April 12, 2022

Project Options

In my 5-page project proposal template, the third section is called “Project Options”.

As the name implies, this is the section of the template where you provide the client with a few different ways you could potentially engage with them.

There are two notable characteristics of this section:

First, always present three options.

Not two, not four.

In my experience, three options strikes an ideal balance between providing enough choice to suit the client, but not so much that they get overwhelmed and freeze up.

Second, the options are incremental.

In other words, option 2 would include everything from option 1, and option 3 would include everything from options 1 and 2.

Making the options incremental presents the client with “good better best” type of decision. All of the options are focused on improving the client’s condition in the same way (i.e., “moving the same needle”), it’s just a question of how much or how long or how deeply they want you involved.

If instead you present them with a “this, that, or the other” type of choice, your options probably won’t all be focused on moving the same needle, so their decision becomes one of prioritization - e.g., “Which one of these options is our highest priority right now?”.

Or, they might get distracted by bundling “e.g., Should we buy 1 and 2? Or 1 and 3? Or 2 and 3? Do we get a discount if we buy two of them at once?”

Generally speaking, if you find yourself presenting a la carte options to the client, it can be a sign that you might not have dug deeply enough in the sales interview to uncover the clients most desirable outcome.

Yours,

—J

P.S. This message is an excerpt from Lesson 3 of my Automatic Proposal workshop. If you’d like to be notified the next time enrollment opens, you can add your email address to the notification list here: NOTIFY ME »

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