Cracking The 20k Freelance Client
A Note From The Author
EXPERIMENT — Help me write a book!
I hear a rumor that we all have a book in us somewhere. Well this is my book about how I built my business on the idea of “results based selling” AKA putting your money where your mouth is and only getting paid based on the results you bring to the client. I now have a few six figure clients (per month) and want to share with the world the process I use to deliver valuable services with a great return for everyone involved. And I’d love your help!
A few notes about this “public book” is an experiment. I don’t know if it’ll be better than writing it in private then posting the final EDITED version for the world to see. I tend to write and think pretty backwards, so the rough drafts are usually a bit of a mess. I tend to research, write, then come back and quote the research, so a lot of my claims seem unsubstantiated at first.
All that being said, I hope you enjoy! I’ll be revising, editing, all that good stuff in real time! So be sure to follow, subscribe, whatever Medium calls it. Chances are what you read today will not be the final product, but I do hope you enjoy watch the process! Feel free to add comments and notes.
A big favor would be highlighting parts you like, this will help me know where to shift the focus as I continue to write!
Thanks again — Sean Vosler
Current goals: 2 pages per day.
Want a weekly update on the book progress with summaries? Add your details here and i’ll send a really short email your way every week!
Working Title: Cracking the 20k Client
Book Thesis:
The art of selling 20k consulting packages that make your customers happier, get you paid faster, and end the cycle of feast and fammen that plague the modern day knowledge worker.
The start of any book must give the author incredible anxiety. Should we start with a story? Should we start with sharing the fear of starting a book? Should we start with a BIG HOOK to get our readers attention and keep it throughout the book? Maybe little bit of “all of the above” will do.
Perhaps I should drive the editors mad and tell you that I’m actually not a writer. If I had to define myself as anything I suppose I’d fall under the label of an investor. Wait, don’t go running for the hills yet! I couldn’t tell you the difference between a stock option and a derivative, so I’m not that kind of investor. I’m actually an investor just like you, with the exact same resources as you. Time, and a skill.
Time.
The age old tick tock that seems to have something to do with space as well according to Einstein. As far as I can tell we all have similar amounts, and though many find themselves obsessed with the cult of hustle, I find myself more interested in how I can squeeze more into tinier and tinier slices of time. How can I get expediently more done using less of the stuff. Because honestly? We all generally have to work to make a living, so why not use the time we set aside for that in the smartest way possible.
The big win of taking control of a higher ticket consulting deals is that, when done correctly, you can actually buy more time. How so? Read on to find out.
Skill.
Are you a commodity? You probably will be…
Many of us are quite skilled at something, honestly it’s a bit more of a curse than we might expect. The modern day “knowledge worker” is becoming more and more valuable to organizations through their skills, yet at the same time they’re also becoming less and less rare. Unlike the diamond cartel that’s a fan of artificial scarcity, there are indeed more and more of us around the world. The fancy word for an increase in the availability of something is “commoditization”, and that’s not a good thing for skill based work. When something becomes a commodity it’s cost goes down, even if it’s still of high valuable to the end user.
So the skill you went to school for, or self taught yourself through many hours of Googling is becoming less valuable over time. But interestingly enough that commodity skill can be paired with something much more valuable. Leverage. The idea that you can use that skill to do more than create something for a company, but the idea that you can turn that deliverable into a specific, measurable, outcome for your client.
Let’s back up a bit. This book at it’s core is designed to show you how to land a $20,000+ client per month. Or per week, depending on your capacity. Or if you’re like me, a 100k client per month. Why are we talking about skills and time? Well before I can just hand over the strategy I use we have to address a few things that hold most people back from hitting these kinds of numbers.
The first being that most people focus a bit too much on WHAT they’re doing instead of WHY they’re doing it. I’m not talking about the deep spiritual “why” here, though that never hurts to have defined, I’m referring more to the end outcome of what we’re making. What it’s real benefit to do for the person who’s buying it. In marketing speak it’s the “benefit” of what we’re selling, or to take it further the ‘benefit of the benefit’ (add as many benefits as you like here.)
For example. If you build a website for someone, what’s the first benefit? Well, they’ll have a website! Ok, duh, given. Most of us go into the world of selling “something”, like a website, without giving too much more thought to what that website actually is designed to do. OK, I’ll give you a bit more credit, maybe you realize that a website is designed to give a company more credibility, an online or sense, somewhere their customers can review their different offerings, and learn more about them.
Cool… But WHY does as company need that?
Go on, guess.. Why do they actually want a website?
For better or worse most customers will reply “well because our competitors have one”, or “we want to be sure we’re up with the times!” Not incorrect answers, but pretty short sighted ones. Deep down we all know the end goal of a website is more leads and sales. Yay we got to the “benefit of the benefit”, but as Morpheus would say, we must go deeper.
Why more sales?
DUH Sean, because it means more profits for the business, win win! Ok sure, that’s true. But here’s the first part of the secret to selling higher ticket consulting packages. You have to get beyond the profits and learn the inner mission of the business, and more likely the person behind the business.
NOTE: ADD STORY
[[END DAY 1 WRITING]]
Learning The “Inner Mission” of Your Prospects — The art of selling with questions.
Assuming you would like to get into consulting, or that you currently consider yourself a consultant, you’ve probably come to terms that you’re going to learn how to sell stuff.
As a guy with zero formal sales training let me tell ya, the idea of Wolf of Wall Street style selling sounds absolutely terrible. Cold calling, lead lists, hustle and bustle of the high pressure sale systems… Not for me. But I’m willing to bet I can sell just about anything to anyone now.
Why? Because I’ve learned the true power that comes from combining empathy and teaching.
The two most powerful words in selling: Empathy & Teaching.
Empathy is the ability to understand and share the feelings of another person. In sales, the vendor who understands the problems, current solutions, and the people involved the most, wins. In the first part of high output sales (close to 100% close rate when done right) we have to become a detective.
The Sales Detective
Most of us are familiar with the stories of Sherlock Holmes, or if you’re like me you’re more familiar with the Robert Downey Jr. Movie rendition. Can we take a second to just all agree that RDJ is probably the coolest dude ever? I mean if I had to pick a guy that would be my “Hollywood buddy” it’d be that crazy dude. I think I’m mainly impressed by his ability … ok I digress. I’m not going to warn you again, I have insane ADD. Wait I didn’t warn you? Consider this your third and final warning. SO Sherlock Holmes. This guy is the MASTER of observation, he can walk into a room and unravel a situation just from the clues around him.
What most people don’t really think about when it comes to Sherlock’s abilities is that he doesn’t just solve cases by his powers of observation… but he has a huge amount of “domain knowledge” in all kinds of fields that he can draw from. As a sales person, we need to collect our own domain knowledge. What made Holmes exceptional was his ability to draw from that wealth of knowledge to piece together the REAL story. That’s precisely what we need to do, my dear Watson.
Understanding the Real Story
Our leads, prospects, whatever you want to call them, are in some kind of serious pain. The real funny, ironic, and hilarious thing about their pain is they’re usually are completely wrong (that was dark… sorry) about what their REAL pain is. They THINK they know, but usually they’re in what we all know to well as “reactive mode”. And in reactive mode, as opposed to proactive mode, people are much more likely to make critical mistakes.
When a lead says they need a website, they actually need more leads. When they say they need a new brand or logo, they actually need a new vision. When they say they need a new follow up email sequence — well if they say that they might actually be closer to what they really need.
Our job is to look at what they’re asking for and then sell them what they actually need.
How do we do that? We have to get to know the real story. That’s where the questioning begins. Empathy can really only connect as a feeling once we truly understand what their end goals, and yes dreams, are for their business.
[[End day 2 writing]]
Defining their goals and dreams, the next step in getting them to pitch YOU.
What do you want to be when you grow up? For some reason we quit asking that question when we get older, but we really should keep asking. This probably shouldn’t, though, be the first question we ask a potential client. But the answer to that question would probably do more to help the sale than the PowerPoint presentation most sales folks walk into the office with.
You see, the first rule of humanity is that people are super interested in themselves. Like, to the point that just knowing this we can do some incredible manipulation. Ok, maybe that’s a poor choice of words. But the facts are facts. People love talking about themselves, and if we can get them to do that we’re taking the first steps in getting them to actually sell US on the project.
Sound exciting? Of course it does. Who wouldn’t want someone to beg you to take their money.
[[ End day 3 — super exhausted so not a 2 page day, but wanted to at least get a thought down on paper today]]
What Questions to Ask
Picture your best friend in your mind for a moment. That person you’ve probably known for a long time, you’ve spent countless hours discussing, musing, or just listening to each other. For some of you this is your significant other, for some it might be your cat. Regardless of who it is, you are inherently good at talking to this person. You can probably not talk for awhile and sit down for a drink and it’s like nothing has changed. You’ll start bubbling over with things to talk about and stories to tell.
Humans are funny like that, in one context we can be experiencing that type of connection with someone, and in another both parties can feel like aliens making first contact.
Truth is the only difference between our best friend and the potential client we’re selling to is… Context.
As Gary Vaynerchuck put it in his best selling book Jab Jab Jab Right Hook “if content is king, than context is God”. He was referring to social media, but the social part of that applies without the media part. This may seem obvious but truth is, we often psych ourselves out when it comes to social interactions. As I’ve probably mentioned I’m somewhat of a shy person “in real life”, but I have learned the art of interaction. I’m the kinda guy who’s a big fan of locking himself away for days at a time and not talking to anyone. But I can also sell, and it’s because I learned how to build context QUICK with someone.
What is context? Well it’s all the details surrounding how we’ve connected with someone. It’s what they know about us, it’s what we know about them. And the more context you have, the easier it is to build a connection.
How can we arm ourselves with more information then? Well simple, we need to research the “nouns” related to our potential client, define the ‘who, what, when, where’s, and why’s’, and it never hurts to know the how either. We can use whatever resources we have at hand for this, I usually try and get more context through their website, mutual friends, social media profiles. Heck I like to learn what TV show’s and Movies they like, yes it sounds a bit stalker-ish but it gives us that crucial context that we need.
For instance, I once themed a client proposal after the Netflix series “House of Cards” after a lead posted on Facebook about how much he loved the show. I used that bit of knowledge to add more flavor to the icing on the cake. No I didn’t need to theme the proposal, but it worked. He actually posted on Facebook later in the day after I sent the proposal that he had received “the most amazing proposal ever”. Now, would I have done that if OTHER pieces of context didn’t fit… such as it being a government contract RFP… probably, but that’s just because I actually think it’s hilarious to do. But, If you actually want to close the deal you have to take into consideration ALL the context, and it might not be pertinent to do so.
The context here was, I knew he had a sense of humor, he was in his late 20’s, he was a fun guy from what I could tell, and we had met in person before and he seemed like someone who would enjoy a little spice in the presentation. Won the deal and got paid completely up front for the project. (Side note, I never talked to the client once during that project on the phone… it was fantastic.)
We’re jumping a bit ahead here, we’re supposed to be talking about questions not context. But without context you can’t ask the right questions. Sound’s like something Yoda would say, actually he’d probably say it like this: “Right questions you can not ask without context first getting… Mhmmmhehehehe”. Now that we know what context is, how to get it, and why it’s important let’s look at how to use it to ask the right questions.
Using Context to Ask The Right Questions.
Now that we know a decent amount about our potential client, it’s time to learn even more. A lot more learning in sales than you thought isn’t there? Well there is at least when it comes to higher priced services anyways, don’t need to know much about someone to sell them a cookie. You do if you want to sell them a complex marking system for $20,000.
So let’s run through an example. We’ll talk for a minute about ‘Jim’.
Jim needs a new website, or at least he thinks he does. His real estate agency has been leveling out lately and he’s pretty sure he can get more leads and sales if he revamps his website. His current website is a random collection of listings when a few elements on the page that might actually bring someone to make contact with Jim. Truth is, Jim’s current site was made by his cousin a few years back and hasn’t really been updated since.
Jim’s business does $250,000 per year profit, and he’s fairly certain he’s going to add quite a bit to it once he get’s this new website. Surely people are going to want to work with him once his website looks more like those fancy people over at ReMax!
So Jim starts shopping around for local agencies….
#edit continue story up till point of meeting
So there you are, sitting down across from Jim. You know his needs, you know a bit about him personally, and most importantly you know something far more valuable… You know he doesn’t just need a website, he needs a marketing system. Fortunately you’ve got just the thing, and where a website with no marketing might be worth $2000 to Jim, a marketing lead generation and sales system is easily worth $20,000, more on why later; hint it comes down to simple math.
So what do you do? It’s like a chose your own adventure game. There’s multiple ways to start off the conversation… but which is best?
[end day 4 writing]
