The Four Numbers That Show You EXACTLY Why You’re Not Hitting £70K+ Yet

Your marketing can look busy — posts, calls, networking, content — but how do you really know if it’s working?

In this week’s episode, I unpack LAPS — the four numbers that tell the truth about your business: Leads, Appointments, Presentations, and Sales.

Because if you’re not tracking these, you’re guessing. And guessing is the fastest way to stay stuck.

Here’s what you’ll discover:

• The simple tracking system every consultant needs to spot what’s working (and what’s not)
• How one HR consultant used her numbers to catch a drop in conversions before it hurt her income
• The “Black Friday” mindset that shows why every serious business measures success
• How to turn your marketing from a mystery into a measurable plan
• The exact LAPS targets to hit if you want a predictable £70K+ consultancy

By the end, you’ll know exactly what to measure, why it matters, and how to use your data to make confident business decisions — not emotional guesses.

And if you’d like to cement what you learn today, go and read the chapter about it in The Complete Guide to Building a £70K HR Consultancy: https://theinfluentialconsultant.co.uk/the-complete-guide-to-building-a-70k-hr-consultancy/ 

And if you'd like to see a basic LAPS spreadsheet then click here: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1ry98TG2714o8sKF3E1pXHKtgyFELdppYoxEs09mW3YM/edit?usp=sharing 

Timestamps:

• 00:00 – What HR Consultants Must Measure to Grow a £70K Consultancy
•  00:29 – Why Guessing at Your Marketing Results Keeps You Stuck
•  01:00 – The LAPS System Explained: Leads, Appointments, Presentations, Sales
•  01:45 – How to Identify Exactly Where Your HR Consultancy Funnel Breaks Down
•  02:35 – The Hidden Cost of Not Tracking Leads and Conversions
•  03:15 – Why Most Self-Employed HR Consultants Don’t Track Their Numbers
•  03:55 – Business Growth Analogy: Flying a Plane Without Instruments
•  04:30 – Story: How One HR Consultant Used LAPS to Spot a Sales Decline
•  05:25 – When the Market Moves On and Your Old Marketing Stops Working
•  05:55 – What the Black Friday Story Teaches About Tracking Business Performance
•  06:20 – Setting Financial Goals: How to Reverse-Engineer £70K a Year
•  06:55 – Example LAPS Targets: 32 Leads → 8 Appointments → 4 Presentations → 2 Sales
•  07:30 – Quick Exercise: Review Your Own Leads, Appointments, and Sales Numbers
•  08:10 – The Four Biggest Mistakes HR Consultants Make with LAPS Tracking
•  09:00 – Vanity Metrics vs Real Sales Data: Why Likes Don’t Pay the Bills
•  09:40 – How to Use LAPS to Improve Pricing, Conversions, and Predictable Income
•  10:10 – Why Tracking LAPS Gives You Control, Clarity, and Confidence

Want My Help to Build Your £70K+ HR Consultancy?

1️⃣ Grab a copy of my book – The Complete Guide to Building a £70K HR Consultancy – and discover how to get every lead and client you need.

2️⃣ Apply to Join The Fastlane Formula – so we can work together 1-to-1 to get you earning £70K+ faster (and easier) than going it alone.

Transcript

00:00 Hello there, and welcome back to another episode of Marketing Made Easy for HR Consultants with me, Nick Peninske. Today's episode, we are diving into something that separates the consultants who guess, from the consultants who grow.
00:13 This is a something I talk about in my book, and it's one of the most powerful tools you can use to understand where your business really stands.
00:22 It's called LAPS. Now, before you roll your eyes and think, oh, here we go again, another acronym, stay with me.
00:30 Because this one could completely change how you see your business. Now, it's all well and good to keep plugging away in marketing, to keep showing up on LinkedIn, to keep writing posts, going to networking events, talking to prospects, blah, blah, blah, et cetera, et cetera, all that good stuff.
00:46 But here's the truth. If you are not measuring this stuff, if you're not measuring what's working, what isn't working, you are flying blind.
00:55 You could be wasting time on activities that feel productive, but aren't profitable. You might be talking to lots of people, but not turning any of them into paying clients.
01:04 And worst of all, you might not even realise how bad the situation is. And, like they say, that which is measured gets managed.
01:14 And if you want to manage your business growth, you've got to measure how bad So what does LAPS stand for?
01:21 Well, LAPS stands for Leads, Appointments, Presentations and Sales. And these are four simple numbers that tell the truth about your business.
01:31 So let's break it down. Leeds, that's it. That's the number of people who show interest in what you offer. That's the L.
01:38 The A stands for Appointments, the number of calls or meetings that you book. P is for Presentations, the number of times you actually share what you're offering.
01:48 And S is for Sales. How many people say yes, and, ideally, how much they pay. Now, each one of these numbers tells you something vital about your business.
01:59 If you don't have any leads, your marketing isn't working. If you're not turning these leads into appointments, you're with something in your business.
02:09 Either, A, your leads are finding out something about you that they're, that is putting them off, or B, you're looking at their information and saying, they're not right for me.
02:20 Next, if you don't have any presentations, you want to move people through your funnel. So, you're getting on a call with them, but you're not presenting your offer to them for one reason or another.
02:29 Something has gone amiss between that call and the next step of the presentation. And finally, if you're not getting any sales, then your pitch, your pricing, or your positioning, or your, your sales technique, it needs work.
02:44 And the biggest story these numbers tell, whether you've got a business or an expensive hobby. Because, like I say, if there are no leads, there are no sales.
02:53 And if there are no sales, there are no leads. There's no business, right? So, most HR consultants, most HR consultants I talk to, they don't track their laps at all.
03:03 They think, oh, I'm just a one-person business, I don't need metrics. But that's exactly why they stay, they stay small.
03:11 Every successful business, from Amazon to your local bakery, they track their numbers. They know what's working, they know what isn't, and they know what needs fixing.
03:20 And if you're not tracking, you are not learning. You are just hoping. So let me give you a quick example.
03:27 You might It's like flying a plane without having any instruments. You might feel like you're heading in the right direction.
03:35 But you have no idea if you're off course until it's too late. Your laps are your dashboard. They tell you when to adjust, when to refuel, when something's wrong with the engine.
03:45 Laps shows you which part of your business is running low, whether it's your leads, appointments, your presentations or your sales.
03:52 Let me give you another story to bring this to life for you. I was working with a HR consultant recently.
03:57 She was brilliant, really experienced, great with clients. She really knew what she was doing. She stuff, but she knew her numbers.
04:04 She said to me, Nick, I used to convert one in four inquiries, but it's dropped to one in seven. Now here's the thing.
04:11 She wasn't doing anything differently. She hadn't forgotten what her, uh, uh, uh, positioning was. What her offer was, nothing along those lines, but the market had moved on the tactics she was using when she started out, they weren't working anymore.
04:26 That's what, you know, that's what we analyze. That's what we worked out. The messages that she was using to grab attention had gone stale.
04:33 And here's the key point, we were able to have this conversation because she had her numbers, she spotted there was an issue, she knew something had shifted, and she knew she had to do something about it.
04:45 That's how you run a proper business. Every serious business, out there, tracks their targets. They know whether they're on course, or they're falling behind.
04:55 And let's just bring this to life for you one last time. Do you know why it's called Black Friday? Well, Black Friday is called Black Friday because that's the day when most people Most retailers would finally move into the black in their accounts, meaning they were profitable for the year.
05:12 They'd analyze their numbers. They knew that was the day they'd make the most sales. They knew that was the day they had to make the most sales.
05:19 That's the power of tracking. And you can't fix what you can't see. So let's get practical now. How do you use your laps in practice?
05:28 Well, let's start off with an annual goal. Let's say you want to make 70K this year. That is, give or take, $5,800.
05:35 That's about £333 a month. Now, if you then need to work out how many clients that you need to earn that, right?
05:44 So if your main offer, if your signature offer is about £3,000 or so, then you know you need two clients a month.
05:51 Then you can So, if you know that one in two presentations turns into a sale, you will know that you need four presentations.
06:02 If you know that two appointments leads to a presentation, you know that you need eight presentations. Eight appointments. And you know, if you know that one in four leads books an appointment, you know that you'll need 32 leads.
06:17 So, your monthly lapse target might look like 32 leads, eight appointments, four presentations, two sales. And when you know those numbers, you know exactly what you need to do to hit your target.
06:31 Feel free to rewind that section and listen to it again, because I did go through it really quickly. But the idea being that you start with your annual goal, you work out how many clients you need to achieve that financial goal, that annual goal, that monthly goal.
06:46 And then you work backwards to identify how many leads you need to get those clients. So, here's a little exercise for you.
06:55 Next. Pause for a second and think about your last month. How many new leads did you have? How many calls did you book?
07:04 How many proposals did you present? How many clients said yes? If you can't answer that confidently, that is a because you can't improve what you don't measure.
07:16 Now, before we wrap up, let's run through the most common mistakes when it comes to tracking numbers. First mistake, not tracking at all, right?
07:25 This is the most common one. And if you're not measuring, you guessing this is a real issue for you. And I know it's going to be difficult for you because when you start to measure this, you might realize that you don't like what you're being presented with.
07:39 That's an issue for you and yeah, that is reality staring you in the face. But at least when you get those numbers, then you know you can do something about those numbers.
07:49 You know something needs to change. And the second most common mistake I find is tracking, but not actually analyzing. So people get this data, but it's only useful.
08:00 If you actually use it, it's only useful if you look at where the gap is, where your funnel is broken down.
08:06 The third, umm, the third mistake that I find is that people tend to focus on vanity metrics rather than actual numbers.
08:16 Instead of the business. So, they focus more on likes and comments on social media. You know, they complain about not getting the algorithm on LinkedIn.
08:25 And I get it, that makes sense, right? We all like it when we go viral on LinkedIn and we get, you know, lots of comments, lots of- lots of likes, lots of, um, engagement, right?
08:36 But that stuff, you know, yes, it gives us a little dopamine here, but it doesn't actually move your bank balance in the right direction, right?
08:43 So, although yes, the dopamine feels nice from getting the likes and comments. It's not as nice a feeling as watching your bank balance move in the right direction.
08:53 So forget about those vanity metrics and focus more on your bank balance, right? And the fourth common mistake I find is ignoring pricing, right?
09:02 If you're making sales, but you're still sh- Short on income, pricing is an issue. You need to increase your prices.
09:09 So, let's wrap this up. Tracking your laps isn't about adding more admin to your work. It's about running your consultancy like a business.
09:19 Not gambling, not or paying, not guessing. Laps give you clarity, control and confidence because you'll know exactly what's working, what isn't working and what you need to fix.
09:32 So, here's your next step. If you've got my book, go and reread the laps chapter. If you haven't got it yet, go and grab it.
09:39 It's worth every penny. Even if I do say so myself, this one chapter could change how you run your business forever.
09:47 And if you want to have a Laps spreadsheet, I've included a link in the spread in there. Uh, show notes and you can see an actual spreadsheet, what it looks like.
09:56 Um, remember though, that which gets measured, gets managed and it is super important to measure your Laps so that you can start managing your success.
10:08 So hopefully this. This episode has been useful for you. Thank you for listening along and, as ever, get marketing. Because without marketing, there's no sales.
10:17 And without sales, there's no business. So get marketing.