How We Should Prioritize Impact over Income in Professional Services Businesses

While the title of this post is a bit provocative, I am convinced that it is essential in professional services businesses to ensure to have sufficient professional impact. Beyond the fact that it should be the essential objective, it is an essential condition for sustainable success – and hence income. And this should be a priority, which means that a number of activities must be undertaken that generate impact even with low or limited income.

Of course income is important but it should be viewed as a means to generate impact. And success means more income, that allows to generate even more impact.

Impact is an essential pre-condition to be noticed and respected as a competent contributor. It must hence be publicized for a large part (which may sometimes be difficult in services of a confidential nature – in that case some general publications are needed). It is also essential to provide clients with sufficient confidence to hire our services and have some idea of the benefits they can expect.

And finally, what are we here for if it is not to generate impact, if possible much, much larger than the cost of our services? And develop ourselves and our business to generate even more impact? The impact we should seek should also of course be ethically positive impact, i.e. provide our clients with tangible, positive and ethical benefits.

I encounter too many professional services professionals that don’t prioritize sufficiently impact and prefer to seek income. This is not a sustainable proposition, and they miss the point of providing this type of services. Let’s prioritize impact more consciously in our daily activities!

This post is a follow-up from the post ‘ Useful Lessons Learnt for the Professional Services Business ‘ based on Pamela Slim’s post ‘ 23 Lessons from 23 years in business ‘.