Smoothing Cash Flow When Your Business Is Small or New

Intro: Happy U.S. Thanksgiving

This article was actually first published back in June of last year. My family is on vacation, first visiting the birth parents of our adopted twin boys, and then off to my sister’s where our larger family goes every year to celebrate Thanksgiving.

In preparing to be out of town for that long with twin toddlers, I just didn’t get the article written. But I wanted to have you take another look at this particular article because as the holidays approach, many heart-centered business folks don’t feel very celebratory. Why not?

Clients go on vacation, and the feast or famine cycle of your business falls on the famine side of things. The approach I describe below tells you how your clients really want to help you smooth out your cash flow, if only you don’t abandon them.

For even more info on money flow, momentum and such, don’t forget to join me for the no-cost teleclass December 2. Yes, it’s a bit of a promotion for our Opening the Moneyflow course, but I’m going to be explaining why we planned our year-long program the way we did, and how that applies to moving your business into momentum. How do you take a full year and use it in a way that moves your business towards momentum?

Click here to register for the teleclass. Then read the article below. And enjoy this coming weekend, whether or not it’s a holiday for you. Even if experiencing challenges, I’m imagining there’s also a lot to be grateful for in your life and business.

Smoothing Cash flow When Your Business Is Small or New

A past participant in the Opening the Moneyflow Course had a fairly minimal email list of potential clients, about 80 or so. It was enough to bring in a few clients, but not enough to keep her pipeline full.

While she was ramping up to increase the list, which was growing every week, she was still facing that cash flow issue: how can you keep a steady cash flow with just a handful of clients, before your marketing gets traction?

When the Last Session Approaches

Despite my Virgo-ness, my office needed big time help, which is why I hired someone to help me get organized. In the first four sessions of a five-session package, things changed in leaps and bounds. Big leaps. Huge bounds. I was ecstatic.

“Well, next session is our last session,” she told me. “Whatever you want is okay with me, whether you want to stop or continue.”

Suddenly, I felt nervous, a little unsure. Was she trying to get rid of me politely? Was she expecting me to able to handle it all on my own now?

Instead of disappearing on her after our last session, I asked her for a prescription: “Based on what you know about me and our work together so far, what do you recommend in terms of sessions or whatever so I can come to some completion?”

Pause. “Well, based on what you still want to do, you won’t be done by the next session. And it looks like you’re responding really well to what we’ve been doing together. You’ve made huge progress. I think you should strongly consider continuing after the fifth session. Next time we meet, I’ll let you know how many additional sessions I recommend, based on what is still left undone.”

I took a deep breath. I didn’t have to figure it out on my own. She wasn’t trying to drop me, and she wasn’t going to abandon me in the middle of the work.

Whew!

Freedom Can Scare a Client and Destroy Your Cash Flow

Whether you’re a coach, healer, chiropractor, or some other service provider, it’s not uncommon when you’re new in business to use some sort of introductory package that consists of just three or five sessions. It’s a great idea and can help uncertain clients jump in, because the commitment isn’t so large.

The problem, however, with these packages is that clients can zip through them in a month or so. You’re then left with having to find new clients. Because you don’t have a steady flow of clients coming through your pipeline, you can’t trust that you’ll have the mortgage or grocery money from month to month.

Not fun.

And look what it does to your clients. Whatever kind of service you provide, it’s going to be a rare client that is going to have gone as far as they can go with you in just three to five sessions. The vast majority are going to need more.

If, on the last session, you say something like, “Whatever you want is okay with me”…. well, you saw my reaction. I’m willing to bet that most of your clients are not going to be proactive and ask for a prescription.

Your clients are not going to be so brave. They’ll just leave.

They won’t feel complete, and you’re left with an open client slot. Lose-lose. Yucko. Instead, it’s best for both of you if you guide them. You have to sell ‘em, but not the hard sell.

Avoiding the Hard Sell

Once someone has signed up as your client, they are depending on you. They are looking to you for care and guidance.

You can, of course, betray that trust by telling them to spend money with you in wasteful or unnecessary ways, and there are plenty of examples of people who do that.

But you’re a heart-centered person and you truly want what’s best for them, which is why you told them, “Whatever you want is fine with me,” in the first place.

Don’t do that. Stand even more clearly in your heart, and tell them what they really need.

Even My Sufi Sheikh Does It To Me

Before I had formally been initiated by my spiritual teacher (called “taking hand” in the Sufi tradition), there was a lot of gentleness, permission, and exploration with the teachings.

But once I had “taken hand” and made the agreement to be his spiritual student ( murid), things changed. As his murid, I made a promise to do certain things. And now every time I see him, he gives me more prescriptions on how to walk on the spiritual path.

It’s a given that I am free to do whatever I want to do. If I choose to ignore him, I can. But I’ve made a commitment to be his student, so I listen. And (for the most part) I do what he tells me. Because he’s my teacher, I trust him, and he’s never yet steered me wrong.

Of course, you may not be a grand poobah, or a high muckety-muck. You’re just you. And yet, your clients are still your students, effectively. Steer them. Guide them.

If you don’t, they probably won’t feel free, they’ll feel abandoned.

Yet, I understand that it can seem like a fine line between steering and bullying them. Walking that line isn’t as hard as you might think, however, if your heart is in the right place.

Keys to Steering Your Clients

• What is truly in their best interest?

If they truly are complete, let them go. Though, if you can see more for them, don’t shy away from acknowledging that.

Take a moment in your heart, pick one of your clients, and ask to be shown what’s still possible if they continue receiving your support past the intro package. Let yourself be willing to be surprised.

• Be creative about the format.

After the intro package, there may or may not be a change in order. Again, for your client, ask your heart what the format would be for them to achieve optimum results.Consider length of time, and number and frequency of sessions. Also consider other types of support.

Write it all down and say “yes” to it.

• Present it as a package.

Don’t string clients along session by session if you can help it. You don’t want each new session to be a new purchasing decision, because it keeps the client from resting into the larger flow of the work you are doing together.

Show them what your heart showed you: “When I took some time to think it through, here’s what I got: you could use another eight sessions, two a month instead of the intensive weekly sessions we’ve been doing up until now, over the next four months. How does that sound?”

If it came from your heart, chances are it will resonate with their heart, too. And even if it doesn’t, you can negotiate together the best course to take.

Take care not to give your clients so much freedom that they feel abandoned. If you keep the container in tact, you’ll see them achieve more and sticking around longer. This helps them, while smoothing out your cash flow so you can focus and take the time you need to get the word out to more people.

p.s. Time’s running out to jump into the 2010 Opening the Moneyflow course.

There are lots of tidbits like this one that help to tweak your business along and get it running smoothly. If you try to jam them all into a typical six week course, how many of them would you really be able to implement and see results?

Join me and the Heart of Business team for an entire year of learning, feedback, community, love and support to move your business into momentum. What if you could trust your business to keep bringing in income every month? What if you you didn’t have to do anything weird or smarmy to make it work?

The early bird deadline to save five hundred dollars is December 4. Read, check in with your heart, and then get your application in:

Opening the Moneyflow year-long course.

Join us for the free preview teleclass on December 2.