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 Jonathan Dillon about email. The question is, what do you do with those warm emails or interest emails after you get them? Do you go straight into a phone call to begin to learn and then close on them? Are you reaching out via email to them until they ask to talk via phone? Or do you not directly contact via email at all? Obviously, every case is different, wanting to know in general terms. Okay, good question. Very tactical, but I've got a bunch of, I think, helpful ideas here. So the first thing to say, I'm going to define warm emails or interest emails as email that you get, maybe it comes in through a contact form on your website or some word of mouth, a friend introduced you and it's a word of mouth thing. But for the time being, I'm going to say these are sort of inbound messages. So inbound leads that you didn't start the communication. They found you, someone recommended you, something like that. So when those come in, I will do a short list of different things depending on the nature of the email. So if it sounds like a project type of thing and the person sending the email seems like they are the decision maker, they're pretty high up in the organization, their title indicates that or something about the message indicates that, then I'll probably say something like, yeah, it seems like I might be a good fit for this. It sounds like whatever they told me about the project, yeah, that might be interesting. For next step, what do you say we jump on a quick phone call and we can kind of explore whether or not there's a good fit. And again, assuming that this is not a gatekeeper, it's probably the decision maker or pretty close to the decision maker, I'll just jump on a phone call. So I'll reply with that and they'll say, yeah, that'd be great. Here's some times available or I'll send across like a scheduling link so they can just pick a time. That doesn't really, I don't think that matters that much how you actually schedule the phone call and that's not really your question anyway. But yeah, if it feels like, it's kind of gut instinct, but if it feels like a decision maker, it feels like a good fit, like it probably is going to be a good fit potentially, then yeah, I'll ask for a phone call right then. One thing in the question, do you go straight into a phone call to begin to learn and then close on them? I never close on anybody. And so it's not really the crux of your question, but I did want to call it out. The phone call is me interviewing them, them interviewing me. And we're looking to see if there's a good fit between our two companies for this particular project. And it should be a mutually profitable thing. So whatever the engagement is that I, assuming I propose an engagement, it's going to be something that I feel like I'm getting paid fairly for it and that they are going to get a good return on their investment from whatever the engagement might be. So I never close on anybody. In fact, I kind of try and talk them out of working with me. That's how I use the why conversation to uncover what the real motivation is, what the objective of the whole project is in the first place, and what metrics we can use to measure progress while we're doing the project to make sure we're on the right track. Okay, next part of the question is, are you reaching out to them via email until they ask for a phone call? As I said, I don't make them ask for the phone call. If it seems like a good fit, it's worth my time to talk to somebody about a project that could be in the hundreds of thousands of dollars or sometimes even a million. So yeah, I'm going to spend 30 minutes on a phone call if it seems like a good fit. But what if it doesn't seem like a good fit? Or what if it seems like a gatekeeper and not the decision maker? So the email might say something like, you know, we're putting together an RFP. We're going to put it out to bid. You know, your name came up in a Google search. So, you know, I found your email address and reached out to you. What's your hourly rate? So immediately I'm like, if it doesn't seem like they really know that much about me, they're going to be, you know, talking probably a bunch of people who they consider to be alternatives or competitors of mine. I'm immediately less interested, immediately indicates to me that either this person or, yeah, the person who's emailing hasn't really been affected positively by my marketing. Maybe they just heard of me. So the odds of that turning into a profitable engagement for me and an engagement that's going to have a really positive impact on their business when they don't know me from a hole in the wall, they don't trust me yet because they don't know who I am. It's a lot less likely that I can have a powerful impact on that business. So I'm like, less interesting, but I'll reply and say, okay, you know, maybe I'll ask them a few questions to reveal.

Me whether or not they're a gatekeeper. So I'll ask questions about how does this fit in, you know, how would this project fit into your strategy for next year or, you know, for the remainder of this year? What changes in your industry are, you know, what changes are predicating this project? Like what's going on? Like why are you even looking to do this at all? So I'd almost ask a few of the why questions in the email to see if they can answer them. If they can't answer them, then I would say, all right, well, maybe we should, if I was going to jump on a phone call, at this point I may or may not get on a phone call with them. It just depends. If I'm getting the feel like, ah, this could be something here. I think this person seems genuine. They're just not the right person. It's a company that I'd really like to work with, something like that, where I feel like it's a pretty warm lead. It might be a really good client, but this person is definitely the wrong person to talk to. But I do want to set up a phone call. I'd say, well, let's set up a phone call after asking those questions. And they kind of can't really answer them. I'd say, well, let's set up a phone call with someone who can answer these questions. You know, you, me, someone who can answer these questions. And, you know, we can see if there's a good fit. Again, is there a good fit between our two businesses? Because if there's not, I'd rather not take your money. I'm not going to probably be able to satisfy you, and that's bad for everyone. So I might sort of pre-qualify them a little bit with some high-level why questions to see if they're a gatekeeper or not. Then there's a possibility that I get the vibe from the email that it's just not a good fit, or, you know, I wouldn't have time to work on it for six months or something, in which case I might say, I don't think this is going to be a good fit for me, but if you're looking for someone like this, I'd be happy to make a recommendation and, you know, perhaps send them to someone else. And then one last thing on this question, if you are doing an outreach campaign where you initiated the conversation and it's not an inbound lead, when you're doing your outreach, you don't want to say, hey, I do all this great stuff. You probably need it. Do you want to jump on a call with me, and I'll try and convince you that you should hire me? Even when you're doing outreach, the ask is, could we jump on a phone call to see if there's a good fit, if there's a mutually profitable engagement that we could do together? Do you have a problem like this? I help with problems like this. Maybe we should talk. And then when you get in the call, it's not like you're pitching and trying to prove to them that they should hire you, you're trying to close them. And if the whole phone call was predicated on the notion of seeing if there's a good fit, it's not weird when you start asking why questions. If you're pursuing someone, pursuing, pursuing, pursuing, and then finally they're like, all right, fine, let's get on a phone call, and then you're like, why do you want to do this project at all? They're like, what? You called me. So if you always make the sales interview an interview and not a sales call or like a pitch or trying to always be closing or some garbage like that, then it always makes sense to have the why conversation because you're really trying to make sure that there's a good fit. And if so, then you can move to the proposal stage. Let's see, anything else? So, okay, so in general terms, yeah, I think I covered everything in there. I hope that helped. If you have a question for me, just hashtag AskJonathan on Twitter, LinkedIn, or YouTube, and we will add your question to the queue and get to it 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.