Time by Another Name - More Tips For Selling a Perishable Inventory

By Deborah Sawyer Platinum Quality Author

Consultants and others who manage service businesses generally have nothing more then their time to offer. Trouble is, time is invisible and the clients frequently seem to think you have a never-ending supply of it.

An additional problem is that clients often believe your time is elastic, and you can stretch an hour to fit a series of new tasks which they think up. No matter that you submitted a proposal or scope of engagement and spelled out what would be done, the phone calls always come in: "... and another thing we'd like you to do...". Even
if the client is willing to increase the budget - very unlikely! - the fact that you can only do so much in any given hour puts a brake on handling these extra duties, unless you are prepared to work 24/7.

The other problem with running any kind of consultancy, is that time, of itself, has no intrinsic value, only the value we ascribe to it. What you can charge for your time - and clients' perceived value of your service - is dependent on a lot of external factors, such as market conditions and the state of the economy.

That's why it's a good idea, early on in your practice, to see if it's worthwhile to stop referring to what you sell as 'billable time' in favor of finding another descriptor that forestalls a lot of arguments. One way to get away from wrangles over what you could do with your time is to start referring to what you offer as your 'inventory' or your 'capacity'. These terms offer more concrete visualizations to the client and will put a damper on some of their unreasonable expectations.

This way, you'll never be at risk of blurting out "But I don't have enough time!". With the time argument, people can always suggest that you can find some more - "Couldn't you fit it into your lunch hour? You can skip going to your school kid's school performance" and so on. If you say instead: "Sorry, I'm all out of inventory" or "Geez, we'd love to help you but we're already at full capacity utilization until the first week of next month", it weakens their arguments that you can just fit in one more thing.

It's a lot harder for clients to argue that you should get some more capacity or acquire more inventory on the fly; both terms suggest it may take - you guessed it! - time to build up.

There will never be any more hours in the day than the current 24, just as there will always only be 7 days in a full week and five or fewer in a working week. Referring to what you offer in the more concrete terms of inventory or capacity will put what you offer on a more business-like footing - and help you save some free time for yourself!

Copyright Deborah C. Sawyer

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Deborah C. Sawyer is President of Information Plus and Editor of Service Business Smarts newsletter, which helps services entrepreneurs "work smarter, sooner". She has owned and managed service-based businesses since 1979 and has written books about issues faced by owner-managers of services firms. More details about the newsletter can be found at http://bizsmarts.info while Ms. Sawyer can be reached via 212/355-2205.