September 8, 2019
This stuff really works
Sent by Jonathan Stark on September 9th, 2019
I have a few long-term private coaching students who came to me initially for two very specific reasons…
They had solid positioning and were attracting reasonably good leads. But they were still billing by the hour and weren’t growing their businesses because their cost-based profit margins were really slim.
What they wanted from me was instruction on:
- How to get better at sales interviews (i.e., The Why Conversation)
- How to write value priced project proposals (i.e., Scope Last)
Eventually, it became clear that what they really wanted was NOT to personally get better at these things but rather, to have these things in place.
They didn’t care if I was able to help them get good at this stuff as long as someone was good at this stuff on their behalf. They wanted an outcome and not a deliverable.
In relatively short order, the obvious question became:
Couldn’t I just do this stuff for them and take a percentage of the sale?
Hmm, interesting… I gave it a shot. Here’s how it worked:
As leads would come in for my students, I would be included in the sales calls. Sometimes I’d just listen to a recording, other times I’d be on the call and ask a few questions, and other times I’d run the whole call.
After the sales interview, I would revise their proposal or draft it myself, and then advise on or directly handle any follow-up or negotiations.
The results have been positive so far.
In one case, a student credits me with “buying his house”.
In another case, I was credited with landing “our highest priced quote ever - by far - that we have ever sent, and for less work than we had to do on our next biggest project.”
A less obvious benefit (which is probably only noticed by me) is that I have passed on quoting a number of low value projects that my students were considering. IMHO, these low value projects would have been big distractions for little profit and would have cost my students dearly in lost opportunity.
Here’s the thing…
Using “The Why Conversation” in your sales interviews works. Using Scope Last in your proposals works. If you’re getting a reasonably steady stream of decent leads, you can use these techniques to immediately double (or more) your project fees while decreasing the amount of work you have to do.
Yours,
—J