Scaling up professional Services businesses

I’m a good professional, why am I working for someone else??I can do this better myself and make more money!

?This is how a lot of us in professional services end up working for ourselves and running our own professional services business.?It sounds like a great idea when you’re sitting in your office at your workplace (or now home office) and wondering how you are going to make your life better.

?But a few months into working “for yourself”, it’s not as great as you thought it was going to be.?The biggest cost (in both money and time) is marketing, getting clients in the door.?By leaving your former place of employment, you’ve usually had to walk away from your client list, so creating a new client base and get well known in the area and industry again takes a lot of time and effort.?In addition, when you do get busy, you are both the service provider and the business, so you are working more than before, servicing your clients and working on growing your business at the same time (which is usually unbillable time).?So how do you do it??How do you grow a sustainable service-based business, so that you can enjoy what you do AND have a great business at the same time?

?The marketing issue

?The first issue that you need to handle is marketing.?Someone has to promote your business and get clients in the door.?You may not love marketing and hate selling, but unfortunately it is part of the job of running your own business.?If there are no clients, this is no business.

?I don’t like selling either, but when I first opened my own business and realised there were no clients coming and I couldn’t pay the bills, I had to learn.?Being a good practitioner was not enough, to I started by reading and listening to books on sales.?Brian Tracy’s books on selling were a great start.?Other books such as Allan Dib’s one-page marketing plan were other straight forward books that gave me a really good idea of the mindset and behaviour of the customer and what I had to do.

?It didn’t take long to realise that I never had to be a “pushy salesperson” and ultimately, this approach never works.?It was really about being in front of the types of people who would potentially buy my services and then answering their questions in how I can solve their problems.?This process is a bit slower at the start, but forms stronger, TRUST based relationships with your potential clients.?Your clients are then more likely to buy from you, rather than you having to sell to them, there is a big difference.

?Remember, if you are selling services, it’s an experiential service, so the client has to go through the process of using your service before they know it is good and meets their needs.?Don’t be afraid to “get started” before worrying that you didn’t get paid as much as you are worth at the start, the money will come when you have formed a relationship and trust with your clients.

?Finally, if you are just not comfortable with marketing and sales, hire someone to do the job.?Marketing and sales are a real cost to every business, no matter how big or small and is usually under budgeted.?Do your calculations and work out how much you need to put aside for this role, bite the bullet and do it, you will not regret it if you want your business to grow.

?Scaling up to have more professionals working for you

?When your business starts to grow, your biggest strength becomes your biggest weakness!!!??Clients started and kept buying from you because they liked you and your service, but you only have a certain number of hours in the day/week/year to provide services, so you have to bring in more professional staff to see more clients.

?There are different options of how to do this, but I want to discuss the way that I did this.?I wanted to make sure that as the business grows, the quality of service remains high as I added more staff.?But, how do I do this when all professionals are a little bit different and have a different opinion in how to deliver the service?

?I started by investing in 2 very specific things.?Firstly, I started developing a structured training program.?I didn’t know what it should look like at the start, but began with writing down the outcomes I wanted to achieve from the training, making the employee great professionals, and breaking down the steps they will need to take to get there.?It was not perfect, but I just got started and soon realised what worked and what had to change until after a while, it was a smooth, consistent process that we use today.

?Secondly, I started writing simple processes on computer to make the experience as consistent as possible for the staff member and client.?This began with a bunch of steps in a Word document.?Then it progressed to Excel and now I am developing computer programs that make this process even smoother and more streamlined.

This meant consistency, so the service not longer relied on “me” to deliver the service for a great client experience.

?This is completely inline with Michael Gerber’s E-myth methodology and has been a key step in scaling the business

?What do you stand for and what makes you unique?

?Whether you like it or not, you can not be all things to all people.?You can not serve “everyone” and be good at “everything”.??Even the biggest companies in the world, such as Google and Amazon do not do everything.?Google does a lot, but is ultimately great at search.?Amazon has a wide variety of goods with fast delivery, but does not try to provide high end service.

?So, what is going to make you unique??Is it great accounting in the local area or a lawyer specialising in complicated family law issues only??I don’t know, but again, I can write about what I did.

?In my business, I realised we were great at achieving long term health outcomes with clients.?If they had a lower back issue, fixing their “pain” in 1 or 2 session was not our strength.?Making people stronger in the long term so they can achieve their goals, such as running a marathon or climbing to Everest base camp was our unique strength, so we started targeting clients who wanted to achieve long term physical goals, not short term pain relief.

?Did we lose clients, YES, but we were not great at servicing these types of clients anyway, so it was never a “win ,win” situation.?The long term benefit to us as business was a great reputation of achieving long term outcomes for clients, so we got more of these types of clients and we were able to grow in this direction.

?Don’t be afraid to be different.?Highlight this to your customers and staff members.?This won’t suit everyone, but will suit the right people that will let your service based business grow in the long term and be the business you had wanted from the start.

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-?????We are currently looking of a Physiotherapists or Exercise Physiologist to join our team at Kew East.?If this sound like a place where you can grow your career, please e-mail us [email protected] or call (03) 9857 0644 to find out more