Guys… i’m BOILING over here.
It’s the second heat wave of the summer here in Germany, 36°C in a country where almost nothing has air conditioning, so this is a short episode. But it’s a good one!
Last week I talked about the ideal business model for a consultant. This week I want to talk about a concept that changed how I sell.
For years I made selling harder than it needed to be, and then I understood one thing that made everything click. It’s a little unfair advantage hack that I rarely hear anyone mention. I use it all the time, and when it’s used on me, it makes me more likely to buy.
Btw last week’s episode looks like it’'ll be the first “non guest episode” to hit 10K listens, wohoo!
Anyway… sales…
It comes down to two things: speed and convenience.
The thing I didn’t get
I’m on both sides of this all day. As a CEO I’m constantly buying services. As the CEO of an agency I’m constantly selling them. And the thing that actually decides whether I hire someone is almost never that they were the best. It’s that they made it easy to start while I was still excited.
In January I was looking for help with the SEO of facilitator.com. I ended up on one call with one company. Not because they were the best, I didn’t do any research. Because they were the first to reach out and they could jump on a call straight away. Then they said they’d go away and make a proposal. By the time they came back, I’d figured out how to do it myself. They didn’t get the job.
Momentum is the whole game
Here’s the truth about CEOs. If you give them too much time to think, they’ve already moved on. The SEO thing was exciting to me for about a week. Then I was done.
So when someone gets on a call with me at AJ&Smart, it’s never about a big proposal. It’s about the soonest possible starting point. Someone wants help with a funnel, I don’t say I’ll prepare a proposal and we’ll have another call. I say: when can we start? This thing starts with a two-day kickoff, and at the end you might not even need us. No retainer to decide, no contract to sign. We just start.
That gives the other person the feeling that this can start now. Because I know they’ve got a million things going on. Right now this is a high priority. In two weeks it’s nothing.
Be the Michelin chef
A friend started a business this week and had a deal slipping. I told him: if you lose it, it won’t be the price or the service. It’ll be that the other CEO lost momentum. We’re so used to doing everything ourselves that if it takes you too long, we’ll just say fuck it and do it ourselves.
Too many of you get on a call, list everything you can do, then go away to make a proposal, then come back, then make the client choose a package. You’re handing the client the job of figuring out what they want from you. You’re the service provider. Be the Michelin chef. Say: this is what I think you need, let’s just start here and see where we get to.
Stop giving people homework
A CEO asks me, “Do you know someone for SEO?” I say yes. Two weeks later: “Oh, they sent me a proposal, I haven’t looked at it yet.” That person gave them homework. A lot of entrepreneurial people have that now-or-never thing, and a long proposal is a task they’ll never get to.
The best proposal anyone ever did for me closed a 100K deal in a Google doc, live, on the call. By the time we hung up, that was the deal. We started, I flew out, the paperwork happened in the background, and neither of us cared because we’d already begun.
Stay disconnected from the money
The move is to say: I’m excited, I can do this, let’s start. This is roughly my price. If it works out, my finance person will sort the contract. I want the client talking about the project and the dates, not the contract. If you’re a one-person show, your partner or a family member handles that part so you can stay on full speed.
And talk the price on the call. No jump scare in an email three days later. “Ballpark, around 15 to 20.” If you can’t say that on the fly, get better at running your business.
That’s the concept. Speed and convenience. Once I understood it, selling stopped being the hard part. You don’t need a better script or better marketing. You need to stop making it a job for people to say yes to you.
Cheers,
Jonathan
