
3 years ago #7
Thank you for your informative reply. It goes some way to answering my comment. I fully understand your methods of charging. While I can accept some things can be unbillable, employees work is not one of them to my mind. I can see that the work done by one employee, can be included in anothers Bill, but not that an employee could contribut to the work and not be paid for it. To me an unbillable employee is someone who does some hard work and gets no recognition/recompense for their efforts.
Jerry Fletcher
3 years ago #6
Mohammed, in the words of Satchel Page, "Don't look back, they may be gainin' on you." And so it goes.
Jerry Fletcher
3 years ago #5
John, Most people assume that consultants all have an hourly rate which is what they are asked for by potential clients. That is treatment equivalent to how a manager might deal with an employee (replacing hourly salary with hourly rate.) I've worked in consulting situations where each employee had a billable rate based on the skill level required. But top consultants don't charge for time but rather for results. If sufficient trust pertains they may operate on the basis of a monthly retainer.
Jerry Fletcher
3 years ago #4
the target though tempting is oft glimpsed only dimly as the light vanishes with your blood sugar. And so it goes.
Mohammed Abdul Jawad
3 years ago #3
John Rylance
3 years ago #2
Ken Boddie
3 years ago #1