Two different stories happened today that got me thinking about the cost of professional services.
The first was a conversation I had with someone about PPC advertising. Specifically about how much agencies charge to manage those campaigns and how they never run on auto-pilot so they constantly need someone managing them.
The second was a class action lawsuit where the attorneys are taking 25% of the settlement ($28M) plus their fees of another quarter million. (Quite a nice payday for them)
Whenever you have to hire professional services to help, the costs can escalate really quickly. They might help and be worth the cost, but those costs still need to be paid for by your business. Meaning either out of your profit or by your customers (via price increases).
On the other hand, if you create repeatable systems to get your existing customers to come back, your cost to acquire each order can go down dramatically. In this case you're not hiring to maintain the status quo but instead to build you an asset you can keep getting value from.
Eric Davis
Is your customer acquisition spending too much?
If you're spending more to acquire a customer than they are worth, you're at risk of going out of business. Check how much you can expect your Average Customer.