20 Ways to Legitimize & Level Up Your Digital Agency (or Freelance Business)

what's up everybody welcome back to the channel wanted to drop in with a new video to remind you guys that this channel isn't just about oxygen and it's certainly not just about automatic.css the utility class and utility variable framework that i'm about to release in november uh nice plug okay so we're going to talk today about 20 ways to legitimize and level up your digital agency you should be able to see the slides on the screen right there reason i'm making this video today is because this year 2021 my digital agency which is called digital gravy is on fire like it is doing better than it's ever done we have definitely leveled up signing more contracts bigger contracts life is fantastic the team is growing we're doing really really well and i know that that's not the case for all of you so uh if you feel like your agency or maybe you consider yourself to be a freelancer these tips are going to help you just as much but if you consider that your business is not doing better than it's ever been um then i definitely want to jump in and help you with some things maybe implementing some of this stuff can really really help you um if you feel like you're doing better than you've ever been and you still just want to learn some great stuff that maybe you're missing that'll make your thing even better then this might be for you as well shout out to my inner circle we just passed 550 active members which is absolutely fantastic and i can guarantee you like we're going to go over these 20 tips these things we're doing surface level kind of rapid fire here on youtube this is the stuff we talk about in depth inside the inner circle and i've already gotten dozens of messages from people thanking me for the content and telling me that because of what i'm teaching they are just like me they are signing bigger contracts they're making more money there's more margin in their contracts for the first time ever they are hiring people and building a team and everything is just running smoother and better and their clients are happier and they have more clients than than they've had they have recurring revenue it's good right everybody is getting great results from this content so without further ado let's go ahead and hop right in so again 20 ways to legitimize and level up your digital agency number one and these aren't in any particular they're in like a loose order okay but like i said i'm just going to go through kind of rapid fire fashion so tip number one is to level up your discovery calls and just off the cuff off off the top of my head thinking about how i've run discovery calls in the past versus how i run them now how i've seen others run discovery calls discovery call recordings that i've listened to from other freelancers and agency owners just some quick tips again off the top of the head number one you should be discussing price and your discovery calls and just to clarify a discovery call is not calls you do during the discovery process that people are paying for this this type of discovery call that i'm talking about is that like pre-sales call where you're qualifying the person you are selling your services you're selling yourself you're getting kind of a price bracketed out uh we'll talk about price bracketing in just a minute and you're just getting the person comfortable in like preparation for sending them a proposal okay so again that's what a discovery call is in this context let's talk about kind of how it should happen because this is the foundation of leveling up if you're not doing discovery calls properly you're not going to get the contracts you're not going to get the projects you're it's just going to be tough and you're only going to be able to secure the small fish clients so when you get on a discovery call number one you need to talk about price at some point i'll tell you how to do that in just a second number two you need to be leading the call don't like expect the person to tell you everything that they need but you lead the call with questions not statements not sales not anything else you lead the call with questions the more questions that you ask the better the call is going to go and your opportunity to sell comes in how people answer the questions number one the questions you ask you have to ask smart intelligent questions but number two the way that people answer the questions or sometimes they respond with a question gives you the opportunity to sell and the way that i sell i try to sell without being salesy so i am authentically trying to tell people exactly what we can do for them based on the goals they're telling me that they have based on the situation that they find themselves in that's what this is all about right you're talking to a business client who needs a new website or they need seo or they need digital marketing or whatever they're in a specific situation and they're trying to get a specific outcome and this entire discovery slash sales call is how can i get you from point a to point b and what is that going to look like and what is it going to cost that's that's basically all you're trying to nail down in these calls but you ruin the call if you just talk talk talk talk talk you ruin the call if you just sell sell sell sell sell you ruin the call if you treat it like a presentation or something like where you're gonna go in and yeah we're the best and we're this and we're that look at all this work we've done and yada yada yada that's not a discovery call a discovery call has to discover some things and in order to discover some things you gotta ask questions you gotta ask a lot of questions right and two things are gonna happen number one you're gonna gain a lot of insights that you can use to sell covertly sell right just authentically so and then number two the client is going to really feel like you're caring about the situation that they're in the goals that they have and you're caring about like creating a campaign that's tailored to what they're telling you versus just fitting them into some sort of package that you give everybody right so you're personalizing this process so i always go in i've done research on the company now the the third thing i would say and just triggered in my mind is to be interactive as much as possible so for example when we get to the seo discussion i literally usually we're always on zoom or google meet or something like that i literally pull up ahrefs i pull up their site in ahrefs we go over their stats we go over the backlinks that they have we go over how much traffic they're getting where they're getting it from what keywords are ranking we take a look at their competitors i show them how their competitors are doing related to them like i'm i'm teaching i'm instructional in a lot of these discovery calls same thing with their webs i'll pull up their existing website we'll go through it what do you like what do you not like about your current website here's why i think this is working here's why i think this is not working now you have to be careful because you don't want to like trash people's websites if it's terrible but at the same time you want to point out where they might be missing opportunities where the the leaks in the boat are so to speak that you can come in and fix and how you're going to fix them with your process so that's basically what a discovery call is and kind of how you should think about it when you're about to get on one right when we talk about price you want to see and and i'm talking about after you've raised your prices which we're going to talk about later in this in this video but you want to give a price bracket like a range and you want to see their reaction to it a lot of people are afraid to talk about price on discovery calls because they feel like well let me give them all the details first let me give them this full proposal and the price will be at the very bottom of the proposal don't do that that is a huge mistake if you put your price in the proposal and that's the first time they see that number you're in trouble and and the reason the big reason you're in trouble is you're not there to defend the price you're not there to justify the price you're not there to overcome objections when they're reviewing their proposal it's in their hands now when they and i think we're going to talk about this in one of the next slides but when they get the proposal they should already basically know what they're about to pay for this okay that is a just huge huge tip that i can give you they should already know what they're about to pay in the discovery call you want to see if they're going to flinch when you give them the price range if they flinch when you give them the price range one it's kind of a red flag two it you know that justification is needed like we have to go into more we have to have a discussion around why this is going to cost the number that i just said right or the range that i just said now sometimes you can say hey what's your budget for this maybe they throw out at twenty thousand dollars thirty thousand dollars you're like oh cool we can work with that right a lot of times you're gonna get the the response well we don't really know what this should be and we're you know we're looking around we're trying to see what other people say and yeah nonsense right they they know they know uh they're pretending they don't know and that's cool like if they want to pretend that they don't know how much it's supposed to cost it's fine that's where i throw out the range and you throw out the range with confidence in fact like i say okay cool so based on what you've told me are you prepared to spend here you go there there's your line right there are you prepared to spend between 20 and 40 000 and you can make it a big rant don't be like are you prepared to spend between twenty two thousand and twenty two thousand five hundred dollars like don't do it get get em net em inside a big range right and then what you can do with that big range is start to bracket them into an actual price okay and they they really don't even know that this is happening it's kind of happening to them and they don't have much control over it but again you know they lied to you and they said that they don't know how this stuff works so for the most part uh and i do deal with like bigger clients who have this is not their first website it's not their first rodeo okay so i know they know now if you're legitimately dealing with a first time this is my first website ever for my brand new business okay they may legitimately not know and they're gonna probably be much much lower on the totem pole anyway right but if you're dealing with a client where it's a sizeable project give them that range 20 to 40 thousand dollars and then don't talk just shut up and see what their reaction is see if they flinch sometimes they'll go oh wasn't expecting that much you know and then it's like okay well what were you expecting right like what would you be comfortable spending and then it becomes we'll talk about you know getting creative with your pricing plans and all of that um but let's say they don't flinch and they're like yes we're prepared to spend somewhere in that range and so at that point you can say okay cool in terms of your budget are you having to be closer to the 20 000 mark or the 30 dollar mark of the forty thousand dollar mark right like get them just kind of say where they're comfortable now with their budget now if they say like oh or much closer to twenty thousand dollars then you can kind of explain where so we have this big range well what factors into that range sorry we're on number one this is not it's some of these are going to be faster okay if you if they're closer to that 20 000 the beginning of the range obviously we have a big range what factors determine where we are in that range is deliverables so say okay cool if you're closer to twenty thousand dollars that's no problem we may not be able to fit all the um all the features that you want into this project at least not in phase one um but that's cool it's it's we can easily work with it right and you just start having that conversation if they're thirty thousand forty thousand towards the top end oh perfect because that means that we're not gonna really have to leave anything out most likely that you're wanting in this project so it's never about like and we're going to talk about discounting later as well it's never about discounting you're getting this big range you're bracketing them into a price and the bracketing is all based on reality like if you're at the start of the bracket you're probably going to get less deliverables if you're at the top end of the bracket you're probably going to get everything that you want right you can't have both all right so the bottom line is now they know what range that they're in they kind of know what they're supposed to expect based on where they fell in that bracket so that when they get the proposal there's no sticker shock there's nothing left to worry about in terms of price the proposal is let's worry about the details all right let's move on so that's your discovery call because if you don't set all that stuff up correctly you're dead in the water like you're going to send this proposal you haven't talked about price yet they're going to skim it they're going to make a decision based on price you're probably not going to get the project especially if there's you know multiple people competing for it you've already kind of fit this is the foundation of everything is getting these discovery calls uh right number two stop selling web design i promise i can go much faster on this one stop selling web design you're like everybody and their mom that has oxygen wordpress theme forest yada yada yada can can sell web design you are not a web design freelancer you are not a web design agency you help businesses achieve their goals now you can niche that down however you want but the bottom line is the website that we're building for your company is a sales tool it is the central hub for your online marketing it is not we don't just do web design here and then we even break it out into like what is web design web design is just one piece of building a website the design of the website is that ui is that ux then there's development right and then there's the marketing and advertising layer that sits on top of it there's a lot more to this conversation than web design so stop calling yourself a web design agency stop calling yourself a web designer a web design freelancer stop like using this term it's a meaningless term it's like one tiny piece there's no value in web design there is no let me say that again there's no value in web design from your perspective from their perspective you can in fact you can let's prove it with data they can have the best cleanest brightest most awesome web design ever and still get zero customers right that's just the honest truth and i tell them that i tell them that like pretty doesn't equal a bottom line it doesn't equal money pretty doesn't equal money so we have to stop selling web design you're trying to sell results the client wants a specific result you need to sell that result the more you sell web design the less projects you're going to get in the lower price point you're going to get them at when you start selling the results that the client wants and a process and experience and expertise and that you know how to put all the layers on top of each other properly to make a nice little birthday cake then that's when you're going to get the bigger projects the bigger fish and so on and so forth stop selling web design number three write better proposals okay um i've reviewed a lot of proposals i've looked at a lot of proposals here's an and i actually have a training inside of inner circle where we go over like a winning proposal but here's what i'll say about this in short one it has to be personalized okay it can't look super cookie cutter like this is the same proposal everybody gets um yeah the colors are all gonna be the same the layout's all gonna be the same but the content needs to be unique to that project and the all the stuff that you asked in the discovery process like you know do you guys want this do you guys want that what's this challenge what's that challenge what services do you want to highlight yada yada all of those answers all of that information needs to be in that proposal so that when they read it back they're like oh my god this like is built for us whereas all these other proposals that they've gotten in the past are just like oh here's our process here's how great we are yeah yeah yeah like it's all about me me me me me your proposal needs to be about them them them them them right you see the difference it's the sense like same like fundamental philosophy of all copywriting like make it about the buyer don't make it about you um and that's where a lot of like freelancers and and agencies go wrong as they try to make it all about themselves so if you can avoid that you're you're already off to a good start second is i always put a statement of work inside the proposal so that they can see that yeah they read about the process they read about their challenges and how we're going to solve their challenges they read about our team they like all the stuff that's supposed to be in the proposal they read it all it's great but then they get to the tangible stuff here is every single deliverable that we are going to provide you then we talk about the cost breakdown of all of that right so that when they have this in their hand and if they have you know ten of them or five of them or however many they're gathering hours guaranteed is the most thorough the most personalized and the most detailed and i can tell you exactly how this works i've been in a number of situations where they were getting multiple bids and when i say multiple bids there was one company that literally was 10 bids okay they they told me up front they're like and i actually came late i was referred to them by somebody else who knew me and who knew that they were in this bid process and they were like well have you reached out to kevin yet at digitalgravy and they were like no we haven't and so they set up a call for us and got on the call and they point blank told me look you're a little late to the game uh not your fault obviously you know you didn't even know we didn't invite you to this process but we've already gotten 10 bids we're reviewing them next week okay cool i did the discovery process asked them a whole bunch of questions and they already told me in the discovery call like wow nobody else asked us all this stuff right nobody else like cared that much um then i got off the call and i knew i was already like head start okay i made this proposal super detailed full sow all deliverables sent it off to them then i heard back and they're like you know we need to get on another call and so i was like no problem got another call um and we can actually go into a side uh lesson here that i didn't even put in here because i didn't win i didn't end up getting this project but we get on the second call and they said look like what you've given us so far is is super impressive um and they basically told me like out of the 10 proposals they shortlisted two of them and mine was one of them so immediately i came in late to the process and i jumped nine other people or eight other people however much that math works um and that was cool so i'm like awesome me and them i'm winning this it's done it's a done deal the problem is and the reason i didn't win it this person i was talking to was a middle tier person not the ceo not the cmo not the any of the c's okay it was like a marketing director or something like that and so i was talking to them and then what would happen is and i asked like five times i was like can i come in and can i talk to you guys in person because i know that when i get in the door physically i'm there in person it's a done deal it's a wrap okay you're not they're not making it out alive it's a wrap okay i know that that's the confidence i go in with and not again it's not being salesy it's just being confident being authentic and legitimately knowing i can solve their problem and get them results and you know knowing that i have a rock solid process to do that that's it okay and i can communicate that in that in that discovery session so i asked them four or five times can i come in can i cut no we're busy we're busy we're just trying to get this done and and she was kind of like blocking me off from coming in um and so what would happen is and this was a kind of a technical project so she had this proposal over here at one price she had my proposal over here at a higher price a much higher price but mine included stuff the other one didn't and i communicated multiple times i'm like look they're not including this stuff and it's going to be a problem they're not including content that's going to be a problem and so you know it was up to her basically to convey the importance of the this set of deliverables versus this set of deliverables at this price versus this price they ended up going with the other one because i think because it was cheaper right it was like you know 20 000 cheaper 30 000 cheaper something like that and that's fine whatever like the the lesson i learned there is just absolutely do not rely on a middle tier person to communicate properly to the real decision makers like you've got to get in front of the real decision makers i tried i couldn't make it happen it is what it is but we're talking about write better proposals my proposal got me from not even in the game to pass eight other people into the ninth position like that the discovery call the better proposal got me to position number i was in the conversation all right and as long as you're getting up to bat and you're swinging and you're chipping balls like you're gonna knock a few out of the park and that's what's critical but if you write bad proposals you're not even in the conversation you're not even being considered right it's somebody else being considered at the top uh and and you know you're never gonna win that way okay time your proposals better so i just told you don't send a proposal if you haven't already discussed price that goes into timing never send a proposal before a discovery call so i'll give you uh another real world scenario this just happened somebody from my inner circle brought me a project and it was open to the public and basically what they do is they create an rfp or a request for proposal and they put this out to the public this is usually bigger companies bigger projects and a lot of people can bid on them and a lot of times by the way if you're getting government funding for example they have to get multiple bids it's part of their the funding that they get says you have to get at least x number of bids and so they'll create an rfp they'll put this out and a lot of people will just read the rfp create a proposal boom fire it in and what i have always said is i will never send a proposal if i haven't talked to a human being um it's you've got to do that discovery process you've got to have that touch point you've got to get into the nitty gritty number one to make sure that the rfp is accurate right it's not always accurate because the people making the rfp aren't experts at this stuff so you've got to get in there and you've got to have a discussion with somebody then you can send a proposal and i guarantee i guarantee it's just like the scenario i told you again if 50 people submit proposals but you and three other people actually got on a discovery call with them first most likely the three people that did the discovery call are gonna get mad preference like theirs are gonna be scrutinized a lot more and probably chosen out of those three because you've built a relationship you've built some know like trust with the people and with the client with the prospect and um that you're in the top of mind right so when they get your proposal they already met you they already like you they already trust you now they're more likely to prioritize your proposal so never send a proposal if you haven't discussed price never send a proposal if you haven't talked to a human being about the project preferably like i mentioned in my last lesson a decision maker all right so time your proposals better number five create a detailed statement of work i just talked about this as part of my proposal process i create a detailed statement of work in the inner circle i show you exactly what an sow is supposed to look like um and exactly how much detail we go into in terms of listing every single deliverable how we categorize them how we explain them on and on and on a lot of people do not do this um two reasons two reasons big reasons you need to do this number one it's part of the contract the client needs to know exactly what they're paying for and they need to know exactly what they're not paying for that protects you just as much as it protects them so that when you get 75 of the way into a project and the client says well where's this and you're like well you didn't pay for that right you don't say it like that but you can show them the sow and say it's not here we never talked about that we never promised that thing because clients well oh and it's not like they're lying it's not like they're trying to sneak one over on you like they legitimately thought that they asked for this thing that they never asked for and now they're expecting you to deliver it but you can be like well would you never ask for that thing right i have the sow right here it's not in the sow so we can add it 100 but it's not in the sow it's it's out of scope so the sow protects you it also protects the client it impresses the client because and and let's just add a third thing here's the third thing they get to see everything that goes into an actual project because in their mind what are they thinking web design web design can't be that hard it's just web design right oh when they see the 400 deliverables that they need it kind of changes the story a bit right it's hey a little more complicated than i thought there's a little bit more that goes into this stuff than i thought it's not typically not 400 deliverables but you get the point right when they see a laundry list of deliverables it clicks in their mind oh oh oh there's stuff on here i don't even know what that is and a lot most of the time they won't even ask if they do ask you can explain it whatever but they need to see everything that's going into their project and then the price starts to make a lot more sense okay all right anyway create a detailed statement of work number six have clients sign a master service agreement this is a contract but it's called a master service agreement or msa and this outlines all of the like you know it's the fine print basically it's how much they're gonna pay when they're gonna pay it when are the you know what happens if they don't pay what happens if they don't uh review your work what happens if they don't give you approvals on time what happens if they disappear for six months what happens if yada yada yada yada yada all the little scenarios we have contract language that governs all of that if you're not having them sign an msa you are leaving yourself hung out to dry and you're gonna get screwed time and time again so msa make it happen number seven start charging for discovery not the little discovery calls we talked about a minute ago but the the real discovery process that you if you have a legitimate business you're trying to get legitimate results well bottom line is there's a lot to learn about the company you're doing work for there's a lot to learn about their industry there's a lot to learn about how people behave in their industry there's a lot to learn about keyword research and how people are searching online for these products and services there's um a lot to learn about how you position their products best a lot to learn about what their competition is doing well and not doing well if you're not doing discovery it's gonna like i would be surprised if you're getting good results number one um but number two if you're not doing discovery you're just doing your client a disservice because there's a lot of things your client is good at in the offline world but not good at in the online world and the more discovery you can do for them and the nuggets that you can uncover the more value you're able to inject into their business both in the digital world and in the offline world in other areas of their business and when businesses work with my agency they're telling me all the time like wow we hired you to do a new website and some marketing and like you've helped us revamp our entire sales process the way we approach sales um you know you've helped us refine the products like you've given us ideas for new products and i found that stuff in discovery right um so they get a lot of extra value but if you're not doing discovery then they don't get that value and it's a thing that they will gladly pay for um they don't a lot of people don't know that they need to pay for it up front but when you explain what it is it's like dude i'm on your team like i i am an investigator like i'm going out i'm going to figure out exactly what people are searching for to try to find you how they're searching what they're expecting to find when they do search i'm going to see what all your competitors are doing online i'm going to see what they're doing well i'm going to see where their uh you know weaknesses are that we can take advantage of like i'm coming at this like i am dedicated to being an uh a spy basically that's going to go in gather up all this intel bring it back to them and make their business 10 times better and they love that kind of they love feeling like they have somebody like that on their team because they don't have time to do it they know somebody should be doing it but they don't have time to do it and i take all of that intel and we bake it into their new website and sales process and marketing and all of that so it all makes sense it all ties together so that is discovery and you should be charging for discovery if you're not doing discovery right now and you're not charging for it you are at minimum giving up i would say a thousand to fifteen hundred dollars minimum but discovery can go up to five thousand six thousand ten thousand fifteen thousand depends on the size of the project the size of the company what they're trying to accomplish there's big money there that you're just not scooping up because you're not even offering it uh and a lot of times you're doing it for free which we're going to talk about in a slide later so i'm just going to keep moving number eight start charging for project management okay so there's a lot that goes into these projects especially as you start landing bigger contracts bigger projects there's more moving parts there's more things to consider which means more phone calls more emails more team members more this more that right it all adds up you can't just eat the cost and all that stuff you can't eat the cost on getting on the phone with this client three days a week for 30 minutes at a time you can't eat the cost on typing up 20 minutes at a time email after email after email yes we did this yes we're doing this do you want this do you want that you cannot eat up that time in your margin don't stop doing it charge for project management i've talked about this before um it's just like listen here's how i'll explain it to you a big take a big company i've done work for big companies before sometimes when a company gets big enough they have an internal team that handles their marketing and website and all of that they pay a project manager to manage all of that okay so if they're not big enough to have an internal team doing all this and they want you to do it they got to pay you for project management because you need a project manager right we both need project managers for this and i'm not paying for it like you're going to pay for it because it's your project okay so that's kind of how you treat it all makes sense and it makes the most sense when you start adding up your time if you're not charging for project management right now next project you do if you still don't you're not comfortable charging for it whatever next project you do track every minute you're on the phone with the client you're sending an email to the client you're texting the client you're driving to the client whatever track all that time and see how much margin you're giving up because you're doing all that stuff for free stop doing that stuff for free start charging for project management number nine start charging for copywriting and make it mandatory a lot of people are uncomfortable with this but let me tell you i did put it in quotes 99 of the time copywriting is mandatory one percent of the time it's not mandatory and i'll tell you when that one percent of the time typically is but if you've been in this game for any length of time if i took a hundred agency owners and sat them down and said what is the one thing that derails the timeline of your projects the vast majority would say content we can't get content from the clients and then i'm like okay so what happens well it sits there we bug them we do this we do that sometimes agencies end up doing it for free just to get the project out the freaking door right they're like i'll just write it right and they write it and it's done and the client gets free content and that's the worst case scenario but this is the reality like you know content copywriting the client inevitably says oh we'll handle that we know how to sell our products we know how to do [Music] so you're like okay cool and then they never give you the content and you're waiting waiting waiting you're tapping your feet uh you're tapping your finger you're like ah this is killing me and then you know you look up and you've lost six months like it's six months delayed uh based on when it was supposed to be launched and there's things that agencies do um like oh well you're about to be off the timeline you owe us this amount of you know more money or whatever there's a lot of stuff they try to do the bottom line is all of that is a disservice to the client if you are letting the client let me just say this slowly because this is the real foundation of this problem if you are letting the client write their own copy whether they deliver it on time or not you are doing them a grave disservice your client i can almost guarantee is not a copywriter okay it doesn't matter how great they are at sales they're not a copywriter there's a difference okay and if you are letting them write their own copy their website is going to be less effective it's going to be less effective at seo and it's going to be less effective at sales you need to step in and you need to say listen this is how the conversation always goes in my discussions you're not a copywriter right and you can ask them like right you didn't go to copyright school okay so copy is the most important part of a website you can have and i go back into the pretty verse ugly scenario you could have the prettiest website on earth and if it doesn't have the right copy and messaging it will get you this goose egg okay you can have the ugliest website on earth think like drudge report craigslist whatever if it's got the right copy and messaging it can be spectacular so hands down we know based on the way people behave and analytics and all this other stuff that copywriting is the most if you're trying to get actual results not win an award for the best web design but you're trying to get actual business results then copywriting is the most important part of the website i mean show me differently right um so this isn't still the you know that's part of the conversation i have with clients so i say listen we are experts at writing copy for the web we are experts at selling services and products with words and content so if you want this website to be effective then we need to be producing the content for this website yes it's an investment yes it feels like it'd be cheaper if you did it but here's the thing number one the clients who try to do it you're already busy you're trying to run your own business the chances that you are going to carve out the appropriate amount of time to write you know decent copy and get it to us is slim to none so there's a risk here that your project actually gets massively derailed it's happened time and time again it happens all the time with other agencies we're to the point in our agency where we basically say look if you want to work with us it's you have to let us produce the content it's mandatory i tell them that right and then we're i'm explaining why it's mandatory so one we don't want your project to get derailed two we want your website to be effective and here's the problem if you write your own copy and it's not effective you're very unlikely to point the finger at yourself when the results don't start rolling in you know who you're going to point the finger at you're going to point the finger at me because i sold you all this stuff and you're telling me it doesn't work and it's going to be hard for me to point the finger back at you and be like but you wrote the copy and we had the discussion about how the copy was the most important thing on the website right so that's a tough conversation to have and this is why i tell them honestly i don't want to have that conversation with you i want you to just let us write the content and the copy and then if it doesn't work you could point the finger at me all day long and we'll figure it out okay but if you write the copy we're gonna have an awkward conversation if the if the website doesn't get results so it kind of boils down to and it starts to click in their mind they're like oh yeah i can't write copy i don't have time to write copy i don't want to deal with this i just want somebody who knows how to do it to do it that's the conclusion they come to at the end of the day and here's what you've effectively done not only have you secured the timeline not only have you secured the effectiveness of the website you've added in a lot of cases three thousand six thousand nine thousand twenty thousand more dollars to the project in the form of copywriting and content everybody wins everybody wins okay number 10 stop agreeing to free work just to win a project stop agreeing to free work just to win a project and we already talked about not doing free work to move a project along but stop doing free work to win a project here's what i mean people are in these sales conversations these discovery calls right and the client side we want this and we want that and we want this and you have that conversation about price and the client's like oh i don't know and then you start talking about well we can scale the project back they're like no we gotta have this stuff we gotta have this stuff or we can't go forward and you're like man i got bills to pay i got mouse to feed i i i can't let this project slip through the crack okay okay okay and you just agree like i'll just throw it in we'll just we'll we'll make it happen are you comfortable at this price we'll make it happen stop doing that stop doing that okay you're undervaluing yourself you're letting the client off the hook um you're gonna get bogged down in projects you should not be doing you could even get upside down depending on how technical these requirements are stop doing this find clients that don't flinch fine let me say that again find clients that don't flinch be okay with saying no if the client is expecting you because it's not fair there's an expectation i don't if you can't go to the dentist or the you can't go to the heart surgeon right and be like that's a bad thing because like insurance is paying and all that let's go to the dentist right you can't go to the dentist and be like doc i need these feelings but i just can't belie like and you just expect the doc to be like okay well i'll just throw that extra one in for free like that doesn't happen right you go to a lawyer and you're like well but i gotta get my custody back you know whatever whatever your situation is and and you're like just do it you just expect the lawyer to like throw it in for free or whatever um that's not a situation that that's this is awkward like now you're not going to believe me you're like damn kevin's got kids that you can't he can't get control of okay we're going to edit this part out all right so stop it just number 10 stop agreeing to free work just to win a freaking project number 11 standard dang it's getting hot in here it's even more awkward now all right number 11 standardize your process standardize your process you've and i did a video in fact let's not even talk about this i'm going to put a little link up there somewhere and you're going to click it and you're going to read about how the website process works okay cool number 12 standardize your pricing so this is how it works when i'm scoping out a project i have a price list inside of pandadoc pandadoc is an app that i use to do all my contracts proposals all that good stuff i'm not an affiliate for panda doc because i don't even think they have an affiliate program but nevertheless it's the best and i recommend it so inside of pandadoc i i have all my products in there with pricing and so i'm going through a website getting all the requirements how many pages is it going to be how many cpts are there going to be uh custom fields all that good stuff templates first pages first ux design wireframes yada yada and i'm adding them into panda dock and they all have set prices right attach every component that can go on a website has a set price that we have standardized and that set price has margin baked into it as we're going to talk about pricing in just a second the bottom line is it's very easy for me to scope out a project and i know it's going to be profitable and i know that it's we're good at the price that i'm giving because it's all been standardized so standardize your pricing i do help you with this inside the inner circle and i'm going to be releasing more and more trainings on standardizing pricing inside the inner circle and i'm going to give you actual price lists so if you just want to like copy my pricing and start using it you got to have confidence to sell it at that price but if you want to you can just take it and run with it number 13 price for scale here's what i want you to think about okay because this is the trap i see agencies and freelancers especially fall into hopefully i haven't been like leaning and like getting my head blocked out this entire time um you cannot price a project to feed your family only you have to price a project to feed your family feed the business with like marketing and advertising dollars like this client should help you pay to get the next client there's got to be margin in there to market and advertise there's got to be margin in there to pay for a team because you're going to die if you do all this work yourself on every single project and you absolutely cannot scale so you've got to have money baked in for you you've got to have money baked in for the uncle sam unfortunately you've got to have money baked in for your team you've got to have money baked in for marketing and advertising you got to have money baked in just for profit just to put aside and say this is nobody's money right it's the business's money but we're not even going to use it we're just going to put it over here you got to have that much margin baked in so when you're pricing for something if the price you give is only paying for you and your family and it's not paying for any of the other stuff you're not running a business my friend you're running a hobby okay or you're running like a bottom of the barrel freelancing operation and there's a problem with that too because you get sick like i got cove and i was out for two weeks okay and when i was out for two weeks if i wasn't working at that time and i i didn't have all this money saved up we didn't have a ton of margin in projects i didn't have other people filling in gaps with a freelancer i mean you could very easily just not have income during that time um so it's a that's a problem you've got to price for scale you've got to price for security you've got to price for for growth of not just you but other people that need to be involved in these projects and you also need a price by the way for just insurance like insurance on the project what happens if some of the deliverables are more technical than you expected and they take extra time they take extra money to fix you got to have that money there right and you can't go back to the client be like oh i messed up on the on the proposal there uh we're about five thousand dollars short and we're gonna need that five thousand dollars like that's not how this works your client somebody sorry you gave me a price like you told me i agree to the price you agree to the price that's the price um so you've got a price for insurance a little bit in there as well number 14 how long have we been doing this i don't i don't i don't have a timer okay that's good we'll just keep rocking and rolling number 14 expect to win the project at the price you asked for what did i say earlier like you heard me right if i walk in it's a done deal it's a wrap son like we're getting the project 99 times out of 100. um i expect to win i expect to get a yes i expect to get the money i asked for it okay and like i said i'm okay with if if it's a nickel and dimer if it's a red flagger if it's a whatever i'm okay with just being like sorry we're too busy we can't take on this project right now right um i i go in knowing my value i go in knowing that i can help this person and by the way if i can't help them i tell them i can't help them like sorry this isn't in our wheelhouse this isn't what we do uh i can hook you up with somebody or we can take on this part of the project but you're gonna need to find somebody else for this part of the project you know there's a lot of ways to skin the cat but the bottom line is you have to be authentic and you have to be confident you have to expect to win and i think that's a big problem with a lot of agencies and freelancers that are struggling to get to the bigger projects is they they've gotten to a point and think about this when you first got into the game you probably didn't expect to win the 500 project you were like ah i asked for 500 that's oh man who's going to pay me 500 but after a while you got to a point where you fully expected the 500 right and then you started asking for a thousand dollars but you were in that ballpark where you're like oh god a thousand dollars i'm getting heartburn can't ask for that and you know you kind of did it once or twice and then you eventually got a yes and then you started expecting a thousand dollars you're like i just can't do it for less than that like i know how much work goes into this i can't do it for less than a thousand and you keep working your way up and working your way up let me tell you the secret because this is what i found the first time i landed a 125 000 project it didn't nothing changed it was just my outlook where i was like look i'm gonna tell them this is what the cost is and that's the end of the story right like i'm not gonna worry about it if they say no whatever i got up to the plate i took a swing and but if they say yes that's going to be amazing right and they did say yes um but it's to the point now where like i can throw out any number 250 000 without flinching and i exp if if it's legitimately worth that much money i expect to get it and that's just it's the way you think about these numbers and these projects it bleeds into your tone and your confidence in the conversations with people and they and and you can actually defend it right because if you don't go in expecting to get what you ask for if you're like i'm gonna try but like how can you defend that number then when they when they flinch and it's time to step in and and justify the price how do you justify a price you didn't even expect to get a yes for so you have to expect a yes and if you're stuck at 5000 right now the only difference between you getting 10 000 projects and 5 000 projects is expecting to get 10 000 projects the only difference between you getting twenty thousand dollar projects and five thousand dollar projects is expecting to get twenty thousand dollar projects that's it you just expect it like it's worth twenty thousand that's what i expect to get okay and that's it that's the end of the story number 15 get creative with your payment plans so there are situations where people flinch ah but they're a great client i can tell that they they would be great to work with and sometimes this is the newer people right these aren't the seasoned people that are just trying to like you know not pay um these are these are the people who are newer in the game maybe they have some funding maybe they have just a startup and they've they're investing their own money and you say hey look to get started get you the proper website that you need and remember it's not it's not getting you a website it's like this is the central hub of your online marketing okay all roads lead to here so this is super important it's critical um that just triggered something in my mind about cost when we were talking about copywriting but i'm not going to go off on a tangent i'm going to stick to what we're talking about here um so if they flinch in the price and i really want to work with them you just have to get creative and how you structure the payment plans and how you structure the deliverables so here's an example i give a proposal i would say look if it was me this is the website that i would build this is exactly how it would look this is what it would include yada yada it's twenty thousand dollars okay flinch now you say okay obviously twenty thousand dollars not what you expected to spend right now how much are you willing to spend we get into the bracketing discussion 10 okay they can get to 10. so if they can get to 10 i just say look this stuff that i would do if it were me it doesn't have to be done it doesn't have to be done now it does have to be done but it doesn't have to be done now so what we can do is like a phase one approach so for the 10 grand here's what you're gonna get in phase one and then we're gonna get you some results with the phase one so money's gonna be rolling in what i want you to do is take some of that money set it aside and be willing to invest in phase two phase two is that next 10 grand here's what we're going to do with that and so that kind of discussion can get them to be like okay i'm comfortable with that i do want all these bells and whistles i do want all this stuff that's gonna make a difference eventually but i can't do it all now what do i need now for ten thousand dollars and then what can i do later for the next ten thousand dollars that's one way to structure it the next way is to say look all right we need to do all this stuff you can't pay me 20 000 up front how much can you get to 10 cool you're gonna pay me 10 and then the other 10 000 i did this with a client just last summer um it was a medical company and they i gave them a price of it was like 18 000 or something like that and they flinched and they were like you know they were a startup and so they weren't like this big company with all this money um and you know they're putting a lot of money into the this you know very very technical system that they're creating like gobs of money it's for surgery um and so you know and the website's not like absolutely mission critical for them right now um so when i threw out 18 grand or whatever it was they flinched but it's not like i didn't i didn't lose them right i still got the project and i made more than 18 grand and here's how we did it so i basically said okay what what can we do up front like what could we get on the front end and then we'll figure out the back end and it came down to like well we can get you six right now like just up front we can get you six and then what we'll do is we'll take the other 18 i was like fine let's take the other 18 the other um you know 12 and let's spread that out over the next 12 months you just pay me a thousand dollars a month for the next 12 months that'll take care of the second half now i'm taking a risk on that so they need to actually pay more than a thousand dollars right they don't get the same price i'm taking a risk that hey what if y'all guys up and disappear on me i'm out a lot of my money that i was supposed to get so we add a little percentage um to the total and then we break it out into 12 payments so i'm making a little bit more than i would have made otherwise but they're still getting all the deliverables they need and i'm actually getting recurring revenue out of it as well so i know every month i'm gonna get this next payment and so it all works out so i didn't you know you throw at a number just because they flinch even if they legitimately can't do it doesn't mean you lose the project you got to get creative with how you structure the payment plans all right number 16 stop discounting stop discounting the the worst thing in the world is for you to discount so there are going to be lots of times where you throw out numbers and they flinch and what agencies and freelancers who are doing it wrong i say wrong but like it's legitimately wrong you're you're undercutting yourself is they go immediately to all right well we can i can work with you at this price and you're just chopping off numbers you're not chopping off deliverables you're not getting anything else in return for lowering the price and like i said you've got to expect to get that now there's sometimes where i've lowered the price but not the deliverables but i did it for something else okay so we actually put in the contract i need three referrals i need a um a testimonial a written testimonial and i want a video testimonial from you right i'm going to show up with a camera and light so we're going to stick it in your face and you're going to give us a great testimonial if you like the work that we did because i'm if i knock you know 2500 500 off a project and we're not dropping the deliverables down because i like you and i want to work with you and i want to get your results but i still need to make up that five grand right so we're gonna make it up and you're gonna give me referrals you're gonna give me video testimonial you're gonna give me a public testimonial on on google or what have you there's a lot of things that you there's a lot of ways that a client can pay you can do a bartering situation right hey you doing a flooring company hey buddy i need new floors what can we do here right so if they're not wanting to pay cash they can pay in other ways so stop discounting get something for the for if the if the money goes down either the deliverables go down or you get something else in return okay stop just flat out discounting for people 17 stop doing all the work okay you've got to start building a team you've got to start start removing yourself from more and more responsibilities because as you start to grow the business the business actually needs you in more of a leadership role in order for everything to work out well and if you're stuck in a um a do all the work role you're not going to be you're going to be foregoing the leadership role and a lot of things are going to slip through the cracks it's not going to scale it's not going to be efficient clients are going to be unhappy and on and on and on so you've got to stop doing all the work you've got to start removing yourself and you've got to start putting other people in the right seats on the bus that's all i'm going to say about that number eight oh by the way um there was a time this is a really important lesson there was a time where i was rocking and rolling had landed a few projects good money but i was only pricing to feed myself and my family i wasn't pricing for scale and three other projects came along and they were they were good at the time now they're small to me now but at the time they were good projects because at the time i was doing like 3 500 websites and these were like 10 10 000 websites and i literally was like i i i don't have time to write the proposals and i don't i can't even take them off if they said yes i don't know what i would do um and when i say 10 grand that was pricing for me that wasn't pricing for anybody else that wasn't pricing for scale so basically by saying yes to these other projects it was all gonna fall on me and i didn't have the margin in any of the projects to be able to hire people so you you can see where this is going right i had to just be like i just let him go right i just i can't do it i physically can't do it when you price for scale which one was it 16 uh how far back do we yeah there you go when you price for scale you can stop doing all the work if you don't price for scale you'll never stop doing all the work so those two go hand in hand they have to work together and you you just have to do it because there's going to be times where like i said you have to turn down work because you can't afford to put somebody else on the bus with you all right number 18 get a simple project management tool and use it i use basecamp for my project management um everything runs through basecamp it's really important to do this for having a history of all conversations you know those things that clients like to always say oh well i thought you were going to do this and it's like no we talked about that here's the thread right here where we talked about it but if you're digging through emails and worse you've got people on your team and it's in their email and like all of that is a nightmare get a simple project management tool get everybody on the same page get a crystal clear track record of all communications all assets that the client has uploaded everything in one place it's gonna make your life a lot easier it's gonna legitimize and level up your agency make your website management plan mandatory okay and again it's in quotes because there are times where it's not mandatory but it's very very very very very few times i want control over the clients web hosting and management and here's why and i have this conversation with the client number one sir um we are responsible for the performance of your website it needs to be fast mobile responsive free of errors free of issues free of security blah blah blah blah all of that just baseline but we're also you know responsible for results like in terms of getting you sales and money and bottom line and all of that and an effective website is a living breathing thing it is not a oh we're just going to design it perfectly from the jump and it never has to be tweaked it never has to be adjusted there's never an a b test that has to be run on it uh we never have to tweak the copy we never have to change up the offer we never have to do anything related to actual business with the website no that's not how it works we have to do all those things so we need it to be in order to do the proper maintenance and management we need to be on our server in our control we can make sure it performs really well we can make sure the daily backups are there we can make sure everything is running smoothly but we can also continue to be a partner with you and this is all sold ahead of time like this is before they sign a contract and all of that they know that this is the game plan that when they hire us it's not we're not just going to build the website launch it into the wild i'm like all right good luck with that um we are here as partners to turn this into a atm machine for their business like we're gonna do we're gonna put the analytics on it we're gonna put the heat maps the scroll tracking we're gonna make sure that we are monitoring how people are using the website making the tweaks and adjustments designing a marketing layer to put on top of it an advertising layer to put on top of that got the seo going and this is all constant ongoing stuff so at the base minimum we have the maintenance what people call maintenance i never use the word maintenance i would and i never use the word hosting look we need to manage the website that includes maintenance it includes hosting but there's more that goes into it than just maintenance and hosting okay they have to know that there's also all the licenses of the stuff that you pay for right and so if your agency is using agency licensed things well who's going to cover those costs right that gets baked into that fee and i explained to them look you don't want to have to buy all these licenses for these things that we use right we have all the licenses already they're agency licenses we're allowed to use them on your website um and we're not going to charge you up front for all those things it's just baked into our monthly management fee and this is recurring revenue for your agency but this keeps you in the conversation for months to come so that when they're ready let's say that they you did phase one and you launched it and now they're just doing the basic monthly management plan three months later down the line you come in say hey how's everything going are you guys ready for us to you know reveal some of the analytics based on what uh you know we've been watching how people use your website and we think that there's some updates and changes and additions that can be made to make your business even better do you want to have that conversation yes we want to have that conversation cool we're still in the conversation because they know we're the ones managing their website right and so they want to be talking to us they want to hear what's next so it helps you get recurring revenue yes it makes sure that all of the technical stuff is taken care of yes but most importantly it keeps you in the loop in the discussion so that you can do future work for that client and continue helping them and growing their business i'm losing my voice so we're going to have to wrap this up number 20 show clients how to refer you so let's read it again show clients how to refer you what that means is don't ask clients to refer you don't tell clients to refer you hey you know refer me every once in a while don't say hey will you please give me a referral show them how to refer you okay tell them what to look out for here's an example i tell my clients look you know a lot of other business owners um do you ever go to meet and greets do you ever do networking whatever right most business owners do that kind of stuff um and the best business owners usually do it naturally because that's how they got a lot of their business in the first place is networking and people and relationships so i just tell them look there's going to be times where somebody's talking about their website there's somebody's talking about facebook somebody's talking about this or that related to marketing or web or digital or what have you when that happens i would love for you to bring us up i would love for you to tell them what we have done for you and you're just priming the pump right there you're showing them how to refer you so that the next time they're in a conversation and the person's like yeah you know we tried the facebook thing oh boom that primer just clicked right and now it blows up because they're like listen i got an agency for you ditch whoever else is not doing this right for you i got the guy for you uh and or i got the team for you so you're showing them here's the situation you're going to find yourself in and there's going to be an opportunity to refer us and i would i would really appreciate here's what that situation looks like i would really appreciate if you would bring us up at that time and connect us with that person you need to prime their brain so that it clicks when it happens because they're having those conversations anyway but it's just they're forgetting they're forgetting that they have somebody that they can refer to you right but if you prime them if you show them how to refer you then they're going to do it more more more often than not all right so oh look that's it okay cool so we're at the end let me let me flip back to camera here can can i no i can't all right it's just it's just up there all right so um so that's it that's your 20 tips i'm losing my voice so i got to go i will remind you if you want in depth on this stuff like i just skimmed the surface kind of rapid fire i know i talk a lot but i think it's valuable but if you really want the in-depth stuff on all the stuff that we just covered that's the kind of content that's going to be in my inner circle links to that are all below um and like i said people are getting fantastic results we're over 550 members now which is absolutely crazy um and we're going strong all right and we're on the march to a thousand and i guarantee you i expect to get to a thousand right so that's the attitude you gotta have i expect to get to a thousand we're just getting warmed up all right i'm out drop comments thumbs up subscribe all that good stuff peace

Channel: Digital Ambition

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Id: qDahWjbJ_uc

Length: 64min 23sec (3863 seconds)

Published: Thu Oct 21 2021