June 3, 2021
“What should I tell my retainer clients when I go on vacation?” and more…
In today’s group coaching session, we had a bunch of good questions that touched on topics like:
- The differences between marketing to individuals vs companies
- How to come up with 3 proposal options when you can only think of two
- Three things to say when a prospect asks for a ballpark price
- Why it’s often better to propose shorter projects than long ones
- How to keep from getting buried by a retainer client
- How to design a simple automated sales funnel
- How to handle vacations when you’re on retainer
- How to define your target market
Plus, I did a teardown of a $250k project proposal.
Good stuff!
Here are some of the questions I answered today:
How does marketing and creating online technical training courses differ from marketing to individuals vs. to companies themselves? (timestamp: 2m 0s)
I’m putting together a proposal using your 3-option template and I’m struggling to come up with a compelling Option 3 with ~5x the value of Option 1. What’s more important: the pricing formula (1, 2.2x, 5x) or the number of options? (timestamp: 5m 54s)
Clearly, the Why Conversation is important for pricing. But a prospect mentioned she wants to use this upcoming conversation to talk about her costs. How dogmatic should I be about not discussing price during this conversation? Are ballparks OK? (timestamp: 14m 59s)
I’ve heard/read that it is better to do short engagements vs. long ones. Can you elaborate more on the benefits of short engagements vs. long engagements? Also, how does this fit in with the idea of an advisory retainer. (timestamp: 23m 4s)
Hi J, how to choose the most suitable type of lead magnet? How to test it and get good feedback? And finally, how to create an autoresponder sequence in terms of content structure, where you try to sell a service, e.g. Business Strategy or Design Sprints? (timestamp: 30m 58s)
I have a customer with which I currently have an open-ended contract for strategy consulting. However, I would love to go on vacation this summer. How do you usually communicate/plan this? Do you usually put contracts on hold? Or do you just stay available / work part-time? (timestamp: 40m 31s)
I have a prospect who’s looking for some contract help managing a dev team while their FTE is on mat leave. Their desired outcome is to keep the team humming and keep output high so executive stakeholders are happy. The team’s goal is to drive $xx million in annual recurring revenue. My prospect’s instinct was to ask my hourly rate and I told her I priced based on project and outcomes. Would you price this as a project? What outcomes would you use? How would you price relative to rev. goal? (timestamp: 44m 33s)
I often struggle to define my target market in a consiste way mainly because I lack vocabulary that describes precisely a certain category/subculture (English in not my native language) . Any directions or ressources to help with that ? (timestamp: 48m 46s)
Could you do a proposal teardown for me? It’s for a B2B SaaS backed by Private Equity in growth mode. Here’s a link [redacted]. I’ve removed the identifying information; but haven’t removed scope or price. (timestamp: 54m 14s)
(If you’re curious, you can review the entire list of past questions here)
Do you have questions like these that you’d like to get answered?
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Yours,
—J
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