You can start a business, but to keep it afloat, you have to bring in sales. It doesn’t come automatically. An IT consulting company needs to bring in revenue to survive. That means doing sales.
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I’ve been fortunate to have had referrals and repeat business from existing clients at Packet6. Those referrals will eventually dry out and are certainly not consistent or predictable.
I recently published my OKRs, creating the most significant pressure for myself as an entrepreneur, thus pushing me outside of my comfort zone.
One key result taken from my 2021 OKRs is to earn $350k in professional services. That’s a huge mountain to climb. To put it in perspective, Packet6 brought in $148,912 in professional services last year. In 2019 it was $218,739. How do I accomplish $350k in one year?
In September 2020, I decided to develop sales fundamentals and implement a sales strategy. You can see my attempts from my book list. I’m about to embark on a new experience of prospecting for clients.
By looking at my average deal size in 2020, I can estimate how many deals I’d need to close this year. That key number is $2910.40. I divide that into my target of $350k to come up with the total number of 121 deals I need to close (rounded up.)
Next, I divided 121 deals by 11 months because of me taking approximately a month’s worth of vacation from working.
I need to close 11 deals per month!
This number intimidates me because of a few things.
- I have a full-time job
- I don’t have any sales experience
- I’m the sole technical person at Packet6
I have to spend my time wisely to prevent anything from compromising my responsibilities to my primary employer. I’d have to do prospecting early morning and late afternoon.
Without any prior sales experience, I’d have to learn it on my own, execute, and learn from the failures. I could very well hire a seasoned salesperson, but I just don’t want to. I’d like to take a stab at it myself for a while.
To fulfill 11 deals per month, I’d most likely need to bring in some help, a subcontractor I can trust.
So that’s where I’m at now, with 11 deals per month to close without a formulated sales strategy. Let’s see where this takes me.
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