I was coaching Ed and his team last Friday.
Last year Ed did $1.4m in revenue with 5 team members. He was making a decent profit on that.
Ed has 250 business clients with an average fee of $4,819 per business client. He had write ups of 10%, productivity of 74% and decent year on year growth. Ed owns a GP firm with a ‘hotchpotch’ of different clients. Everything from a solo contractor to a $25M ad agency – and everything in between.
Pretty typical starting mark for most of the firms I coach.
I asked him what his ‘ideal’ client was going forward. The absolute ultimate sweet spot for him. He told me HVAC businesses – heating, ventilation & air conditioning businesses between $1M and $10M in revenue. I asked him why that sector. Here’s his answer…
- There are lots of them throughout the country
- They have the ability to pay
- My IP and industry knowledge can help them
- I like them – good solid down to earth people
- There business will not be digitally disrupted (aka eliminated) in the future
The following conversation took place:
Me: Awesome. 5 good reasons to target them.
Ed: Yes, I have thought long and hard about the target going forward
Me: Ok. How many do you want?
Ed: 48 new ones
Me: How many do you have now
Ed: 1 and we’ve helped him a lot
Me: When do you want the 48?
Ed: By the end of this year
Me: How much do you want to charge them?
Ed: $40k each per annum
Me: What are you going to deliver as a minimum to justify $40K?
Ed: Simple. Compliance, tax planning, budgeting, forecasting, monitoring, accountability, financial coaching
Me: Do you have a marketing person to help you?
Ed: Yes
Me: Do you have any idea how to find them?
Ed: No!
So then the work started. We’ve got a clearly defined target market and he wants 48 new ones. What I did was draw a funnel on the flip chart and did a workback to see how many leads we need.
- End goal – 48 clients
- From implementation plan to sale 80%
- From 90 minute interview to implementation plan 90%
- From qualification process to interview 50%
- From lead generation to qualified lead 50%
Based on that he needs 266 quality leads (call it 300 to be safe) from this target market this year. 25 leads per month. He also needs a sales process and some fine tuning in the sales skills area. His marketing manager (part time) was in the room.
EASY she says!
MM: All I need to do is get a database, clean it up, send valuable content (case studies, articles etc), feed them into our complimentary report online, do some webinars and I’ll get 25 leads per month.
Me: Great – so let’s just go and to that!!!
I’ll be coaching Ed and he MM on the journey this year. Should be fun.