Treasa Edmond: 0:00

Welcome back to Boss Responses. Have you ever gone through a discovery call with a client, spent what felt like forever on a proposal, sent it off and then crickets? That's what's happened to Sophia, who's asking our question today. It's a tricky situation. I have a lot of thoughts on proposals. Jamie has a completely different process. So today you get to hear about two separate processes that both have very high success rates. It's dealer's choice. You can choose the one that's right for you. Let's go ahead and get into it.

Treasa Edmond: 0:33

If you're a freelancer, business owner or anyone who deals with clients, you're in the right place. I'm your host, teresa Edmond. I've been dealing with clients and running my business for nearly two decades and in that time I've dealt with my share of doubt, imposter syndrome and not knowing what to say when a client asked a question I wasn't ready for. I created this podcast to empower you with the boss responses you need to grow your business. Each week, my guest co-host and I will bring you five episodes packed with practical insights. Monday through Thursday, we answer your questions, and Fridays we dive deep to explore how our co-hosts embrace their role as the boss of their business. Welcome to Boss Responses. We are back for day four with Jamie. Jamie, what is the question for today?

Jamie Brindle: 1:35

Let's see here. Today's question is from Sophia from Melbourne, australia, or I guess Melbourne is how. I have to say that I have a friend from Australia that taught me the proper way to say Melbourne. Sophia's question is I keep getting ghosted after sending proposals. I take the time to put together detailed plans for potential clients, but I never hear back. Is there something that I should be doing differently to improve my response rate? What do you think?

Treasa Edmond: 1:58

Do you know what? I've helped five I just counted them up in my head Five people with proposals over the last month, and so I kind of know some of the issues Sophia is probably dealing with here. I will say from the outset your system is probably flawed. If you are just dropping a proposal on a client and waiting for them to respond, then you've set yourself up for failure. Tough love. Sorry, I don't want to say it that way, but it needs to be said. Your proposals should be a part of your onboarding process. They're not a standalone thing. They're not a I might get this client, I might not. If you go into it knowing that it's part of a process, it's going to end with you working with that client. Then you have a system in place to follow up on every step of it and you're going to get a response one way or another and then you can tweak it until you start getting more and more positive responses. So my recommendation for this situation is to work on your system first and then work on your proposal. So system to me looks like this and it'll be interesting to see kind of what you recommend on this.

Treasa Edmond: 3:09

Jamie, I do pre-qualification discovery call. My discovery call is 90% questions. I ask them to determine scope, success metrics, what the project actually needs to look like, all of the details, who it matters to which competitors they're competing with. I get strategic in that. I take that. I also know from that call what they think they need for this project. I take everything they've answered and I put together a proposal that I never spend more than 30 minutes on because I have a template ready to go.

Treasa Edmond: 3:45

I put together a proposal that includes multiple options. The first one is always what they think they want, scaled to meet the budget that they've given me. The second option is always top end of their budget, what I believe they need and it could even be more than their budget. But I'm very clear in my messaging in that proposal why I'm recommending it, what they're going to get out of it, what problems it's solving for them and why I think they need that instead of what they asked for. And then I have an everything and the kitchen sink option. That is value added through the wazoo. It includes extra strategic guidance. It's really truly partnering with them. 90% of my clients choose option three because they see the value in the call and in the proposal to do the thing and the ones who don't choose option two. I've never had anyone since I started this process. Choose what they thought they wanted.

Jamie Brindle: 4:41

Go with their gut yeah.

Treasa Edmond: 4:42

Yeah, Don't go with their gut. So I do the proposal, my proposals. This is the part that takes a little bit of extra time. I never spend more than half an hour putting that proposal together. And it's laid out, it's pretty, it's in their branding colors. If it's a project, that's more than a certain dollar amount because effort scales with money, right, Jamie? And then I record a quick walkthrough of that proposal on a Loom video and I include the link to that in the email I send them at the top of the proposal. And then I have already, on my discovery call, scheduled a call with them to go over the proposal in person and answer any questions they have. And then the proposal has an expiration date seven days, 14 days, whatever they thought it would take to get approvals. If they go past that date, we reevaluate pricing, we reevaluate availability. I do not hold space in my schedule until they have signed off on the proposal agreed to the contract. So all of the agreements are in place and I've received my deposit.

Treasa Edmond: 5:48

When you put those deadlines in place and stack them up, your clients are going to respond faster and you have a process then that led from I've qualified them as a potential client to. We now have a starting date for the project and if you go through that every time, you don't have to think about it. You don't have to do any second guessing. The only thing you have to do is look at your calendar, see if you have availability, translate the answers to their questions onto the proposal, come up with the options that you're going to give them and I'm telling you my success rate since I started that proposal process has I calculated the other day because someone asked me to, and I'm at 95% success rate on converting proposals. Clients like it. When you have a straightforward, easy to follow system, what do you do, Jamie?

Jamie Brindle: 6:36

Well, first of all, damn damn on that 95. Nice, nicely done.

Treasa Edmond: 6:41

It's amazing, but I pre-qualify. That's important.

Jamie Brindle: 6:44

That's. That's important, for sure. Okay, every industry is a little different. On the proposal side of things and on what's expected and what's not, I will say that in my Over 15 years of doing this, I personally have made maybe three proposals. It's something that I don't participate in that often and I find isn't necessarily required for the way that I like to acquire or convert leads into clients, which I think this is pretty beneficial to see two very different ways to do it.

Jamie Brindle: 7:24

For me, it all happens in real time, on the call, and it's me walking them through all the questions. How are you going to measure success for this? Have you ever done this before? If so, what are some things you want to replicate, some things you want to avoid? If not, what are some anxieties you might have about this process? What are the things you're looking forward to? Who are our decision makers? What's our schedule looking like? Okay, here's my recommendation on a budget range something big to give us to talk to. We're from X to Y to give us a conversation starter. Now let's talk about budget. Okay, you walk them through the whole thing. At the end of it, you've got a game plan and a pretty rough budget established and you say are we ready to do this or not? It's like we're right then and there because I want to have that conversation with them.

Jamie Brindle: 8:11

I think that any time that I've sent a number and I've sent a game plan, it does encourage ghosting. But also, you don't know if you're being ghosted. And putting a timeline on it helps for sure, but I would catch myself negotiating against myself. Five days after sending it I'd send another email. Hey, just check it in.

Jamie Brindle: 8:34

Also, if the number was wrong, let's talk it over. I can come up with a way to get us down to a lower number, xyz when really they'd already decided that they were going to do it and they were just waiting on approval from the boss, or there are any number of things could be happening when you think you're being ghosted. So I want to be in the room for that conversation. So I like to present the plan and the number then and there on that call, get everybody signed off to it and then most that will happen afterwards is the scope of work will get sent over for final sign off. Yeah, but that's the way that we do it, because there is no, they can't ghost you on the call, right? They can't just.

Treasa Edmond: 9:08

Oh, they can, but.

Jamie Brindle: 9:12

Oops, oops.

Treasa Edmond: 9:13

I lost my internet connection.

Jamie Brindle: 9:15

But it is something that is just something that I remember we were consulting on a production for a very, very large brand, top five brand in the world size company, and they asked me can you put together a deck of everything that we just talked about? My inner monologue is going why, like we just talked, like we just talked about it, and then they say you put together a deck and we'll have another call and go go through your proposal?

Treasa Edmond: 9:41

Bureaucracy man.

Jamie Brindle: 9:43

I said, okay, all right. And the morning of that call again huge company. I opened up Keynote and just made my deck and they all get on the call and it's two slides the first slide is the problem and the second slide is the solution, with the budget on it, and we hashed it out and I guess they just needed that to feel like they needed the visual. But that's probably as close to a proposal as I've gotten in a long time.

Treasa Edmond: 10:13

That's lovely. So I do want to clarify. I do high value work like perceived and actual. So ghostwriting a book, there are a lot of details that need to be agreed on in writing to make sure that there's accountability on both sides. And with content strategies there are a lot of moving pieces, a lot of deadlines, a lot of requirements for things that need done on both sides for success. So I do proposals because it clearly outlines that and it provides that level of accountability on both sides from the get-go.

Treasa Edmond: 10:48

And now ghostwriting I'm usually talking to the person who's going to sign off on it. So my proposal is my contract with ghostwriting. Everything is in there that they need. I have a brief thing on payments. I don't go into a lot of clauses because it freaks them out If they need a content strategy.

Treasa Edmond: 11:09

My initial point of contact on the discovery call is very rarely the decision maker and they need something in writing to take to the decision maker to actually say this is what we're going to do. Now do I do full-on proposals for blog posts? Never that I give them pricing on the phone because I know ahead of time what I'm willing to do that for. Or that I give them pricing on the phone, because I know ahead of time what I'm willing to do that for and we just do the thing. But yeah, for more complex projects. The primary point of a proposal is so they can see everything clearly outlined. The biggest thing and this is why I send the Loom video is because the decision maker was not in the room, yeah, is because the decision maker was not in the room, yeah, and this gives them the opportunity to see my face, to understand that this is an important process and to do the thing.

Treasa Edmond: 11:59

My success rate on blogs probably isn't as high, but I don't write blogs for people much anymore. It's just not what I enjoy doing. I like doing the ghostwriting and the content strategy, so I love what you do when you just do it on the phone. Let's talk for a second, though, about the level of confidence that that takes and the fact that your sales process and you are incredibly sure of what you're going to charge and you're able to figure that up really quickly on the call, because that's where a lot of people really struggle. In my conversations with them, I feel like the client put me on the spot. So how do you prevent that feeling? How do you? Do you have like a pricing guide that's yours and yours alone, or do you just know at this point, this is the value, this is what I'm bringing to the table.

Jamie Brindle: 12:51

Yeah well, here is the value, this is what I'm bringing to the table. Yeah Well, here's the secret. Guys, Even 15 years into this thing, I still have a cheat sheet that is up on my computer before I call, like this and it makes you look awesome because it's written in kind of a choose your own adventure style. If they say this, here's where you're going. If they say this, this is what you're going to say. It's not a script, because that's you immediately. People figure that one out real quick and that's just a weird conversation. It's not that. It's.

Jamie Brindle: 13:20

Here are the questions I'm asking to determine their budget. Here are the questions I'm asking to determine what they're really going to respond to, essentially, what their goals are, what their magic wand experiment. Everything goes according to plan. Everything works out better than you would ever imagine it would. What is the result here? What are we aiming for? It's things like that. We're trying to get them, trying to get an understanding of their objectives. But yeah, there is a definite cheat sheet up on my computer that I've just gotten very good at using. Oh, that is it's practice. Once you have a very similar conversation a number of times, it gets a lot easier. But yeah, it's very rare that I go into a call like that, especially with a significant project, without having planned out exactly how you know the eight different ways this conversation could go.

Treasa Edmond: 14:08

Yeah. So that's why he doesn't have to send a proposal, because he's already done all of the thinking work before the call. If you need to weigh everything and do it after the call, or if you're not good being put on the spot, so if you're not good ad-libbing and being really confident and saying to a client to their face, I'm going to charge you $25,000 for this project, or the investment for this project would be $25,000. That either takes an incredible amount of moxie or you just have to be a sociopath and you're able to lie with a straight face every single time. Whichever it works, but you have to Whatever gets it done Whatever gets it done.

Treasa Edmond: 14:50

But you just you do have to practice, and if you're, you can either practice on potential clients or you could find a person you could join a group, you could do a thing where you're actually practicing discovery calls. And if you get paired up with a partner who throws curve balls at you, all the better, because that simple act of responding to one of those really stupid things in real time means you can do it on a client call and not have a problem. One other thing I would add for Sophia, and this is why my success rate's 95% I do not send proposals to clients I don't want to work with. I do not send proposals to clients I don't want to work with. I send them a very nice email saying I'm not a fit for this project and it doesn't fit in my schedule. I'm happy to refer you to someone else. Let me know if that is something that you're interested in. It was lovely talking to you. All the best with your project.

Treasa Edmond: 15:46

And if they were a red flag discovery call? They slipped through the pre-qualification process and then they threw up all kinds of red flags the man who does the verbal equivalent of smacking you on the ass when you walk by. You just send them a one-line email. Sorry, I almost made Jamie spit out his drink. You send them a one-line email and say I'm not a good fit for this project. I wish you all the best, that's all. You don't have to offer reasons and excuses. Read the room. You might be sending proposals for clients who really weren't even interested on the discovery call. That's a possibility. Jamie's way weeds them out really quickly because Jamie gives them a price and they say that doesn't work for us and then the call's over and you're done with it, and I'm sure you also pre-qualify your clients.

Jamie Brindle: 16:38

Oh yeah, you hit on that so I figured I wouldn't tread that ground again, but that is another big part of it is that you don't want to waste anybody's time, theirs or yours. If you know how this one's going to end, don't even bother. But if they're qualified, then we're all in on it.

Treasa Edmond: 16:53

Yeah. So, sophia, whichever way you go, come up with a system, even if it's Jamie's cheat sheet system or a full on onboarding process, whatever it is, have a process of some kind, because that's what gives you the confidence, I think, to really move forward with that.

Jamie Brindle: 17:09

Absolutely. It gives you the confidence and it gives the client the confidence to move forward with you, because it says, okay, this person has a game plan here, this person has a way to get it done.

Treasa Edmond: 17:19

Yep, and it works. I think one of the things that makes it even more powerful is when you're honestly in the relationship with the goal of making life easier for your client in some way, rather than I'm going to charge them the big bucks because they know, they absolutely know if you're in it for the money or if you're in it to partner with them and solve a problem and that's been our theme of the week but partner with them rather than doing the thing. And if proposals are not working for you, try Jamie's method or just do a verbal proposal, say, let me come up with all of the details on the project and we can jump back on another call and I can share those with you. Nobody ever said a proposal has to be a written document.

Jamie Brindle: 17:59

Yeah, absolutely.

Treasa Edmond: 18:00

And then you can ask them to bring the decision maker to that second call.

Jamie Brindle: 18:05

Definitely.

Treasa Edmond: 18:06

That works All right. That is the end of day four with Jamie. Tomorrow we're going to do a bit of