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 Michael Anthony Gibson who asks, when you present a range of options in a proposal, how do you label and structure those options? Thanks in advance. Oh, well, that's a good question. So for a project proposal, I would give three options, always three, never two, never four, always three. And the first option is going to be, it's sort of like bronze, silver, gold, small, medium, large. They're always incremental. So if somebody wants option two, they're also going to get option one. If somebody opts for option three, they're going to get two and one. So the first page really would be like a cover sheet. The second page would be the situation appraisal. So the current situation that the client is in, the situation that they want to reach, and the reason why they contacted you to help them reach that desired future state. Then I'd start with the three options. So the three options would be small, which would have some kind of title so we could refer to it. Let's just call it bronze for the time being. And I'd say, you know, in the bronze option, I will do this and that and the other, and just have like maybe two or three sentences, a kind of narrative description of what I would do to give them some comfort around what that would look like. Then I might give some bullet points about some deliverable type stuff. But then the important point, the focus with this particular option would be listed under the benefits. So it would be benefits are bullet point, bullet point, bullet point, like three to six bullet points of business benefits that they'll get from picking this first option. So I explained to them what I would do, or what they might have to do. So first of all, have a kickoff meeting, I'll need these people there. And then we'll put together strategic goals and blah, blah, blah, define the objective, the strategy and come up with some tactics, and then I'll give you a roadmap. And then the bullets, the benefit bullets would be things like, this will decrease the risk of wasting money on development time by going in the wrong direction, or whatever, but business benefits. And then option two would start off saying, option two includes everything from option one. And in addition, I will do some stuff. And the benefits of that to your business are X, Y, and Z. And then the third, same thing, the third option, the gold option would be, option three includes everything from options one and two. In addition, I will help hand off the system to your internal developers for a period of three months after launch. So the benefit so that you can sort of self sustain, you won't have to spend money on external developers or so there won't be a break in service for your users, whatever the reasons are for this particular customer, whatever this particular customer might care about in hiring an expert like you to help, you know, make their business better than it was before. So those are the three options, I would label them with three different names, maybe it would be some, you know, I've been saying bronze, silver and gold, but I would do something specific to the work that you're going to do. So the first one might be innovation workshop or strategy session or design document or something like that. The next one might be some sort of project oversight. So it'd be like strategic definitions up top, option one, option two is kind of like that plus, I don't know, project oversight or something like helping them source people to do the work, or you're going to do the work, whatever that might be. And then option three, the gold option would be all of that plus something like, you know, a three month handover or skills transfer or something like that. So that you'd be able to refer to them, they could, so the client when you're discussing it after the fact can refer to as either option one, two or three, or they can say just the strategy option or the also the strategy plus implementation or strategy plus implementation plus skill transfer. So it'd be like, I made that too long, it'd be like strategy or implementation or skill transfer. Anyway, you want the point is you want the name of the option to be relevant to the client, that's very important. And it's very important, very, very important in each option to list the business benefits. So that they would be understandable by someone you didn't even talk to. I always try to imagine that the person who's receiving the proposal is going to show it to a friend or a colleague or a mentor to get their opinion about it. And they weren't, you know, the mentor wasn't in the meeting with you, they don't know how great you are, they don't know all of the wonderful things about you. They don't know what their friend, your potential client...

I don't know what they care about from reading the proposal. Maybe they share it, maybe they don't. So I try to put all of this stuff that is going to be of value to the buyer in the proposal so they could show it to a complete stranger or I could show it to you and you'd be like, oh yeah, that makes sense. That seems like those benefits, those outcomes, those things seem like things that a business would want in a business of this particular size in this particular situation. It would be reasonable to expect them to pay $80,000 or $800,000 for these kinds of outcomes. So yeah, after the options, then I would usually have a section called risks and assumptions where I would list things like I'll have reasonable access to your employees through the course of the project or whatever your assumptions are, whatever you think their assumptions might be, any risks that you see in case that they do come to pass during the project, you can say, well, we knew this might happen, so we'll just deal with it. We have contingency plans for this. Then after that, after risks and assumptions, if it's the first time you've worked with this client, you might have a why me section where you call out what's different about you and why you would be different than other alternatives, perhaps not better. Hopefully in their case, they think your differences are better than the others, but you'd explain why you're unique in the about me section. And then pricing terms and conditions. So this is where I would say, this is a quote, not a estimate, not an estimate. These are fixed prices. You will never pay a dime more than the price listed below. If this takes me two years instead of two months, that's on me, not you. So I take all of that risk. Then I would have listed the prices for the options. I don't list them in the body of the description so that they're sort of forced to read the descriptions. And as they see those three prices, option one is $10,000. Option two is $22,000. Option three is $50,000. As they look at them, they're going to be doing the math. They're going to say, well, what do I get for my $12,000 for option two? And then they can go back and look at the business benefits of option two. Oh, interesting. Okay. Those are the benefits. They don't go back and look like, oh, well, he's going to do more work or she's going to work harder in option two. They want to know what the difference is for them. What's in it for them if they spend that extra $12,000 to go with the silver option? And same with option three. So $50,000. Well, what do I get for the Delta between 22 and 50? It's a lot of money. What's that $28,000 get me? And they go back and they look at the business benefits and they're like, yeah, we don't really want to take the risk of getting left high and dry after launch. We would really rather have you, Michael, help us switch over to a, you know, just transfer your knowledge about the new system so that our employees can handle it on our own. So we can kind of row our own boat. And then I would say, let's see what's up, terms and conditions. And I would say, I might give some kind of guarantee here. You know, like if you feel like in the first 30 days I am not meeting the expectations that you have, then just let me know and I'll give you your money back. You know, so maybe a 30-day money-back guarantee, maybe a 12-month bug-free guarantee, maybe some kind of satisfaction guarantee. It really depends on the nature of the work that you're doing. And then after that, I give them a way to pay all the instructions that they need to actually give me the money right then. So at the end of reading the proposal, they should have zero question marks in their head. I don't want them to have one question mark. I want them to read the whole thing and say, yep, this is what we talked about. Option one is pretty much what I asked for. Options two and three are very interesting. Perhaps I'm going to consider one of those. Here's all the benefits that I get from each option. Here, you know, so on and so forth. Here are all the risks and assumptions. Here's why we should go with Michael. And here's the terms and conditions. And here's how I pay. You know, so they shouldn't have to even get back to you. They should just be able to say, all right, we're going with option two, checks in the mail. Or we're going with option two and like our credit card number. We click the link and we put in our credit card. We can get started on Monday. Oh, I almost forgot. In the terms and conditions, the pricing terms, you want to put a deadline on the proposal so they don't think that they could just shop this around forever and ever trying to get a lower price. So I usually put a 14-day deadline so that you can follow up with them two or three times during the two weeks depending on how communicative they are. And yeah, and at the end of that, you know, the day before the deadline, say like, look, you know, I know you guys haven't made a decision yet. I haven't heard anything. The proposal is going to expire tomorrow. And after that date, I can't guarantee availability or the pricing because things are going to be changing in real time. My calendar is heating up for the spring. So, you know, I really need to get a decision from you. If not, that's fine. If the answer is no, that's fine. We'll just, you know, maybe work together later or not. But, you know, tomorrow's the deadline. All right. Let's see. Okay. So I think that's everything. Hopefully that was helpful.

If you have a question for me, you can just hashtag AskJonathan on YouTube, Twitter, or LinkedIn, and I'll add it to the queue and get back to you as soon as I can. 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.