Cultivating Consistent Cash Flow While Selling B2B or Corporate
Two weeks ago, a client came to me and said, “Monica, I’m generating about $200,000 a year from corporate contracts. The problem is that I never know where exactly that money is going to come from or when it’s going to come in.”
She explained that she often waits up to four months after signing a corporate contract before she sees the money. “I’ve got three kids to support, and the inconsistency is driving me crazy. What do I do?”
If you are selling B2B or corporate, perhaps you resonate with this problem.
One of the benefits of selling to corporate or selling to organizations is that you receive more money with each contract – you can make upwards of $30,000, $40,000, $50,000 dollars per client, which is amazing.
But the downside is namely that corporate contracts take a long time to come to fruition. You might start talking to someone in January and not actually sell them until September.
Just signing a proposal can take anywhere from six months to a year (or longer). And when you get the contract signed – you may still end up waiting two, three, four months for the money to come in.
It can feel like you’re always living on the edge in your business, unable to plan vacations or pay your bills every single month.
If you’re in this position, I recommend that you keep going after corporate contracts, because when the money comes in it’s good money. At the same time, having some individual clients can help with the cash flow problem.
I like to explain this situation with the avocado versus tomato philosophy.
You see, when farmers plant avocados, they have to wait nine months to harvest them. The beauty is that when those nine months are over, they can sell each avocado for $5.
That’s great money – but the farmers can’t live off of the avocados for the nine months that they’re growing – so they also plant tomatoes to take to the market every single week. Even if they get ten cents per tomato, it’s consistent money to live off of.
As a person who sells corporate or B2B, it’s important to have both avocado clients and tomato clients.
Your avocados clients are your large, likely corporate clients. Tomato clients are one-on-one individual clients. By carrying five to ten individual clients, you’re bringing in cash flow every single month.
If you’re looking for tomato clients, you’ll want to pick an individual market. If you normally do communications consulting to help people resolve conflict in corporations, then you might work individually with executive leaders to help them improve communication with their teams.
I would recommend that you approach your current and past corporate clients with a standing offer to work with their executives and leaders individually while you’re simultaneously signing larger contracts to work with their teams.
If you are selling B2B and cash flow problems are driving you crazy, I invite you to look into picking up some private clients.
And as always, if you want support in figuring out your business model and getting that cash flow consistent, please feel free to reach out to us at support@revenuebreakthrough.com.
