That Pareto was a real dog! (photo cc dairycows2)
Do you track your clients before the ink is dry?
PROBLEM: Your True Hourly Rate is a hidden, mystical creature. A unicorn! But you want to find and pet the unicorn. Petting unicorns is profitable. To find the unicorn, you must go on a quest… to track all the time related to your work.
SOLUTION, PART ONE OF MANY: Figure out exactly what it costs you to acquire a new client. How many hours spent prospecting? How many hours spent doing initial consultations? Then how much work does that lead to?
Track time spent swirling around your sales funnel from the very first point of contact, and you’ll find your True Hourly Rate unicorn coming out of the magical mist.
Begin tracking your time the second a new client reaches out to you — by email, phone, twitter, or carrier pigeon.
Track…
- the time spent on emails
- the time spent fretting about what to put in the email
- time spent on the phone
- time spent visiting the client
- time spent researching the client and/or project
- time spent planning & writing proposals / responses to RFPs
Don’t know what to call the project-before-it-is-a-project? Don’t let that stop you — use the client’s name.
Only then can you begin to calculate your True Hourly Rate! (Well, with that, plus all the other things you might be accidentally forgetting to track!)
Did we miss anything? Let us know in the comments!
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