Gold Business Tips - Turning your passion into pure gold!

A problem that a lot of service based companies have is the inability to plan and track income and cash flow beyond a few months at a time. This is largely due to the fluctuation in leads, jobs, sales, etc… each job has a specific set of tasks and deliverables that will be accomplished at some point in the future, leaving you searching for the next job unsure if/when that income will be coming in.

Monthly Revenue is GOLD

Instead of following this painful service model, find ways to develop “products” that clients/customers can lease / sign-up for on a monthly occurrence. Even if it generates less money up front, there are three major benefits to this situation.

1. It is much easier to say yes to $50 than $600 (monthly vs lump sum)
2. You know how much income will be coming in month after month
3. If the client enjoys the service product they will continue to use it, generating more income than the lump sum would have generated anyways.

How do I develop these “products”?

The trick is to find something about your service offering that you can lease to the client. The best situations will be one where the product/service will have a high price otherwise and the service is more/less dependent on the piece that you are leasing to them.

Some ideas:

• A Content Management System could be leased
• Website Hosting / E-mail Hosting
• Reporting / Rankings (SEO/SEM/PR)
• Hardware / Equipment (Modems, Air Filters, Equipment Monitoring Tools, etc)
• Information / Access to information (databases, etc)
• Connectivity (Phone, Internet, etc)

You may want to have a setup fee to offset some initial costs, and prevent a huge loss by giving the client something of value expecting to recoup it only to have them cancel after the first month.

Does it really work?

Absolutely. Imagine if you were to charge $100 an hour, and someone needed a 10 hour job.

$100/hr x 10 = $1,000 Revenue – one time

You could instead set them up on a plan for that service, and lease something to them that goes along with it.

$500 setup fee, + $50 month = $1,100 for the year, and an additional $600 the year afterwards.

Predictability has extreme value

Being able to predict your monthly revenue, as well as increase it as long as you keep your customers happy has extreme value in being able to grow a business. By knowing exactly when and what you will be paid you can make more informed decisions in terms of hires, advertising, expenditures, etc…