Collaborate on Consultancy Invoice Format for Research and Development with Ease Using airSlate SignNow

Consultancy invoice format for Research and Development

even though consulting is one of the fastest ways to start making money online as a solopreneur it can quickly turn into what feels like another job if you don't structure it correctly and attract the right clients so let's follow this simple business plan and model so you can maximize your income and actually start leveraging your time so you don't feel burned out every time a new client comes through the door so time stamps below along with some other helpful links and resources including a link to our consulting launch playbook to help you get up and running with your consulting practice as quickly as possible so we'll dive into the three p squared model yeah it's a silly name but you know i couldn't come up with anything else so you'll name your consulting things better and then of course we'll go through each step so by the end of this guide you have everything you need to launch a irresistible offer to your ideal customer and actually automate your client acquisition so the way to do all of these wonderful things as a consultant is to start with one package one of the worst things that you can do as a new consultant is try and be a jack of all trades and as you'll see as we go through this guide you can't leverage and scale when you have to do a separate service or some sort of custom work for every single client that comes through the door and when you have one front-end package this allows you to systematize your process so we'll go through how to productize your process so when you get a new client it just feels like a rinse and repeat process and then of course let's add some reoccurring revenue to your consulting business and give you the right of first refusal and so this is where at the end of your package you'll have some sort of offer where you can upsell your current clients on some sort of monthly package and of course write a first refusal all this means is if you have an active relationship with a client they're much more likely to bring you more work as opposed to going and finding someone else so this keeps the door open and that credit card on file for when your client wants more work or services and then once you have this process down you'll start adding other back-end offers in terms of more reoccurring some larger ticket packages in the back end some add-on services and then and only then once you have this process completely dialed in do you add two more front end packages and this allows you to systematize and easily scale over time and so as you add new packages and you add new services you don't have to add more sales calls or client acquisition we're just maximizing our revenue per client and of course keeping them happy so if you already know who your ideal client is then go ahead and jump to this time stamp where we go through how to design your irresistible offer otherwise let's dive into who on earth should we be targeting so there's a simple question or statement that you can use to really zero in on your exact ideal client and then what you're going to do for them so here's the simple formula i help ideal client take action so they can achieve result and this is going to be the tip of your marketing spear when you get this little sentence right all of the rest of your marketing copywriting and ads just falls into place it's really really cool so let's say for example we are a contractor and we drill holes in walls right so our sentence could look something like this i help first-time home buyers drill holes in walls so they can hang bookshelves and picture frames now the key here we'll go through another example that's a little more concrete but with this classic marketing example the point is nobody cares about the hole in the wall nobody cares about what we do as consultants all they care about is the bookshelves and picture frames that they get to enjoy on their wall after we've done our work so a huge trap a lot of new consultants fall into when doing their marketing is they talk about the drilling the hole in the wall like i've got this really cool technique and you know i can do this and i can do that and your client just sits there goes i don't i don't care i just want the just just hang it and make sure it doesn't fall and you know ruin my wall and and find the studs correctly right so that is what we need to focus on with this statement and then all of your marketing more on that when we get to the client acquisition at the end so in the playbook linked up in the description there are four simple questions you need to answer in order to create the sentence for yourself so the first one is of course how are we going to identify our ideal client so let's say i'm going to start a consulting practice helping other youtubers grow their channel right so we could call them video creators we could call them creators youtubers youtube entrepreneurs and as you go through your marketing you'll figure out which label works best for your particular ideal client all of these are different things and they're going to connect with different people which is what makes marketing so fun because we have so much to test and then we want to think about okay we want to help this person grow their channel what specific result are they after in terms of benefits in their larger life so of course they want to grow their channel we know that but why do they want to grow it do they want to be able to make more videos do they want to travel full-time have a full-time or part-time income for their channel and then what do they think is getting in the way of all the results they want well they probably think they need to grow faster they need more subscribers and views of course rank videos maybe their video quality isn't up to par and so this is going to be 15 or 20 minutes and it's going to save you so much headache when it comes to the rest of your marketing so please definitely go through this process and once you do you'll have a list of results and of course roadblocks and of course you're going to want to pick the big result for this next step where we're going to complete our sentence so at the top here i have a couple of verbs of course you can fill in your own verbs here these are just some examples and so we can take our who we're targeting our roadblocks and our results and a couple of verbs and we can come up with five different examples so you can pause if you want to read through them i won't waste your time going through each one but as you can see there are lots of different combinations with just this simple example that we did in less than a couple of minutes so there's going to be a brainstorming session on the horizon for you and you're going to go through this process and there's going to be one that pretty much just clicks right you're going to go through this process and go that's the one that i should start with and spoiler alert you can always change it later if it turned out to be wrong so that is really all there is to it to figuring out the big result that your offer is going to deliver and of course who you're actually going to give the results to which means we are ready to start designing our package now as we jump in here we're not going to talk about systematizing your process how you're going to go about doing your work yet we're going to leave that for the next step here we want to focus on okay we know who we're servicing we know who what the big result is so what do they physically get though like at the end of working together what do they have in their hand is it a physical asset is it ability is it something else and so a physical asset this could be a set of documents or reports or maybe you've configured a software for them and so what physically do they have in their hand and of course it could also be something that's intangible like an ability maybe they can do a handstand now they can bench press 250 pounds or squat 300 or something like that right or maybe they now have the ability to tell their dogs how to do tricks right so in every single niche or industry there's a set of abilities that they walk away with and it's a set of some sort of physical asset that they get and of course there's space for something else intangible as well right and of course if you're a coach then it might just be mindset mind mindset oh no mind set shift right they have a new ability or that a new way of thinking and so this is how we make sure that what we deliver in our package is actually valuable and directly connected to the result that they want because this is going to make sure that you don't have that awkward conversation at the end of the engagement where they go yeah i i didn't really want this like i don't feel like i can get the result that i need with all this garbage you just gave me right and that's just a awful conversation to have so let's make sure you avoid that definitely not pleasant so once we know what they get at the end of it whether it's the the skill an asset something else intangible now we can focus on ourselves and this is really the key to breaking the oh so terrible feast and famine cycle of being a consultant freelancer because the process normally goes something like this without productizing your service you spend all this time getting clients then you have these clients so you spend all this time working and then you finish the clients and now you have no clients you have to go back to the beginning and find more clients and then you know the cycle continues so what this allows you to do is shrink that middle process down so that it takes you so little time to actually give clients the results they want that you can keep getting more clients while you're actually servicing the ones that you have and you can only do this if you have one front-end package and you have a big result that you become really really good at delivering for your clients and so there are three phases to productizing your service we have the input we have the construct and then we have the output i know revolutionary names right so in our input phase this is most likely going to be the first seven days that someone starts working with us and so the key here is we want to collect all the information that we need set expectations for how the engagement is going to go get all their questions answered and of course handle any objections or worries that they have so when you go into the construct phase you are able to completely focus so imagine you just closed your client and you're on the phone with them and they say hey you know what just whatever i need to give you i'll give you now and i'm going on a trip for a month and i'm not going to be available right so you want to make sure that you collect all the information you need to go do whatever your magic is inside of your construct phase and so once you have all that information you've set those expectations you've collected all that information so you don't have to ask your client again for anything and there's a little delicate balance here you don't want to send them an email saying hey here's the 30 things i need from you right now there's some nuance to it then we move into the construct phase and this is where you go into a silo and work your magic because you can't deliver awesome client results if you're constantly answering client questions and constantly waiting for new information from the client now the only caveat here is obviously there's different types of consulting engagements and projects is if you need some sort of feedback along the way and so during your onboarding phase you might tell them hey we're going to go work for a couple days and then we're going to come back and ask for your input on abc right and so you do want to make sure that you don't work so long that you come back and be like hey here's your awesome website or here's your trained dog and then just look at you like uh that's not all what i wanted um he's playing dead and i needed him to i don't know jump over this fence right so whatever the silly thing is we do want to make sure there's milestones so you don't get to the end of the project and find out that they're really not happy and they're going to ask for like 12 revisions right because revisions and scope creep are just the absolute worst to deal with as a consultant and of course because you are doing the same service in the same way for every single client you're actually going to start to be able to create standard operating procedures or soaps and what these allow you to do is start delegating specific tasks and also it just makes you a lot more streamlined because this becomes a routine and you can actually start delegating parts to other people on your team or hiring freelancers which is awesome because then your costs become variable you just hire freelancer to do a specific task when you need them to for a client and you don't have to keep on a bunch of staff if you have a month where you don't have any new clients and then finally we have the output because let's face it it doesn't matter how great we are eventually our clients are going to leave there's some sort of life cycle to every single business out there and so when it comes to leaving we want to make sure that we deliver everything that we figured out in the previous step and of course that we set them up for future success and this is where we can have a conversation about some sort of monthly reoccurring type of service which we'll get to in a moment or an upsell to another service so you can start to think about all right well i just solved this problem with this package what else could i offer them now that they've achieved these results link in the description to the consulting launch playbook so you can map out this process for yourself with your own business so you can claim back your time and productize your service now let's talk about getting paid so if you're still with me hit that like button how much are we going to charge for this awesome package that delivers all the results that our ideal client wants well this is a video of course in and of itself so link in the cards in the description to a super deep dive guide everything fee structure and lots of different ways that you could get paid and structure how you are paid here let's just 80 20 let's say 95.5 the process and use a simple formula to figure out what your baseline should be and of course this starts with how much time it's actually going to take us to deliver all of these awesome results so how much time does it take for the construct where we're actually doing the work how much time are we going to spend on the phone with them replying to emails setting things up in our project manager every single minute related to this client go ahead and put that there let's say it's going to take us 30 hours all all in 30 hours from start to finish and then well how much should we give ourselves in terms of pay per hour yes there are lots of different ways to do this this is just one i always get hate comments on this for some reason so go to monster glass door whatever job board you want to look at and see in major cities like new york or la look at how much you would be paid if you were hired by an actual company to do this type of work right and the reason i say the big cities is because those tend to be inflated and there's lots of costs of living adjustments no matter where you are in the world and so the rate that i would be paid as a marketer in say san antonio was very different than when i moved to some place like seattle right so we don't want to under charge ourselves we'll just take the the top rate assuming that we have confidence in what we can do so let's say this is going to be around 50 an hour right and of course we don't want to just multiply these two numbers we need to give ourselves a profit margin and a cushion so we'll multiply it by anywhere from 1.3 to 1.5 and this gives us a 30 to 50 percent profit margin and so at the very end we're going to charge about 1900 bucks for this service again there are lots of different ways to do this this is just a way to make sure that your rates are not only reasonable but you're charging enough now you may be completely brand new to whatever your niche or industry is and you might take on a few early clients at zero or super discount but don't do that after the first five you have the first five clients you might take in a super deep discount or for free just so you can get some experience get some testimonials and case studies then charge what you're worth right so don't go onto client like number 10 or 15 and go okay well i'm still trying to figure out this little part of my process or this little part of the process no after you've delivered results for five clients charge a full rate minimum this or higher and speaking of going higher it's time to talk about upsells because the best source of new revenue for your consulting business is not new clients it's current clients right so when it comes to how do we maximize revenue and how do we really grow and scale our consulting business it's not about getting more clients in the door it's about maximizing the revenue per client and so what you want to do here is start thinking about what else could we offer what else can we offer in terms of add-on services while we're doing our core package a little asterisk there what can we do in terms of management after they're done with our package so what can we do on an ongoing basis to essentially help them take the results that they've achieved and go to the next level or do we just want to stay on as a advisory role like a some sort of retainer model now each one of these is different the only asterisk here comes to the add-on you need to make sure that whatever you offer during your core package shouldn't have been included in the package in the first place that's a huge mistake and a red flag in the eyes of your clients and so here are a couple of examples you can always pause if you want to read through them they are in the consulting launch playbook linked up in the description and it goes through a simple exercise to help you come up with lots of ideas but when it comes to increasing your revenue it's not about getting more clients in the door it's about maximizing the client the revenue that you get per client and of course the value you deliver to each one of your clients so speaking of clients in the door our final step here is going to be actually getting them in the door now here's the key with this acquisition process there's a lot to it you can see there's there's some steps here that you might actually not do in the beginning so i will link up in the cards and the description to a super deep dive guide another one of course that goes through each step of this consulting acquis client acquisition model and how you can apply it for yourself using free software and so this model only works because you're offering one package you can't automate and systematize your internal processes let alone your client acquisition process if you are offering too many services and so when you have one front-end package it allows you to market that one package and yes you can offer more services on the back end but it's a lot easier to sell to current clients and you don't have to create a whole new sales funnel every time you want to sell to your current clients and so this is really powerful because your front-end package allows you to automate this entire process of finding qualified prospects and getting them on the phone with you pre-vetting them and then if you have other services that you want to offer you have other things that you know you could be uh be of value to your current clients you can have that conversation after you've already collected that credit card information and you've delivered some results they're going to be much more likely to just say yeah sure let's do it and that's a much easier thing to do when you're on the phone with a client anyway versus having to come up with a completely new set of ads and content and landing pages and email sequences trying to get someone new through the door and so quickly just as we wrap up here when it comes to this client acquisition model you're going to want to use either ads or content and offer something called a lead magnet and then you're going to have that lead magnet and a simple email sequence tell them to book a call with you and then on that call hopefully you close them and then you can go ahead and actually start your product ties service so again link in the cards in the description to a guide that goes through all of that process and more because going through building that would be twice or three times as long as this video already has so thank you so much for watching sincerely hope you have a much clearer picture on how you can structure your own consulting business to maximize your revenue and of course minimize your time per client go ahead and comment below with any of your consulting questions i do read and reply to every single one hit that like button and subscribe for more deep dive guides just like this one and some that are a whole lot shorter and until the next keep building the business you love [Music] you