Why Adapting Your Revenue Streams May Be Better Than A Full Pivot In Your Consultancy Business Post-Lockdown

Welcome to the latest edition of the Seven Figure Consultant LinkedIn Newsletter for Women in Consulting - which is released twice a week. Don't forget that you can get daily updates from Jessica in your LinkedIn news feed by accessing her LinkedIn profile and hitting Follow. She will be sharing insights and discussions through the week that she would love to hear your views on.

Your clients have new priorities and problems they’ve never faced before.

This is excellent news for your consulting business if they’re willing to pay you to help them.

And I’m not talking about pivoting here. I’m not suggesting you offer those services instead of what you do currently. I’m saying it’s possible to maintain your income by adapting what you offer right now and also add new revenue streams by taking advantage of new opportunities.

You don’t have to ONLY protect your current position - you can advance it.

Start by understanding what your current and target clients’ priorities are right now. What problems do they need help solving?

Back in Episode 011 of the Seven Figure Consultant Podcast, my guest was Sales Expert Dylis Guyan and she shared how to use Google Alerts to understand what your target companies’ key priorities are. (If you haven’t heard our interview yet, I’d really recommend that you add this one to your playlist as Dylis had some great tips and tricks to share.)

Before approaching them, it’s worth taking the time to get your head around the core objectives of any company you want to work with, especially at the moment. 

Are they cutting back on everything? Where are they looking to invest in consulting services? Has this changed? Is this a long term need?

The more information you can get on this, the better.

We can spend months sketching out the perfect service that we are SURE every client will jump up and down for. And then it can be the biggest surprise when actually, it comes to the moment to test the offer and clients aren’t that interested.

Starting with what the client needs you to fix for them is always the fastest route to making sales, and you need to be confident that you have sufficiently understood where they are and what they need. 

But I’m not telling you to ditch your existing offers in favour of these new ones.

Instead of seeking to replace your revenue streams, are there opportunities to add to them?

Can you offer a new product or service to the same audience? Is there something your existing client base would benefit from that you haven’t offered already?

Or can you now take your existing product or service and offer it to a new audience, who need this type of help for the first time?

There may be companies who are looking to develop their communications model now that the bulk of their staff are remote. Or get help in mapping out how they can manage their workforce as they transition back to part-time office working in adapted workspaces.

Depending on the service you offer and the niche you serve, there may be all kinds of things that your clients need help with.

Or you could offer a new product or service to a new audience. This is something that I would always want to advise you to approach with caution, because it is so easy to underestimate the costs associated with it.

It is a much easier transition to take what you’re already doing and transplant it into another sector, than it is to break ground in an entirely new sector with a new product you haven’t had much experience of delivering yet.

It could be that now is the perfect time to move away from an hours-based consultancy model and start to offer online learning, or some kind of digital product that is easier to scale, and a more attractive solution for companies who are working remotely.

One of the things that excites me most about the next 12 months is the opportunity that it gives for consultants to find ways of working that fit their lives better. Maybe you don’t need to be there in person to provide your service. Maybe it’s the right moment to start implementing a more flexible work schedule. Or realising that you could potentially earn more money by working less. If you’re a regular reader of this newsletter you’ll know that Working Less and Earning More is one of our core principles!

And it depends on your business and what you currently need the most.

If you need fast cash, the best thing is to approach your warmest audience – your existing clients. 

But if you are stable for this quarter but you’re less sure about what lies beyond that you can start to explore the ways you can add income, those are some great questions to start with.

Or maybe you’re seeing your business with new eyes, noticing weak spots you hadn’t worried about before. It can be scary to see the vulnerabilities in your business, but it means you can 100% make your business structures more stable going forward.

If you have realised that maybe you’re focusing all your attention on one narrow sector, or maybe a lot of your work is with one single client and you want to plan for more stability and a lower risk business model going forward, this is a great time to map out what that new version of your business could look like.

Revenue, and diversifying your sources of it, is the first of my Six Elements of a Seven Figure Business. You can read more, and discover the other five when you download my free, popular guide:

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.

Sign up here for your PDF report, and I'll show you the six elements your consultancy needs to make the shift from a nice little 6-figure lifestyle business to a serious 7-figure enterprise.

=================================================================

Thanks for reading and subscribing! I'd love to hear your feedback and future topics you'd like me to feature.

To find out more about the work I do, visit jessicafearnley.com or message me here on LinkedIn if you'd like to hear more about private coaching and how I can help you transition from booked up and burned out to THRIVING as the CEO of your 7 figure consulting business.