June 12, 2024

Don’t Scope In The Sales Meeting

If you’re designing a solution in the sales meeting, you’re doing it wrong.

Believe me, I know how hard a habit this is to break.

It took me a loooooong time to stop trying to scope an engagement in the sales meeting.

Why?

Because years of hourly billing trained me to use the sales meeting to uncover as much SCOPE as possible.

How did hourly billing cause this?

Because I knew my next step was to create an estimate of how many hours I thought it might take to do the work.

What’s the problem with scoping on the sales call?

The problem is you can’t uncover all the scope of a non-trivial project in a one-hour sales meeting.

So what happens?

You inevitably underestimate how long the project is going to take.

What happens after you land the project?

You eventually go over budget.

And what happens after THAT?

The client gets REALLY CRANKY :-(

What is the moral of the story?

Don’t 👏 Scope 👏 In 👏 The 👏 Sales 👏 Meeting

What do you do instead?

Use the sales meeting to uncover as much VALUE as possible.

Once you have a value, you can set a price.

And once you have a price, you can decide on a scope.

Scope LAST, not first.

Yours,

—J

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