Ditching Hourly

Hello and welcome to Ditching Hourly. I'm Jonathan Stark. In this episode, I'd like to talk about what I call the why conversation. This is a particular kind of sales conversation that takes place as you're leading up to an engagement with a client. So imagine a situation where you're a web developer and you receive an email from someone who's looking for some web development services. Maybe they were referred to you by someone or maybe they found your information online in a Google search. And they want to set up a phone call to discuss a punch list of things that they'd like you to do for them. Some things that they believe that you're qualified to do based on whatever information they know about you. So you go ahead and set up that call and, you know, maybe it's in person, maybe it's on the phone or Skype or video calls or whatever. But you eventually have that call. And when you get on the phone, this is how I think you should handle it for the best results. First, they probably have a lot of thoughts about what they want done. And it's probably pretty detailed, very tactical, very specific. And they are going to, it's going to be on their mind and they're going to want to feel the need to let it out. So the first thing I want you to do is have a paper and pencil ready and just take notes as they brain dump. They just vomit all of this information out to you. It may or may not be actually useful. You may not even understand what they mean in some cases or until they get rolling because they haven't given you enough context to even have a grip on where they're going. But just catch their language, anything interesting that stands out to you and really just take notes and listen. Perhaps ask a question here and there as you start to get up to speed with what's going on and try to encourage that they exhaust this sort of verbal diarrhea that they'll probably go through. And then when they finally seem to have gotten to the end of it and they can't seem to think of anything else to say and you can't think of anything else to ask, usually somewhere between 20 and 30 minutes have elapsed and you can then thank them for sharing all that information because it is useful, in fact, or it eventually will be. And then ask them if you could just step back for a second to understand the bigger context that they would like this work done within. If they seem confused by that, you can say, well, there are a lot of ways to skin the cat and I need to know if I should do things one way or another way depending on your bigger goals. For example, if this project is meant to be a long-term solution, I'm going to build things in a particular way. Or if this is meant to be a short-term thing just meant to get funding or be a stopgap measure between now and when some bigger system is installed down the road, I'm going to do things a different way. And I'm going to take your actual situation into consideration as I'm making these decisions. These are not the kind of decisions I'm going to bother you with. There are just hundreds of decisions that a developer would make every day as they're working on a project. And as long as I know what the ultimate context is and the goal is, then I'll be able to make the right decisions so you don't find yourself painted into a corner at the end of the project. At that point, they'll sort of sit back and think, oh, okay, well, here's the situation. Here's why we called you. Some competitor is moving into our space or a competitor has released a new feature that we think is really compelling or that our audience or our customer base is really going to be attracted to. Or maybe a competitor is eating their lunch or maybe there's been a big change in their industry that they want to capitalize on. But what they'll do is they'll back up and they'll give you a feeling for what the bigger picture is. Once you have that, you'll get a general idea of how important overall the project is to the company, if it's a big thing or a little thing or somewhere in between. Once you have a feel for sort of where they are and where they're trying to go, which will come out of that kind of a conversation, the crux of the why conversation starts to kick in. This is where you basically try to talk them out of hiring you to do the project, which sounds crazy, sounds counterintuitive, but in fact, it's a huge trust builder and it will get you the information you need to feel confident that you can deliver 100% customer satisfaction, which normally folks don't have. Because having a punch list of features to build does not guarantee that the customer is going to be satisfied. You can do the punch list that they asked for, but if it achieves no specific goal, they're not going to be happy that they spent that money. They probably won't blame you, but they're not going to be happy they spent that money.

All right, so let's talk about the why conversation. This is where you start asking why, and there are three categories of why. There's why this, why now, and why me. So I'll talk about each one and give you some examples of each one. So why this? Why do this project? Really the question here is why don't you just leave things the way they are? Or why not do it differently? Why not use an off-the-shelf solution? The question you're really trying to get them to consider is why embark on such a costly and risky project? All software projects are expensive, and they can blow up in your face. They can go over budget. They can go over time. It's a big commitment, and if there's no good reason to do it, you shouldn't do it. So you should ask yourself, as part of the diagnosis, which is what you're really doing here, is why not just leave things the way they are? And they'll say, well, we couldn't possibly do that. And you'll say, OK, why? They'll say, well, and they'll give you some very detailed reason that they have begun the search process, the search for someone like you, maybe some of your competitors. And they will convince you and themselves that this project is the right approach to solve the problem. The next category of question is the why now question. So as they were sort of brain dumping or perhaps in your big picture pushback question, they'll have revealed that they've known that they wanted to do this for a while or something happened recently that revealed to them that they needed to do this. So depending on which case it is, you're going to find out why they need to tackle this issue now. So if they just discovered the problem or opportunity, you can say, well, why not keep an eye on this for six months or a year and then see if it's really a big deal? Decide what to do then. Why not just push this off? Is it really that urgent? And they'll say, oh, no, no, we can't wait. We have to do this right now because X, Y, and Z. And you write that down. You write down what X, Y, and Z are. Or if instead they've known about the problem for a while but only recently decided to act on it or do something about it, you say, well, why did you wait so long to address it? What changed? Why do it now? And they'll say, well, something happened. You know, we've known about this. It hasn't been a big deal, but X, Y, and Z. You write that down. If you, you know, possibly they could say, oh, well, no. Yeah, good idea. We'll wait six months or a year, in which case now you don't have to write a proposal. You can say, all right, great. Get back to me in six months or a year or I'll check back with you in six months or a year. See how it's going and then we can talk about it then. But most likely what they'll say is, no, no, no, we need this done now for these specific reasons. And so by asking the why now questions, you'll have a sense for what the urgency of the project is. The third category of why questions is why me? And in this section, what you want to do is try and give them any, give them suggestions of any possibility that would be a cheaper way to go. So yes, you know you need to do this project and yes, you know you need to do it now, but why hire an expensive resource like me? Why not handle this internally? Dear customer, you mentioned that you have some internal web developers or internal UX team or an internal iOS team. Why not have them do it? Why not outsource this to an overseas team? They're much less expensive than it would be to hire a premium resource like me. Or why not hire some junior contractors or get some interns to do it? And every single one of these questions you ask, it's possible they'll say, oh, good idea. But the reality is they probably thought of all these and they have specific reasons why they're not an option. Well, our internal team can't handle it because they're already maxed out on some other project. Or we tried an overseas team and the time zone difference created a major problem for us. We have junior contractors or we have interns, but this is just way above their pay grade and we want someone to really handle this, someone really professional to handle this. And whatever those reasons are, you write them down. So by the end of this conversation, one of two things will have happened. You will have either talked them out of hiring you for this project or talked them out of doing the project now or at all. So you would have convinced them not to do the project with you. Or you will have convinced yourself that there is a potential beneficial project here, a sort of mutually beneficial project here for both of you. And the customer will have talked themselves into hiring you. So both parties will have come to an agreement about, oh, OK, this seems like a really good idea. We've thought this through from every angle. We've considered every objection. So by the end of a really good why conversation in which you have asked questions from all three of these categories, not just one or two,

All three of these categories, you will have collected all of the information you need to put together a killer proposal. That's a good place to leave it for today. I'm Jonathan Stark, and this is Ditching Hourly. If you'd like to learn more about how to ditch hourly billing, please go to valuepricingbootcamp.com to sign up for my free email course. Again, that URL is valuepricingbootcamp.com. Thanks. 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.