4 Quick Ideas to Help you Change Your Cash Flow Habits As a Coach, Consultant or Trainer

    By Victor Bassey  In my experience the most challenging thing about starting on the path to highly paid expert status, is managing the feast and famine periods, you know what I mean? Today you snag the big client and make some money, but you don’t see any more action for weeks or sometimes months. It can be very discouraging especially if you have responsibilities that constantly demand diapers! And then there are those crazy disrespectful bills that never stop coming, yeah I’ve been there and I can tell you, it’s no fun. So, here are a few cash flow habits that I’ve adopted to make sure I’m still around and relevant ten years from now:   1. Ask for Cash up front   One way to immediately boost your cash flow when you do get a client is to ask for your money up front. Now I know for some people that’s going to be a bit of a problem. You might be thinking, nobody will agree to that especially if they haven’t experienced your work before but hold on just a bit. The fact is if you had done a good job in establishing your value throughout the time you were selling them on your program or service, getting them to give you your full fee up front shouldn’t be that much of a problem. In my experience, the sooner you set that as your operating standard the better. At the very least, always ask for a deposit; about 50-70%.   2. Make Daily and Monthly Income a Priority   Sometimes we can get so focused on big ticket projects that take weeks and months to generate income that we forget that we need to eat, pay rent and buy those darned diapers! The sooner we make plans for products and services that provide, daily, weekly or at most monthly income, the better. For me, my monthly subscription based personal and business development audio series Power Ideas takes care of my daily income. At just one new subscriber a day paying N6500 I earn N130,000 a month. Every month I promote my Experts Masterclass. Just in case you’re wondering, the one for April 2014 is on How to Start, Grow and Profit from your Own Coaching or Consulting Business. Even if all I get in the month are just 5 participant at N25000 a seat, that’s an extra N125,000. Just these two profit centres add up to slightly more than N250000 in a month in new business. This doesn’t include my Highly Paid Experts VIP day program or sales from my reports online or done-for-you services like audio program production, website development or bio makeovers that I do for my premier clients or any of the other profit centres I put in place for my business. So what’s my point? Have plans in place for profit centres that generate cash for you NOW, while you work towards landing the mega pay jobs.   3. You and Santa Claus Are NOT related   Many experts are giving away value now in the hope of making a bigger sale later. My advice: Don’t! Now, I’m all for moving the free line and educating to sell, BUT do it with a large dose of common sense. If you must give away value, give it in the form of information products that ultimately set your prospects up to buy. Here’s something else: Manage your price points. Create a spread of products and services that span the full price spectrum, within the limits of reason of course. Have some N15, 000 ($100), N200000 ($1000), and N650000 ($4000) products and while you’re at it, create a N3million ($20000) product just for the heck of it. Will you get buys for all your price points? I don’t know. What I do know is that most of us experts get comfortable managing certain price points. Get out of your comfort zone and re-price what you do.   4. Go fish somewhere else   Markets are like fishing spots. Sometimes by changing your activity location for a while you get a fresh catch. If you are selling to corporations, create a quick cash flow product that works for small businesses. If you sell to individuals then create something you can do for companies. So there it is, four ideas for managing your cash flow. Let me know your thoughts.     About the author: Victor Bassey helps entrepreneurial experts, coaches, consultants, trainers, small/medium scale business owners and corporate executives become commercially smart with the positioning, packaging, promotion and distribution of their knowledge expertise and life experience. Follow him on Twitter @mrvictorbassey  – See more at: http://connectnigeria.com/articles/2014/04/04/what-do-you-do-when-people-cant-afford-to-pay-your-fees/#sthash.JJkBU4S4.dpuf