Setting Your Income Goal

As a consultant, your website has a purpose — to make you more money. But, if you don’t know how much you want to make, you have nothing to aim at. You’re throwing darts at a dartboard with no target.

An effective consulting website is aligned with the goals you want to achieve in your business. A revenue goal is a solid place to start.

Think about how much you want to earn (or, the lifestyle you want — and how much money takes to live this lifestyle), and write it down.

How much money do you want to earn per year from your consulting business?

Do not read the next word until you’ve written your income goal down.

EX: $200,000

Let’s say you want to earn $200,000 per year.

Good. Now we can work backwards from that number and reverse engineer your success.

You, as a consultant, make money by providing value to your clients. You provide value to your clients by solving their problems. It’s your expertise — your thinking — that allows you to solve their problems.

Consulting is advice. Ideally, expert advice. Clients pay you for your advice — advice that brings them closer to their desired future state.

To win consulting projects, you need to consult with prospective clients. You must sell them on the project. It’s your marketing that generates these consultations. Your marketing creates interest in the minds of your prospective clients. Effective marketing inspires them into booking a consultation with you. Without these consultations, you cannot win more consulting projects.

Your website, as the central hub of your marketing, exists to create more of these conversations.

Continue to work backward from your goal.

Think about how much you charge your clients — on average — for a consulting project.

How much do you charge per client project, on average?

EX: $30,000

Here’s the formula for how many clients you need to hit your income goal:

Income Goal / Average Project Income

In our example, the consultant who wants to make $200,000 must work with 6.667 clients per year to hit their target.

But, not all sales conversations lead to project work. Only a certain percentage of them do.

How many consultations with prospects does it take to turn one into a paying client?

EX: ⅕ consultations turn into a paying client — or a 20% sales call conversion rate.

In our example, it takes our consultant 5 calls to get one consulting project. 20% of consultations turn into paid work.

Let’s figure out where your website fits in. We must know the percentage of your website traffic that converts into one of these consultation calls. Or, in other words…

What is your website conversion rate?

EX: 0.5%

In our example, 0.5% of website visitors book a consultation call with the consultant.

Here’s a breakdown of the numbers:

• Annual income goal: $200,000
• Average project: $30,000
• Clients needed: 6.667

• Sales call conversion rate: 20%
• Consultations needed per month: 2.778
• Consultations needed (per week): 0.694
• Consultations needed (per day): 0.093

• Website conversion rate: 0.5%
• Website visitors needed (per month): 555
• Website visitors needed (per week): 139
• Website visitors needed (per day): 19

(Use my Consultant Website Income Formula to enter your own numbers so you can work backwards from your goal.)

Do the math for yourself. It will shock you how achievable your income goal is when you break it down into small, bite-sized chunks.

Now that you’ve set your income goal, you understand the purpose of your consulting website. A lead-generating website has every pixel, word, and section in alignment with your income goal. But, that’s not all. Your income goal is only possible when you shift focus on the goals of your prospect — their desired future state instead of yours. Your consulting website must reflect that.

It’s paradoxical, but that’s exactly how it works.

You can only achieve your income goal with sufficient consultations. You can only achieve sufficient consultations with sufficient website visitors. You can only generate sufficient website visitors when your website is worth visiting.

Your consulting website is worth visiting when you use it to help your prospective clients. Provide them with value. Provide them with your advice and expertise that brings them towards their desired future state. Do that, and they’ll show up in droves. And if they’re already checking you and your competitors out, you’ll stand out as the one who understands them best.