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. Evan Pichy wrote in to ask, what do you typically include in consulting proposals? Great question. So I have a five-page proposal template that I use for all of my consulting projects and you can actually download it by going to jonathanstark.com slash five and you'll get the details there. But just to give you a high-level overview, I usually keep proposals to five pages. Sometimes they go to six, but it's pretty rare and it doesn't matter how big the project is, it's five pages or about that. So the first page is a cover page, which wouldn't even be a full page. And then I have a section where there's a situation appraisal where I describe the current state of the client situation. I describe the desired future state, where they want to go, and I describe why they are talking to me about it at all. So it's sort of a two or three paragraph section, not very long. And then I go into three different incremental options, small, medium, and large, where I describe what I can do to help move the needle they want moved at a particular price point. And then incrementally, option two would include option one, but give them more benefit. Option three would be even more benefit, include the previous two options. After that, I'll put a section of risks and assumptions just to make sure that we don't have any assumptions or to call out any risks in advance so that if something does come to pass in the future, I can say, well, we knew this could have happened. Projects are uncertain and we'll just move forward. We made a contingency plan for this. After that, then there's a section called why me, which I will omit sometimes when I've already worked with the client or if the trust level is just through the roof for some reason. But generally, you're going to include a why me section that's kind of like, there are a lot of smart cookies out there. Why would you pick me instead of others? So you can kind of bullet point out some reasons that make you a uniquely good fit for the project. And then I get into pricing terms and availability, that sort of thing. So at that point, I would say this section is actually a little bit complicated, more complicated than the others. It includes a lot of things, things like the fact that my prices are fixed prices and not estimates. That's a big deal. And I want to emphasize that as much as possible. I'll also give them pricing terms. 100% upfront is usually where I would start so that I can negotiate away pricing terms if I need to, so I don't have to negotiate prices. Then I would list the prices for the different options. I don't include them in the option section themselves. I put them way at the end, so they're kind of forced to actually read the document and not just jump to the numbers. And then I'll give them a very clear next steps for how to execute the agreement. So that would be like, you can send a check to this address or you can make payment online or whatever the case may be. So that's really it. And it's been very successful for me over the years, very successful. And it doesn't have to be a giant proposal for even a huge project. The proposal really should be a summation of everything that you agreed to in the sales interview when you had the why conversation. So there should be really no surprises in the proposal when the client reads it. You should have talked about all this stuff already. It should be full of language that they gave to you, sort of taking words out of their mouth and put them straight onto the page. And the only thing they're going to be curious about really is the breakdown of the options, the delta in between each option, like what do we get in option two that we don't get in option one, and what are the prices and pricing terms and that stuff. So the pricing terms section is the big section where they're getting a lot of new information, but everything else should be pretty straightforward. Again, you can go to JonathanStark.com slash five to get an example of one of these templates. And I hope that helps. So my name is Jonathan Stark. And if you have a question for me, you can hashtag ask Jonathan on YouTube, LinkedIn, or Twitter, and we'll find it and add it to the queue. See you next time. 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.

...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/call. That URL again is jonathanstark.com/call. Hope to see you there.