Ditching Hourly

Hello and welcome to Ditching Hourly. I'm Jonathan Stark. Today I've got an audio excerpt from an answer I provided on my YouTube channel. You can check it out at thejonathanstarkshow.com and it'll redirect you to YouTube if you're into watching videos. Otherwise, you can just listen to the audio here on the podcast. Enjoy. Hey, Jonathan here. I've got a question from G. Bortolot. Bortolo, Bortolo? Sorry. I hope I got it in there somewhere. Okay. So the question is, should I ever try to persuade the client the value of my service or is the value of a service something already inherited in the client needs? Okay. So I never try to convince clients anything. You're just setting yourself up for it blowing up in your face. And you're convincing, you know, I might be, I'm sure you're not like, how do I convince people to do this? It's probably like a translation thing here. But specifically the word convince or persuade, I never ever do that. I try to do the opposite. I try to, well, I try to talk them out of hiring me. I try to convince them that they shouldn't hire me. And what that does is it causes them to reveal more about the underlying reasons why they want to hire me. And they end up convincing me or giving me some confidence that I can actually help them. So the way to value price your services is to understand the outcome that the client is trying to achieve. And they'll almost never come to you with this. They might not even know it consciously. They're just going on gut instinct or advice from someone else. You need to help them uncover that. And the way that I do that is by trying to talk them out of hiring me or someone expensive like me. And that's what I, when I'm talking about the why conversation, that's what I'm talking about. It's like you go into a sales interview, you start, you know, they brain dump for 10, 15 minutes, maybe 20 minutes about what they think they want you to do. And then you say, that's great. I've got pages of notes here. Thank you so much. Would it be okay if we back up a little bit so I can get some context on how this project's going to fit into the business as a whole? And they'll say, sure. Because it's a refreshing question. And you'll say, okay. And you start asking the why questions. Why this? Why now? Why me? And why this is like, why did you get us, why did you folks decide to solve this problem in this way? Why is this the way? Why not not do this? What would happen if you didn't do this? Why not do it in some other manner? Isn't there, you know, an easier way you could do this? And get the answers, you know, just keep digging into that. And it'll force them to think. Asking them why sort of pushes back. It sets you up as a peer and not an order taker. Because you're challenging them to reveal their underlying motivations. And the reason you're doing it is because you want to make sure that at the end of the project, they are satisfied. That this was a, they don't get to the end of the project and be like, oh, we really shouldn't have done this. This was a mistake. That's not a good feeling for anyone. Even if they don't blame you because they're the ones that made the decision, you don't want that. It's not good for you. It's bad for them, but it's also not good for you. So you ask all the why this questions, then why now questions. Couldn't we put this off for 12 months? Couldn't we study this? Wouldn't that de-risk it a little bit if we waited to see, you know, what the competitors are going to do? Or if this technology is going to gain traction in the marketplace or whatever. How come you didn't do this six months ago? You told me in the brain dump section that you've known about this for a while. What changed? Why is it urgent now? And find out if there is some sort of pressing concern, like this needs to be done before the next Olympics or the next presidential election. Or if it's just like, well, we have some extra money laying around and we figured this would be a good time to do it. Or we're in a slow phase, so now would be a good time. You want to find out how urgent the project is. And then the last thing is why would you hire someone expensive like me to do this? You know, maybe they mentioned that they have internal developers or internal whatever it is that you do. And well, why not just use them? Or why not outsource this to, you know, some to Costa Rica or something? Why would you hire someone expensive like me? And get their reasoning. Because it's not like they didn't think of it. They know that there are cheaper options. They know that they could get interns. But you want to know why they decided to talk to someone who's not an intern or who's not an internal employee or is not $5 an hour on Fiverr. You want to know what those reasons are. And once you get to the end of this why conversation, you're going to be either, you're going to be convinced one way or the other if this is a good fit. So if there's any value in you engaging. Okay, so, you know, if you're convincing, if you're trying to convince someone in a sales meeting of anything, it's that they shouldn't hire you. And that will, if there is a good fit there, that will actually draw them closer to you and give you a better chance of value pricing the outcome. All right, hope that helped. I'm Jonathan Stark. If you have a question for me, you can hashtag.

Jonathan on YouTube, LinkedIn, or Twitter, and we'll add it to the queue. See ya. Would you like to learn how to get paid what you're worth? How about selling your expertise and not your labor? We work through all of this together in the Pricing Seminar. Pre-registration starts soon, and you can sign up to be the first to know when early bird pricing is announced at thepricingseminar.com. That URL again is thepricingseminar.com. Hope to see you there. Hey, Jonathan again. Do you have questions about how to improve your business? Things like value pricing your work instead of billing for your time, or positioning yourself as the go-to person in your space, or maybe productizing your services so you never have to have another awkward sales call or spend hours writing another custom proposal. Book a one-on-one coaching call with me and get answers to these questions and others in the time it takes you to get ready for work in the morning. Best of all, you're covered by my 100% satisfaction guarantee. If at the end of the call you don't feel like it was worth it, just say the word and I'll refund your purchase in full. To book your one-on-one coaching call, go to jonathanstark.com slash call, C-A-L-L. That URL again is jonathanstark.com slash call. Hope to see you there.