Don’t Count Your Consulting Clients Until You Harvest

About this time of year, I start to get excited about pumpkins.

No, not the Halloween jack-o'-lantern kind. I mean the kind you can eat.

Every year, I plant an absurd amount in my garden, more than any non-farmer should.

One year, I harvested 27 beautiful pumpkins—all destined to be made into soup or pies or given to other foodies as gifts.

I don’t harvest them until the fall, but by now I start to see the blossoms and little baby pumpkins form.

I usually have an entire 12 x 12 garden bed covered with vines by now.

But I don’t. Not this year.

I have one sad little vine with two anemic blossoms on it.

When I saw it, I felt so deflated.

All that time planting and nurturing the seeds to have it end up like this.

It’s the same feeling I’ve had after nurturing a consulting prospect.?

All to have it amount to little or nothing in the end.

But that’s part of the business of consulting.

No matter how skilled you are at cultivating prospects or closing deals, sometimes it just doesn’t happen.

The potential client changed their mind, had their budget reduce, couldn’t get agreement internally…it could happen for so many reasons. Many reasons that have nothing to do with you.

Here’s the thing you always have to know: a deal is not a deal until it’s a deal.

The contract has to be signed, and the work has to start.

So, even though it can be tempting to think of the engagement as yours and that the revenue will definitely be in your bank account…

Don’t. You can include it as potential or even probable revenue in your financial projections.

But don’t count on it or, worse, spend it before it’s yours.?

It’s one of the least fun parts of the business of consulting, but it’s part of the gig.

Losing an engagement you hoped for can also open up opportunities for something just as good or even better.

So, keep up your business development activities until this engagement or another is truly yours.

As for my pumpkins…

Well, I got a nice surprise.?

Turns out a pumpkin seed had dropped outside our chicken coup.?

And it grew!?

So, am I going to get the harvest I hoped for? No. But I’ll get more than I expected after the other vines died.

But I’m still not counting my pumpkins before I harvest them.?

A lot can happen. So, I’m going to care for them and do everything I can to get my pumpkins in my kitchen.

Cheering you and your harvest on!

Deb