Guides

Longer answers to the questions founders of services businesses actually search for, written from having run three of them.

• Cash flow forecast for a services business: billable days, pipeline coverage and the ceiling you cannot see

  A services forecast is people times days times rate, minus the bench. The month you can repeat matters more than the month you are proudest of.

• Consultant day rate in the UK: how to set one you can defend

  A day rate you can defend is worked back from what the firm costs to run and how many days it can honestly bill, then graded, so that a buyer picks a rung rather than argues with a number.

• Consulting business plan: the working-backwards brief, with the sections a lender or partner expects

  Most business plan templates are written for companies that sell a product many times; a consulting firm sells skilled people's time, so its plan should start from who will pay, at what rate, for how many days, and what that leaves once the people are paid.

• How to become a consultant: the honest version from someone who did it twice

  You need a problem you have solved repeatedly for an employer, one person willing to pay you to solve it for them, and a price you can explain; the company, the website and the business cards can all wait.

• How to price managed services: per user, per device, per cent of spend, per application, and a fee designed to fall

  The unit you price a managed service on decides whose side of the table you sit on. This guide compares the five common bases, argues against pricing on a proxy for the customer's spend, and sets out application tiering with a fee designed to fall.

• Independent consultant: how to set up, price your work and win the first client

  Setting up takes a week. What you charge and who you talk to in the first month decide whether you earn anything, so do those in the right order.

• KPIs for agencies and consultancies: the numbers a monthly scorecard should carry, and the ones it should not

  Nine financial measures on one page, each with a written definition and the question it answers, sitting under three fixed headers that force a customer measure and a people measure onto the same page as the money.

• Market research to start a services business: ten questions, ten conversations, and a ranked list of what hurts

  A services business needs one buyer, not a market size. The cheapest research a founder can run is a short list of pains, ten conversations and a scoring rule.

• What is a monthly retainer? How consultancies and agencies structure and price one

  A monthly retainer is a fixed fee paid every month for agreed access, capacity or an ongoing service. It is the first step most consultancies and agencies take from project revenue towards revenue that repeats, and it is easy to price badly.