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. Got a question from Nicholas Robb who asks, what kind of questions would you ask on the first call with a client? Could you go through a few scenarios like talking with decision makers or talking to lower level managers? Thanks. Okay, well the answer to this is I would have the why conversation once I jumped on a phone call with a potential client. And the why conversation is three sets of questions. It's why this, why now, and why me? And you go through that list of questions to determine the underlying motivation of the project, what their desired outcome is, what a home run would look like, and as you're going through this conversation, what you're trying to do is build up confidence based on their answers that you can actually help this client make their business better than the amount of money that they would pay you. So the questions that I would ask are very much about the client. So you start off with why this? Why would you do a project like this at all? Maybe somebody reached out to you to do a white paper for them. Well, why do you want a white paper? Like I can do a white paper for you. I'd be happy to do that. I've done white papers for a bunch of big names in your industry. I can definitely do that, but I don't want to take your money unless you're going to get positive ROI because that won't lead to a long-term relationship. So why even bother doing this? Why do you need this white paper? What would a disaster look like? What would a home run look like? What are you trying to get from this white paper? Nobody just wants a white paper to print out and put on their wall like it's a piece of art. They want leads or they want qualified leads or they want more signups to their SaaS or they want to attract talent to hire employees. They want some business outcomes. You want to find out why this? Why did they decide a white paper was going to achieve something? You want to find out what the thing is. Next, you would ask, is this urgent? You know, why do this now? Couldn't you just wait? Is there some big reason why this has to happen right now? Is there a big trade show coming up that you want to have this done before? Or is there, you know, something like the Olympics or a presidential election or some kind of hard deadline? Or maybe Amazon or Walmart or some big competitor is entering their space and they need to defend against that or they need to differentiate against that. What is the reason that this is important right now? Because the more urgent it is, the more valuable it'll be to them for you to actually move the needle that they're trying to move. And then the last thing is, why me? Why would you hire someone expensive, an outside consultant to do something like this when you've got Photoshop, you've got Microsoft Word, you've got Xcode, you've got interns, you've got junior developers and copywriters and social media marketer admins. Why don't you just have them do this? Why would you reach out to someone like me to do this? And as you go through this list of questions, they will give you answers for all these things. And then you will know why they need to hire you. They will have convinced you that there's a good fit. There's value there. There's a reason that they should hire you. And you can take all of their words and put them straight into a proposal and be like, you said, you know, you said, and I believe that this needs to be done. Let's say it's a white paper. Yes, you do need this white paper. It does need to be done now because AWS is moving into your space and you need to differentiate quickly or you're going to get squashed. And you need to hire someone expensive like me because you haven't got time to fool around with junior copywriters putting this stuff together who maybe don't understand how to communicate with your ideal buyers, but you know I do. So you've got all of the potential objections raised in advance and you can put them straight into the proposal. So that's the idea. You ask the why conversation questions. Why this? Why now? And why me? Now, there's another piece of your question here, which is what if you're talking to a low level manager? And I'm going to interpret that to mean what if you're talking to the wrong person? So if you're talking to the wrong person, you need to insist that you get answers to these questions. And if they don't have the answers, then you'd say something like, well, do you know who has the answers? Could we get them on the call right now? You know, maybe it's the CMO or vice president of marketing, or maybe it's the founder or the CEO. Can you just pull them in right now so we can get these questions answered? Otherwise, I won't be able to put together a proposal for you until I have the answers. So we can either talk to them now or set up another phone call or we'll just part ways. Okay, hopefully that helps. I'm Jonathan Stark. And if you have a question for me, just hashtag ask Jonathan on YouTube, LinkedIn, or Twitter, and we will find it and I'll answer 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.

Start soon, and you can sign up to be among 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.