Are You Feeling Desperate and Panicked About Money? – Three Steps to End the Desperation and Create Consistent Cash Flow.
Here’s the scenario. You have 3 sales calls this week and you are so excited, a little over-excited. You need this money like yesterday. The first call starts and it goes well. Then you get to the “here’s how much it costs” part. Your potential client starts to talk about how she doesn’t have any money. You start to panic and think “Oh no, I’m going to lose her.” Your intuition turns off and you start to speak from a place of NEED or DESPERATION. You find yourself trying to convince her to buy for your reasons, not hers. You might even get a little angry or frustrated with the potential client. Meanwhile, she’s pulling further and further away from you.
You can’t think of anything else to say to convince her. You hang up the phone with the dreaded “I’m going to think about it”. The equivalent of “It’s not you, it’s me” line at the end of a break-up.
You hang up feeling panicked and disappointed. And you start to smell that emotion that no one’s wants to feel: DESPERATION. And here’s the problem, your clients can smell it too.
You know what makes sales calls easier, and 10 times more effective? When you can honestly feel OK whether a potential client says yes or no. It allows you to stay out of your own head and use your intuition to guide a much smoother sales conversation.
Desperation is a result of one thing: Lack of Consistent Cash Flow!
With a little planning, you can stay out of desperation by creating consistent cash flow in your life. So you are always ahead of the game and not behind it.
Here’s 3 Steps to get you started today. If you love what you are reading, don’t forget to check out my upcoming Revenue Breakthrough Program– www.revenuebreakthroughprogram.com
1. Track Your Actual and Projected Income. I’m surprised by how many business owners aren’t tracking their projected income. You can’t know how much money you are making and how much marketing you need to do if you don’t know how much money you are bringing in. Don’t worry, this is a simple fix.
Just create a spreadsheet or chart. Put the months across the top. Put your clients, products and other sources of income in the column on the left. For each month make a projected and actual column.
Then fill in the chart with your existing revenue in the projected column for each month it will come in. Once the money comes into your account, you can put that number in the actual column. If you have a day job (or two) be sure to account for it in the column on the left and put the income in for each month.
If you are just starting, create placeholder clients (or product sales): Client 1, Client 2, Client 3. Then go ahead and create the income for each “client” in the projected column of the month in which you would like to sign him/her.
It is important that you fill in the chart for the whole year.
2. Plan Your Marketing at least 3-6 Months Ahead of time. Ok, now look at the next 3-6 months. How is the cash situation? Let’s say 3 clients are ending their programs with you in September. What kinds of marketing are you going to do now to start attracting new client leads? What workshops will you put on? What networking events will you go to? What conversations will you have with referral partners? Remember that what you plant now can take 3-4 months to grow (estimate 6 months for a total beginner in year 1). So start planting now, before you actually need that new client money.
If you are brand new, then just keep marketing with the intention to create new client leads so that you can build your practice and get real clients for those placeholder clients above.
And if you are in that first six months, don’t be ashamed to get another source of income from a loan or a day job while your marketing seeds are growing.
3. Be Persistent and Consistent. So many of my clients dutifully make this plan and go out and do their marketing. But then the seeds they plant don’t grow fast enough. My answer to that problem: plant more and/or plant differently. Let’s start with plant more. If you really need income and you are going to one networking event per week and doing one workshop a month, double or triple those numbers. I know, it doesn’t sound fun. Remember, you are building a business based on relationships. So the more relationships you build, the more solid your foundation will become. Also, this isn’t forever, just until your seeds grow faster and more quickly.
Onto point two, plant differently. One of my clients attended a networking group for over a year and never got a single client. She tried lots of different ways to utilize the group and it didn’t work for her. As soon as we did our VIP day together, we came up with a strategy to have her start a woman’s networking circle with her friends. As of today, she now has six new clients from that group. If one avenue doesn’t work, just try, try again.
Don’t forget that entrepreneurship is all about experimentation.
Use these 3 steps to start bringing in consistent cash flow in your business. If you want the template for the chart in step 1 or the plan in step 2, please check out my Cash Control Program.
Please leave me a comment to let me know what you think!
