Consultant’s Pyramid, Part 2: Do Billable Work
March 3rd, 2009
(Part 2 in the Consultant’s Pyramid series—a short blog series on keeping the project pipeline full).
So, this one should be a no-brainer: billable work is how most consultants¹ generate revenue. If you have billable work for one or more customers that is currently actionable, do it—but don’t overdo it. An all-too-common pitfall among consultants (myself included!) is to get wrapped up in a big project and sink all available time into it. However, even the best of relationships will end for no good reason.
Perhaps the worst time to go looking for more business is the week after your customer has been bought out by a larger company that has already unplugged your servers and routed all information through their corporate headquarters. Yes, it does happen.
No doubt, billable work is king, but even the king needs backup, and, more importantly, succession. When your favorite client falls over, what will you do next? Do only the amount of billable work that will still give you time to complete the rest of your daily routine, and have the emotional reserves to maintain a healthy life outside of work. For me, that translates to about 4 hours of billable work per day. Your sweet spot may be different.
Occasional dips and peaks in billable time are practically unavoidable for consultants, but chronically or significantly overshooting your daily quota can be just as disastrous as working too little. This business strategy is all about balance and sustainability; as an independent consultant, you must switch roles regularly, and that means stepping away from the technical work frequently enough to focus on the other aspects of your business.
Finally, billable work done to a high quality standard is easily your best advertising tool; it often leads to more billable work from the same customer, or at the very least, a glowing reference.
Success Measure for Billable Work: You have completed actionable, billable work today, with time to spare.
The next posts in the series will focus on the other tiers in the pyramid. You may subscribe to my RSS feed here.
¹ Of course, if you have product-based offerings, the main idea here will apply just as well.
March 4th, 2009 at 8:01 am
[...] Yesterday, I talked about the importance of billable work. As a consultant, billable work is your product. Products require inputs. Existing relationships—your network—are the fuel that drive new work. Thinking back as far as I can remember, nearly every significant event has come as the result of an existing relationship I had with someone. Web 2.0 is old news—very old news; the world has always relied on networking. Humans are social. [...]