Here are some ways to manage that situation for your business:

• Know your numbers! How many prospects do you need to have, on average, to get one client? While the number is not a fixed number, there is probably a good average to work from.
• Know how long it takes for the average prospect to become a client… and then for that client to pay.
• Don’t stop doing what you’re doing! Continue working with current clients, continue marketing your services.
• Do what it takes to go the extra mile. It might mean late nights or running the assembly line through the weekend from time to time, but those steps are necessary to keep clients happy, especially when there are unpredictable changes.
• Automate. If possible, automate some of your processes so you are no longer working on the mundane details that might distract you from your focus. Over at IAC-EZ, that’s what kind of help we give to businesses.
• Hire out. You might or might not want to outsource your core competencies, but you should probably consider hiring out your non-core efforts so you can spend more time on the work that earns your income. Over at IAC Professionals, we helps all kinds of businesses do that all the time.
• Plan for it. As a consultant, I see these challenges in businesses all the time, particularly as we work at increasing a business or bringing a new product to market and then facing the demand it generates.

Best,

Heather Villa

No related posts.

I said that the first part of the conundrum of committedness is: The more commitments you have now, the less time you have to generate new commitments. But the less time you spend on generating new commitments, the fewer you will soon have.

But there’s a second part to that conundrum and that is: your new commitments aren’t fixed. In other words, your prospects aren’t perfect. You can (and should) market to fill your pipeline but not all of those prospects will react in the same way at the same time. Some will come to market faster than others. Some might suddenly buy more at one time than anyone else. You might have one quarter where all of your prospects fall out of your pipeline and sales diminish.

Let’s talk about the consultant example again. The consultant has several clients (“commitments”) and he or she stays busy with them, carving out just a little bit of time to market because it’s important to generate new business. When all progresses well, it’s a perfect system. But then “part 2″ of the conundrum kicks in and the prospects suddenly (and unexpectedly) buy more. What should the consultant do?

It’s a tough balance. Turning some away might be the wrong answer in today’s economy. Putting in extra hours is probably a good idea. But there’s a risk to this sudden influx of new commitments: the consultant notices that he or she doesn’t deliver as quickly anymore. And some might say that he or she is working too long each day. And there’s the risk that this “overwork” will diminish the amount of time to market.

Guess what. There’s no easy answer. Every business needs to find that special state of Zen in which they have a healthy number of commitments to continue earning an income but marketing in such a way that there is and continuously full pipeline. And they need to acknowledge that new potential commitments could suddenly increase and they should be prepared for it… but not to the detriment of their business today.

So, the consultant should leave a bit of ‘wiggle room’ (but not too much) to market and perhaps a bit more (but not too much) just in case there is a sudden influx of clients. And the manufacturer should leave just a bit of excess inventory (but not too much) to manage any surprise and they should have a plan in place to produce more inventory (but not too much) if demand rises unexpectedly.

In the next blog (tommorrow), I’ll give some more ideas about what businesses can do to work with this conundrum.

Speak Soon,

Heather

Related posts:

1. The conundrum of committedness – part 1
2. The conundrum of committedness – part 3
3. When Business Growth is Bad – Part 2

But one of the challenges that businesses of all sizes face is something I call ‘committedness’. And as a business works to strengthen itself, the ‘conundrum of committedness’ increases and can cause all kinds of problems.

Let me use the example of a consultant for a moment to give you an example of what I mean:

A consultant has 24 hours in a day. Presumably, at least half of that time will be spent eating, sleeping, and in personal pursuits with the other half (or less) on the business. Now, if a consultant wants to get more business (client commitments), he or she needs to do more marketing. As the client commitments start to increase, the time available to market tends to decrease.

Now, if the consultant only had to market once in order to get client commitments, and then those clients stayed around and sustained the consultant’s income, that would be okay. But, clients come and go and if a consultant wants to stay committed, they need to market more to generate new commitments.

So the first part of the conundrum of committedness is: The more commitments you have now, the less time you have to generate new commitments. But the less time you spend on generating new commitments, the fewer you will soon have.

In other words, the consultant needs to find the balance between staying busy with current clients so that there is a healthy income being earned, but also to leave enough time to market in order to get more clients.

All businesses face a similar situation, not just consultants. A manufacturer, for example, doesn’t want to produce too many products so that their inventory is completely overloaded. But they don’t want to produce too few products so that they anger their customers and drive them away.

Whether your commitment is related to time-spent, like a consultant, or products-produced, like a manufacturer, your business may suffer from this first part of the conundrum.

But there’s a second part to this conundrum of committedness that I will talk about in my next blog tommorrow.

Best,

Heather Villa

Related posts:

1. The conundrum of committedness – part 2
2. The conundrum of committedness – part 3
3. When Business Growth is Bad – Part 3