So the most successful consultants only spend one-third of their time delivering customer service. This may not seem like a lot, but as you'll see there are numerous other activities you must do to manage your business. For speakers and trainers, delivering speeches and seminars represents only half of their 20 hours of customer service. Typically they're running 3 sessions of 3 hours each per week. The balance of their service time is spent on preparation.
Some speakers also try to generate non-speaking revenue.
However, this is only a very small part of their business, taking up just about 1 hour per week. The consultants' billable time is divided between working from a home-based office and working at their clients' location. They include billing, photocopying, buying supplies, going to the post office, dealing with associates, general administration, paperwork, personal training, professional reading and cleaning up the office. But their work week is much longer, so the actual hours are longer, adding up to 13 hours per week on administration. Depending on the person, this might include filling out government forms, writing reports, sending service updates, updating databases, and even fixing a computer problem.