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 Derek Elliott who asks, When you see the line, why hire someone expensive like me, the buyer may immediately ask how expensive before you've had a chance to fully uncover value. Where do you steer the combo next to find the value but let them know if you're way too much? Okay, so Derek's referring to a line that I often use. I'll say something like, in the why conversation which I have during a sales interview with a new prospect, I'll try to talk them out of working with me because I want to validate that there is a good fit between our two businesses. I want the arrangement, the engagement or arrangement or whatever the relationship is to be mutually profitable. I want them to be better off after it's over and I want me to be better off after it's over. And if you can create relationships like that, you're going to have a banging business. Things are going to go great for you. It's not super easy, but that's the idea. Mutually profitable engagements. So people are always happy that they gave you the money and it cost you less than you got paid to do it. All right. So one of the things I'll say in the why conversation, there are three sections of questions. First is why this? So why do the thing that they think they want you to do? The next thing is why now? Where you find out how urgent the project is or isn't. And finally, why me? Why would you hire someone expensive like me? Why not just hire this? Why not hire your cousin Vinny or do it internally? You've already got people that do this. Why not just do it on Fiverr? Why not cheap out? Why not do the cheapest option? And you have to ask these questions. I mean, you don't have to, but it makes your proposal a lot better if you have the answers to those questions because they can't freak out at the end and be like, these prices are ridiculous. We could get someone for half this because you've already found out why they know that they could get someone for half of that. That's why they're talking to you. They don't want to take that risk. It's usually a risk problem. They need to nail this thing the first time. There's no do overs. There's some tight deadline or they're very scared about a competitor. Or there's some real, they have a book launch coming up. There's some kind of urgency and they don't want to goof around with somebody who doesn't maybe know what they're doing, certainly doesn't appear to value what they do because their prices are so low. If they want someone cheap, they should hire someone cheap, not you. So fine. So when Derek's specific question though, I don't think it's ever happened to me. So it's a theoretical question. If I said, why hire someone expensive like me? They're not going to cut me off and say, well, how expensive? I'm going to say, why hire someone expensive like me when you could just do this internally or when you could just find someone on Fiverr? And they're going to answer that question almost certainly. I can't think, I mean, maybe it's happened, but usually they just answer the question. And I'm just building up this expectation that my prices are going to be high. So if they did though, say, well, how expensive is it? Before I answer that, what do you mean expensive? You could say all sorts of things like, well, for something that seems like, I mean, I haven't even decided what we're going to do yet, but here's some things I've said in the past. Well, it'll be between 5,000 and 5 million. Can we get back to talking about the project so I can get a sense for what's involved? Make a joke. It'll be somewhere between this gigantic range. Another thing you can do is say, well, historically, my proposals are usually twice as much as anybody else. And they'll be like, twice as much? Like, yeah, and you close deals. I'm sitting here, right? So you just want to answer. I think actually you're imagining something that doesn't really happen that often in practice. So you don't have to worry about it. But if you did have to worry about it, crack a joke, throw out some crazy number, say, well, I mean, I could be double anybody else you get. I mean, or you could say something like, well, I'd be double what Fiverr would cost. I'd be 1,000 times more than someone from Fiverr. So why don't you just talk to someone there? So I would say don't worry about it too much, but maybe have a couple of jokes ready to kind of diffuse the conversation and turn it back to the value. Some salespeople explicitly get into the, you know, handle it in a direct way, not a joking way, and say like, well, I don't know how much it's going to be yet because I don't know. I don't even know if I'm going to give you a proposal yet because I don't even see what the value is here. Like, why would you hire anyone at all? I'm not even seeing the business case for this stuff you're suggesting that I do for you. Why? Why bother? It doesn't seem like reasonable. And put them on, it's kind of like, I almost said put them on the defensive, but I don't like that. I don't like that implication. I'm not trying to put them on the defensive. I'm trying to get them to convince me that there's a good fit.

Because I don't want to take their money if they're going to end up regretting it. That's the worst. So I'm trying to get them to validate to me and themselves that they really should invest in someone who's got a lot of experience with this. If they just need somebody to patch up their clunker car to last, you know, until the end of the school year, then the mechanic shouldn't like rebuild the whole thing from scratch for $50,000. They should just replace the fan belt and patch the tires and get the buyer to the end of the school year. Three more months and they'll be done. That car just needs to last me three more months. If that's what they need, that's what you should sell them or send them to someone who sells that. So, you know, this is all about having confidence in your expertise and the value that clients would realize when you're hiring. I almost said when you're hiring the right clients, which actually I kind of like that. You should be hiring the right clients. Okay, so hopefully I've answered that. I think I've given you a couple of lines that you could use, a couple of jokes to diffuse the conversation, turn it back to the project at hand. And big picture, if I've ever gotten this question, I don't remember it. So I hope that helps. I'm Jonathan Stark. If you have a question for me, you can hashtag AskJonathan on YouTube, LinkedIn, or Twitter, and we will find it, add it to the queue, and answer as soon as we can. See ya. Hey, Jonathan again. The next time someone asks for your hourly rate, I want you to stop what you're doing and go to valuepricingbootcamp.com to sign up for my free value pricing email course. That URL again is valuepricingbootcamp.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.