March 8, 2018
A bankrupt agency, escaping staff aug, handling rejection gracefully, and more...
Wow, we had some tough questions to tackle in today’s group coaching session (the bankruptcy one, especially):
When your proposal is rejected but you’re close to 100% sure they should take it, what’s a polite way of saying “Your loss, I’m here when you need me”? I don’t want to try and ’convince’ these guys that they need me, but I want to suggest the alternative is doing things the hard way (I know the alternative they’re considering, and it’s totally the hard way). (timestamp: 1m 52s)
Questions I have are: 1. Do you have a Project proposal template? (not the retainer one) 2. What are your typical steps after the proposal is accepted? Do you create a spec and give to the client for approval or How do you define the scope details? 3. How do you handle support/maintenance? If you give a 6m/1yr support/maintenance as part of the proposal, what after that time frame? (timestamp: 7m 7s)
I’ve recently landed my first coaching client. I wasn’t really considering coaching before, but I love it. I’m billing a fixed price for 2 hours coaching per month with unlimited email contact, with discounts for 3 months payment. What advice do you have for a budding coach, particularly around building a pipeline of prospects? (timestamp: 21m 45s)
Is it so bad to have a horizontal positioning? My main gig is digital strategy consulting for $5mil+ companies who prefer to have a hybrid internal/external team vs. a full-service agency. It’s a unique service model for reasons not mentioned. I know it’s harder to market myself, but I only need 3 clients to break 6 figures (I have that already) and 10 clients to break multiple 6-figures sustainably. Is it simply “the fear” making me hesitant to jump into a vertical with 2 feet instead of 1? (timestamp: 31m 9s)
How do I persuade leads to see the value of fixed-price offers when they are too used to hiring via staff augmentation? Like the habit to estimate a hourly rate based on the proposal and deciding on that and not the value they get. (timestamp: 38m 43s)
When trying to get work from past clients or more work from existing clients or new (super busy) prospects, we often get pressured to just send a proposal. That ends up needing to be revised or gets rejected because we couldn’t/didn’t do enough discovery/educating them for the value - do you have any tips for how to manage/insist on having enough discovery in that process to get to the desired outcome in these type of situations to get it right the first time and maximize chance of acceptance? (timestamp: 42m 29s)
I’ve been doing some web dev work for an agency who just went bankrupt. Yes, I lost some money but there is a chance to work with their client directly. It seems like a chance to move the project toward a fixed price approach. But I have no idea what that client’s budget was/is. Any recommendations on how I can get some insight on the $ that’s on the table? (timestamp: 51m 7s)
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Yours,
—J
P.S. Would you like to see a sample of what group coaching is like? Here’s a link to a public session I ran late last year:
Group Coaching - Oct 12, 2017 [OPEN TO PUBLIC]
P.P.S. You can peruse a complete list of all the questions that I have answered in group here: