Sales Call Review & Analysis

OK, let's get into it then. Are you ready to go? Yeah, sure. OK, so this is how we're going to do this, I think you're going to tell us a little bit of context and then I'm going to ask you a few questions and then we're going to go to the tape to the part where I hope you can direct me to, OK, so having your audio clip ready to go and then we'll listen in and we'll listen and learn. OK, so give us the context, ok? OK so basically, I didn't have any client calls lately, so I decided to have a role play with my peak performance partner, Maria. Perfect So we managed to do 3 3 short clips. Two of these was Maria. Maria was the client and one of these I was the client. I focused mine on outbound because pretty much nothing is coming in so far. So I'm trying to optimize the way things happen if I'm the one reaching out to the clients. Mm-hmm So when somebody friends me on LinkedIn or follow my Instagram page, I try to reach back and say, hey, thank you for this. If you have if you ever need any help, let me know. So I find this to be the most challenging thing, and this is why I focus the role play there, because lots of times the why did you come to me? Point cannot be accessed if I'm the one reaching out, so I try to get better of that. OK, and what's your mindset when you do these prospecting thing? First of all, I want to say how you phrased that is like, hey, Thanks for following my page or connecting with me. Is there something I can do? Please reach out. I love that because it's not too salesy, but it acknowledges them right away, right? And sometimes, believe it or not, that's just enough of a trigger for them to take the next step. Yeah, so that's pretty much my mindset. I tried to be open, I don't focus on that and pretty much is I try to forget about the engagement like, oh, I got a new follower. Probably give me some money. That's that's not working for me. I don't want to raise my hopes too much on this one. Why don't we listen in on one of your calls? Yep, where you are trying to get a new prospect and this is all cold outreach, right? It's an outbound call, and it's an inbound call for someone who said, OK, yes, we possibly need your help. Oh, after they've responded, yeah, Oh OK, that's fantastic. So it's warm lead, then. Yeah, OK, because once they reach out and they say, hey, it went from cold to warm. OK, fantastic. OK, so I'll play that clip. Yeah do I share my screen or will it go? Go ahead. Share your screen. I need to find how to do this share. See the green thing. Yep Can you see my screen? Yeah oh, there's video, too. I think we just OK, it's a little low in the volume. Can you turn it up? It's maximum. So is the volume coming from my speakers shit? No, no. Where are you playing it from? Youtube? Yes. And are you sharing the YouTube screen? Yes no. That's it's coming from the application. The Safari browser. It's for its maximum volume then. How about on your system, on your computer? Is it maximum volume in your system? Yes Yes. OK all right. We'll just have to listen very carefully then. So anyone else. So The obsolete. We are. Some changes we feel like. OK getting we feel like we got something wrong. I think we were thinking of changing our menus and everything, so probably this is something you could do for us. I could definitely let me. So is the fact that you're not getting the traction you wanted, the reason you stop working with the other designer you had. No, he's actually he wasn't delivering very fast. And you know, what are you trying to do things right? You could. You could not keep working with people who are unreliable. OK, that's fair. So you've seen some of my work on Instagram and you liked them. Thank you very for about this. So then to create this sort of work, there's a method that I follow, which is pretty much I take some time and try to understand my clients properly and try to get in your head. So and eliminate the guesswork between what we're talking about and what you actually have in your mind. So this way we take we measure twice and cut once in a sense. We we try to pinpoint what your actual business needs are. And this way we can prescribe solutions that will actually make some sort of difference in your baseline. How does this sound? I'm not really sure it sounds good. I won't tell you no. But would that be for a new business more than a business like ours? I think what we need is probably a social media strategy or I mean, we're going to on a new menu. I think this is going to help. It would be nice to bring it out to the world and maybe a flyer or something like that. Mm-hmm I see the thing is if I pretend to be sure what your issues are and what your best, the best idea to solve this issue is, I would be lying like it. Really, it's really important to take some time to understand everything and get into this. So I understand time is a concern. But the work you've seen in these projects, and this is something that I do really, really well with my clients right now. It's improved. My my workflow is that once we do this, actual production of work takes 10 to 20 times less time to create like if we have a strategy and we have your customer profiles, we have the branding set. Creating a new menu is almost instant, creating new posters almost because there's a baseline we can work with. So in the scale of things, this is actually going to be quite faster. So you would you still be up for at least trying something like this out? It sounds good. I am not going to tell you no. However, because you said you're going to invest time and you're going to go in depth and all these things. I would think that this is quite a costly procedure, isn't it? Is it OK to ask how much you charge for all of this? So basically. This sort of discovery and strategy would be in. From what I understand that your business needs would be around 3,000 pounds, ok? And pretty much, then we can prescribe any more work for production, for example, menus, stuff like this or a website, perhaps or I don't know whatever we find will find a way to tackle this by itself, but it's going to be much, much easier when this happens. However, with that price before just this procedure and say menus that we definitely need be extra in that case, would that be included? So well, yes, so pretty much what you'll get out of this is a branding statement, a few couple of customer profiles. We will try to give you some insights on what your customers' challenges are and how this brand is going to solve them. So you get all of these, you get some valuable insights. And what the competition does, what business is in all the verticals do and how these good practices can help us tackle solutions. And there's a lot of things that we actually understand about how your clients feel and how you can speak to them in a voice they can understand. And yes, if we find out that you're the solution to your problems is a menu, we'll have to we'll have to give you an estimate for a menu after we do this. So it's not. So say I do. And then the menu is definitely going to need, because we're going to change what we are in the menus. So I definitely need one. Can you tell me a prize for that? Probably if I do, you'll have to brace yourself, because if I do it now, I'll give you a really high price. If if I tell you no, now I'll give you really high price to make sure I just for anything that might be involved with this. Perhaps the solution we're going to be happy with is if I do give you a number now would give you 1,000 pounds if we do this. Perhaps we find that the expectations are lower or something like this, and it could be lower than this. If if you ask me right now, I give you really high number. I understand what you're saying, but that sounds like a very expensive solution for me. However, what I said is true. I don't have someone else in mind. And I did really like your work. What you're saying, it's very sound, really good. However, I cannot pay this amount, and I would be glad to have the strategy done at some point. But right now, I don't have this money and I do need a menu. Is there anything you can do for me? What? what sort of number did you have in mind? Oh, I thought something about two 300 pounds the top. OK 200 to 300 out. I'm pretty sure that I kind of do. If if there was some wiggle room that we could, we could try to find some solution. But this is just like 10 times lower. I really, really cannot kind of put the time to do with this sort of budget. What I can do is I can take some time and find you someone if I know people in my network have these sort of rates, sorry, you said before that you had to charge me 1,000. But this is because we wouldn't go through the strategy. What if we just did them any more? No, no, no, no. That's not what I said. No, no, no. Don't get me wrong. So I'm just saying if you ask me for a number right now, I'm giving you a high estimate after we do after we do strategy, I can give you a more sensible range that we can work with if we find give me that range. Is there any way you can give me that range now? And if it's something I can pay, we do the menu first because this is something it needs to happen soon. And then we do the strategy. If the less I know about your business from, the more money I will give you as an estimate. So I have to assume a lot of things to give you a number. I have to assume the people involved. I have to assume the time constraints. I have to assume the printing costs. I have to assume different, different things and I don't. What I want to avoid is give you a low number and then I find out that I cannot work with this. No overcharge you. So if you ask me if you're asking me for a number right now, that's the number I give you. I see what you're saying sounds good. I don't want to be disrespectful of your work, for sure, but I can tell you for sure this is something I can pay right now, and I definitely don't mind you. However, I would be open to discuss again because, as I say, we feel like we have problems past the menu thing. If so, if you definitely cannot do it, can you recommend someone else? And maybe we could get back to you about the strategy saying a little later. I can definitely check in my network if there's someone that can take a project like this in the budget you're giving and I can have you, I can have you, I can email you about this in three or four days. Is this good? Yes and even if sooner if you can, that would be great because I don't want to. Whoever I hire, I don't want to push them so much. I really I am intrigued to ask you, though, if you say we, our problem is we do need a social media strategy. We know that we have a very basic website with just a small coffee place. And yeah, we reach people through social media usually. So if you come to us and you do do that strategy session and you do a social media strategy, can you give me a number now for that to see that when I have this money, I can come back to you the. Biggest challenge is the same. I can give you really high numbers, and these numbers might scare you. And the sooner you ask me for them, the higher the number, you'll get that. So if I can give you a number, I can give you 20,000. Is this something you can work with? I don't think so from the numbers at time, so what I'm saying is the more assumptions I have to make, the less flexible I can be with how much I charge. So the more I know, the more accurate and and wider. The range of estimates I can give you. Great right. So you say that I can pay for the strategy, just the strategy, and then we can talk about everything else. Yes, pretty much. You repeat the price you gave for the strategy, please. 3000 pounds and that will be. Is that you're working alone? Do you need access to our economic files? So this is pretty much this. This is a process that I. I do two workshops with you. They're usually a week apart. I can. I can speed this up. If if that's a challenge, we can do them in some consecutive days or even if the time is really, really tight, I can do them all in the same day. There are about eight hours of your time combined. And pretty much, yeah, if the number I'm giving you is based on your size. If, if. If, honestly, if you were bigger business, I would have other people with me as well, and we do. And we would have experts, researchers to help with mapping the market, and that would be a high, higher number. You said your local coffee shop, so this is the number I'm giving you, right? Let's talk. OK all right. Stop your screen sharing. Wow, OK. Oh my god, I'm writing on so many. No, no, no. There's like I was like, oh, I could help this. And then you said something. I was like, oh, why did he say that? And then why did he say this? Oh my god, where are you going with this? OK, I want this to be the maximum learning opportunity for this entire group. OK this is a helicopter hovers over my head. I'm going to ask the group first to take a moment to think about something that he can improve on. Not so much what he did wrong, but what can? How can he improve? Give one piece of actionable tactical advice. Because I already made a long laundry list of things he can do to improve his sales call. If this were actually a client, I think they would have hung up on you like a third into the call. Going to be honest, if I was a client, I'm like, I'm done, I don't know what we're doing. Just going to hang up. There's lots of things that I can tell you that if you implement one or two of the things I'm going to tell you in a little bit, I think you would change your game. OK, so this will be a very productive call for at least one person, hopefully more. All right. Does somebody here? Are they ready to go? Yeah OK. Who's who said that it's jordan? Let's do it. Well, it's one thing he could do better and dig deeper into the business to value price because what I give a price but he doesn't know very well is the client. So they say the three southern pound, but she does not know if the client can afford that of of, if you can get a better price. Yeah OK. OK fantastic. Who's next? So you'd be happy? Yes well, I'm going to go first. Yes, OK. Eye contact and smiling. He looked a little uncomfortable. I felt I just put myself in the client's shoes and I felt a little uncomfortable. Like I felt like I was being bullied a little bit. So just maybe smiling and eye contact. But overall, I thought it was all right. OK I was going to say, I'm not sure what's in the background, but it looks like you're in your bedroom and it's like, it's like, yeah, so there's try to have something in the background. The other thing was there's a point where you were getting aggressive with her, and I'm like, I'm not sure if that's like you're going to get into an adversarial position, and that's not necessarily the place you want to be. Yes fantastic. OK and this is pretty simple thing, but what I found that helps me is I still do it when you pause and you say and you and you hesitate and it, it's like Matthew said in the beginning being more confident what you're saying. But actually the UMS and the US can be a bit of a memory tick. You're trying to recall what you're trying to say. So if you even talk to yourself in a mirror or just talk to your own camera and record yourself and listen back, you'll start being more aware of how often it comes out of your mouth and it'll start to decrease and you'll be more confident in the words that you're saying it just restrains your brain. Mm-hmm And Dimitri, also, I also felt like did a lot of talking, and Maria did very little talking, so it was as if she took up 10% of the conversation and you took up 90% of it. I almost feel like you want to flip that around so that the client is giving you more and you kind of moving and kind of guiding her. Mm-hmm OK it's almost as if you did too much selling or pushing, and you almost want the client to sell themselves on your service. Mm-hmm Good OK, we'll take one more. And I'll give you my deep dive analysis and we'll talk about it knowing what your minimum level of engagement is. I think you were almost scaring her off with a high price and trying to get her to buy into strategy to make it cheaper, whereas strategy should probably be something that can open up possibilities to maybe a higher price. So maybe just knowing what the minimum level of engagement is and being confident with it and being OK with that being your expertise that you provide? Yeah, fantastic guys. Good job. Good job. Thank you, everyone. I'll give you my breakdown. So do you me, are you ready? Bullet points, which I will share with you guys after the call. But right now, I just want to talk to you, ok? There's a couple of things that we need to. We need to warm up a little bit. We need to warm up our personality, our delivery. What Tina was saying about smiling smile with your eyes, smile with your mouth so that the words that come out of your mouth sound a lot friendlier because I'm trying to imagine what it's going to be to work with you in the future. That's what a prospective client is going to do. You need to realize this is a warm lead. This is not through inbound marketing where you have a lot of leverage right now. You have very little leverage. So we have to understand I'm going to use a fishing metaphor here. If you have a little nibble, you can't just yank on that thing and try to bring that thing into the boat. You just cannot. This person gave you the time of day through a cold outreach and responded, oh, I'm kind of interested, let's talk. So they're the very beginning of a journey with you. So I wouldn't go and hard sell and a lot of what you were doing was selling really hard to this person, to Maria. And if she were real client, I think she would have ghosted on you really fast. And for what a lot of people have already said. So let me go over some of the bullet points here, ok? One thing is in the very beginning, she's like, I'm interested in your work. I need this thing done. What do you think? So you have a Yes already. And when you have a Yes from the client, you just take it, you just take it, you get into the next phase. Don't undersell something that's already been sold, right? She's like, I need a menu design, I need to know what the nature of the work was like. I need a menu design and she already saw something in your work. So you guys don't go in a script in your mind like I always have to sell and I always have to prove myself. I always have to push back on the client. If the client says yes, you just say how much? Let's talk. Let's build a relationship and it's OK. And one thing I wrote in here, my notes, at least, is we're all at different stages and I'm realizing you guys have been watching a lot of role plays that I do, so I'm selling at a 20 year stage. And if you're out on the street, you're one. Don't try to sell like you're 20, you're going to have to scaffold towards that. So for the first 10 years of my life, all I did was let's talk about the budget, what you want to do, and I will figure out if I can do this or not. OK, so if she's calling you for a menu design, let's just get some money in the door. Let's let's put food on the table and let's just score this as a win a win for a cold outreach, which is not that often, right? So I would celebrate that. So definitely guys do not go past the sale. So at that point in the conversation, Maria says, I'm interested. You're like, fantastic. Tell me more about your project. What kind of problem are you trying to solve with this? Why do you think you need this? So I'm going to tell you right now. Throw away the entire script that you've been following. I only want you to do three things from this point forward until you get some work in the door. Ok? you follow the Jonathan stark technique, which is why this? Why now and then? Why me? Literally, why do this? Why now? Me? Marisa, I really need a menu design. You're like, fantastic. Why do you need to do this? Because we need to do x, y and z. So what you're entering into more is a consultative role because you're going to ask more questions. Marwan was saying, you talked too much. Whoever asked more questions in a conversation is in control. The conversation? Who was in control of that conversation? Everybody well, muscle memory, because she hardly said anything. OK if you listen to a sales call that I do, you will find that the client is talking most of the time. And all I'm doing is asking questions. So you ask why this? It says, I'm curious, I'm open and it makes her stop and think. So What you're trying to do ultimately is disrupt her pattern, but not through selling, not through pitching. Because, hey, we're not that smooth. We don't have that much experience behind us. So this is not the time to do that. OK, so why this? Then it's like, why do you need to do this now? Could this wait? Are there other things that are more urgent? They just have no. I really need to do this. It's got to get done in two weeks and I need two. Oh, so this is important. You figure it out. And it's urgent, and I'm curious, I'm sure you have a lot of people you could choose. Why would you want to work with me? And you could add in the little caveat, I'm going to be a little bit pricier than most people you talk to now at your price point, you're not. So I want you to stop even saying that my price is going to shock you and then you say 1,000 or 3,000. Now, I think in my mind, that was a low price, and now I'm going to I'm going to bid you even lower. When you throw out a high price, it needs to be a high price, but we're not ready for that today. OK, so if you're, I'm probably going to be the most expensive person you talk to. My minimum level engagement is $10,000. Is that something that you can afford? Then as like, oh, OK, I understand now, but at 3,000 and 1,000 pounds, that's nothing. So let's not talk about being expensive. Ok? because you can scare away a client for saying something like that and being too low, it's like, what is this guy thinking? I was prepared to pay him 6,000 and he's saying, this is expensive at one. Holy cow, I'm going to offer him 400. Most likely, they won't even do that because they think I'm talking to the wrong person. All right. You need to read the client a little bit. If the client's getting agitated, you need to readjust your reacting to them. You're kind of matching and mirroring their energy. And I felt like you were on a very different path. You were on a script and you need to get off that script. Realize not every client needs strategy. Some people just need work to get done. Take that work. I think Matthew said, hey, some clients just want execution when clients come to us to make a commercial. We're just designed an execution at that point. We're not going to try rewrite the script and undersell what was sold to their client. One question that you might ask is once you find out like, why she wants to do this, you can say how will you measure success? How will you base the decision on who to work with? I'd like to know now, oftentimes if you're sending out a cold email like this or a cold email in LinkedIn and they reach out to you, you're not talking to too many people. Not at this level. They're not shopping around too many places. You just happen to appear on their radar at the exact right time with the right portfolio, with a problem that they have. OK and I want you to make one small change to the words, and sometimes I use this on. I'm a little sloppy myself, but I want to have you make this course correction here. Don't say you might have different issues. Issues sounds like I have a problem. Like have mental problems. I have anxiety. I have all kinds of problems, say challenges. What kind of problems are we trying to solve together? But the word challenges is a lot more easy to deal with and not judging. Then then issues. Nobody has a positive issue. But you can have a positive challenge. OK, so what we want to do is as soon as somebody is like, I'm ready to buy, let's have the money conversation right now. All right. OK, so what you can say is she's like, I need a menu design and say, OK, look, I don't know exactly what it involves, but my minimal level to do a brochure design is this. And you could price bracket between six to 2000 out. Is that something that you can afford? Oh, yeah, that's right, within my lane. Perfect So when they say yes, then you know, they're at the higher end. If they show you hesitation that the lower end of that spectrum and you just have that conversation and just say, like, once we get into the details, I can give you more accurate quote. Is this urgent? Yes, it is fantastic. So here's my next point, which is be really be really responsive when she asks you for a referral. The answer is Yes. Don't beat around the bush. The answer is Yes. I'll get you something by end of day. Is that to work 3, 2 four days? It's like you're not really trying to help her. OK, if you want credit for the referral, do that in earnest, like do that with speed and be responsive that way they're going to remember like andimi really came through. He readily gave up referrals for this, even though it costs him money. I like this guy. I trust this guy. OK I already said it, but more questions than answers. That's a consultant. That is an expert. You're diagnosing longer than you're prescribing, next point is show me, don't tell me you describe the strategy part or all these kinds of things, and it's just like, it's like Black magic to them. It's like, what are you talking about? But if I ask you questions about the challenges you're trying to solve, why customers don't buy, what kind of friction points you're trying to overcome, then I know you're a much smarter designer. So the way you do this is you show me in the conversation, you don't tell me about it. And I already heard that time was precious to her. So when you said, oh, discovery or strategy will take a week and two meetings and 8 hours, I'm thinking, Oh my god, this is so overkill for a menu right now. So I hate to say this, do you, me? And this is good practice for you, and I hope you take this. It's pressure, right? Right I hope this would be a call on 10 things you should not do on a sales call on a cold lead because you literally just went down the list and hit every single one. OK, all right. So we're going to improve. OK, I'm so glad that you and Maria get to practice. I want you to practice differently. I want you to try it again and see what happens. Ok? you'll see the energy change. And if Maria's on is in today, she's on, she's out. Maria, can I bring you online? OK, Hello. Turn on your mic, Maria, Hello. How did you feel doing that role? Play with him? Can you remember how that went down, like you're feeling as a potential client? Yes I mean, later on, I tell him my feedback. What I told him is when he was talking about strategy, even if I was interested, I didn't know what I was getting. I couldn't understand. Do I get a leaflet? Do I get theory? Do I get something hunt? That's why I was pushing him. So what is this thing? I saw how I felt then. How I feel now is I see the hesitation now. And I didn't realize that he overtook the conversation when that I was listening to him and I tried to be respectful of his work and his process. But on the other hand, I try to make sure I still have what I need in the end. Perfect OK, here's what I'm going to say to you guys that are practicing. This is lovely. I just encourage you doing this as often as you guys can at least once a week when you're doing your peak performance call. Here's what I want you to do. A lot of designers are kind to other designers when they play the client role. They almost want to give them the job because we feel bad, like we never want to be our clients, right? But you're doing him and yourself a disservice if you do this. I want you to be the client. Like, wait, wait, I just wanted a menu. Now you talking about you're confusing me right now. Just be that person. Ok? it's a natural tendency for us to do this because we never want to be those people. It's like if you have a bad relationship with your parent, I never want to be like that. I never want to be like, mom. And then you overcorrect, right? But in this case, they need you to be mom or dad and just be that tough person. OK you you've had conversations, really tough clients before. I need you to be that, not to be a jerk about it, but just to be a real person, so that when dimi gets into the renal arena and he does battle, it's like, oh, I'm familiar with this. These same punches are being thrown at me, not like somebody who's going to just take me there. OK all right, and you guys may want to try the Dan Sullivan question, which I think everybody in this group is aware of, and it goes something like this. Three years from now, if you and I are having this conversation, what has happened? What, what has happened? If you're looking back on this to make you both happy personally and professionally? Nice help, you need to realize something small businesses don't understand strategy, they barely understand local design. They don't even understand branding, so you're going too many steps ahead of them. That's why I say to you all. Everybody's at different stages. Don't try to oversell something. And people just understand that when you're getting to those conversations with $100 million company, they might understand the strategy. 100 million dollars, they might understand it. So when we talk about mom and pop shop that needs a menu down the street that they're going to be doing less than 3 million out. They have no freaking clue. They're just busy running their business. They might have inherited the business. They might have grown up in the family business. So understanding any of this stuff, this is just a bizarre concept to them. They're not as sophisticated, so don't go there because you're going to lose the sale. Somebody wanted to say something. I heard somebody say it. No I don't think so. OK, fantastic. Whew, that was a good one. All right. So I have my notes from that now. Who? who's going to go next? Let's do it. I'll go. OK all right. Yeah OK, go ahead and share your audio thing and don't share yet, I mean, we'll get ready for that. Give us the context and then play your audio clip. OK, so I had to. One was an audio. One was through Instagram messages DM. The audio clip came in through a referral from a friend, and she essentially just told me that she needs a logo. Can you help her out? I'm like, sure, and they connected us through LinkedIn. I had introduced myself and I set up a time for the call. And that was pretty much all the contacts I knew at that point. OK I did ask. Sorry, I did ask my friend beforehand. Can you tell me a little bit more about her. So I can kind of just see how I can be the most helpful? I did look her up a little bit just to see what she's up to on LinkedIn itself. And it seems like she's a busy bee. She has a lot of things going on. She wants to do like a lot of ventures. She's an entrepreneur. The outcome of the call was, I don't know how I felt at the end of it. I think that I scared her off and I probably talked too much like I had points where this is good. And then I said too much. And I started to feel that right away. And I couldn't. I couldn't find a way to retreat back from it. And I did manage to get feedback from my friend. I haven't followed up with the girl yet. I did manage to get feedback from my friend asking her, hey, did you buy it by any chance? Talk to her and does she give you any feedback on our call? And she said something you probably should ask her, but the only thing that she told me is it's pricey. That's it. OK, fantastic. Let's get to it then. Sure, the audio. We'll do this. And then Sean, to Megan, I saw you. So you're up next. All right. OK I didn't think I'd make it because I had a client meeting, but it looks like it might be a no show, so I'll be here if someone shows up on my behalf. All right. Did you? Does he want to go first? If he has to go, I can let him go first. No, we're set up. No, you're right. OK the other thing where the kids are going, no problem. And so I was just kind of talking with her about what I wanted to do. And that was I've been real estate investing for the last 11 years to renovate and build and flip and everything you can imagine. I've done it like wholesaling extraordinarily good stereos and subject to renovations, get jobs and new bills and everything. And I told her, you know, it's not really my passion anymore. My passion is speaking up, and now I'm living on my pretty much I get a podcast and now working on real. So I'm working on kind of more of a media platform to speak and provide entertainment, new stuff like that for my social media platform, right? And so that's kind of what I know now. I started tweeting of media and I love to speak. I love to do podcast, and I'm trying to get that up and off the ground. I'm an entrepreneur, you know, and I just I was bored with real estate, so I lot of take, you know, that's awesome. And just, you're chasing what you're passionate about. So you've done a bunch of things. And now your focus is want to be a speaker, a motivational speaker or what kind of issue? Oh, sorry. Can you hear me now? Yes OK, sorry about that. Yeah so I'm just trying to understand. So you you've done a bunch of things and now you want to gear your focus towards becoming a motivational speaker. All right. It's horrible. Yes, it's motivational speaking media. Yeah, pretty much. Yeah OK. And then what are your goals? What are you looking? How can I? How can I help? OK, so basically what I want you to do is get a local OK. And I guess that's what do it? Yeah, we're a brand identity company, so we do brand identity design, local design, stationery and a bunch of other things around graphic design. Now, if you don't mind me asking, what are you? Is this something that you're starting new from scratch or is this something you already have developed? This kind of something new that I've started? OK, so handiwork means something will get us started, right? And now, is it something that is this something that you're also just is this going to be your full time gig or is this just sort of a side side passion? It is going to be my who I want to be my ultimately, ultimately, I want to see Michael typekit. OK, I'll never really walk away from military for because, you know, I just I just will, but I don't want to do real estate as my primary career, anyone to do as media respect. OK, so the reason why I ask is I do get quite a bit of calls for identity design and logo design. And you know, in most cases, we do tend to be a little higher in price. So I want to make sure that where the right fit for whoever we're working for. And typically, people that are just doing this sort of as a side passion, we don't really end up aligning because again, it ends up being too pricey for them. So that being said, is there like, have you know, what did you have what are your goals in mind? Like, why were you thinking that you needed a logo to start off with as far as know, setting up this new venture? Well, you know, the professionalism as well as, you know, for people to remember that they have to listen to me or my site, you know, I think that if I'm going to be a business, I should have some sort of order. Don't you think so? But I've been able to say Yes because of what you do, but well, it's important for you. I want to make sure that is. Is this something that you are? You know, again, everybody has a different way of setting up the way they do it. And definitely a logo is a good way to identify your business, right? And you know, from what I'm understanding. It feels like it's possibly something that's important for you to get right. Again, everybody values logo and designs differently. So it's I'm just trying to get I'm trying to gauge and understand like, what does this mean to you? Because again, people value certain things differently. And depending on what stage they're at in their business, it might be, you know, appropriate for them or not. So absolutely, you're right. Like logos, a good way for you to identify yourself or differentiate yourself from your competitors. If there are any or your public or your, it can be a personal brand. It can be a bunch of these things. So, yeah, and I mean, that being said, typically, you know, from a brand identity project, we're typically charging anywhere from 7,000 up, you know? So is that something that you're comfortable with or is that, you know, how do you feel about that? Well, would honestly, I have not tapped into any sort of pricing at all yet, so I didn't know that it was that much. But like I said, I've just started to check into everything right now. Yeah, Yeah. I know it's I know it's important for me to have it, but I definitely I don't I don't know anything about pricing. So am I the first person you've talked to you in regards to your logo design? Yeah, you are right, but here's the bigger problem. And so I was curious what the US allies are comfortable with. So yes, that's people we've done typekit. We've worked together and we do talk about it. But you suggested that with everything she's coaching me on now that you know, getting a logo is something that would be important. And she put me in touch with you. So, yeah, and you know, I'm glad, you know, I care and I have worked together. And so, you know, she's like, I said, she's a great person. You know, I would first thing I would suggest is, you know, definitely, you know, you got to make sure that you're comfortable with whatever you're doing. So definitely take a look around. You know, I do realize that we are, like I mentioned before, we are on the higher side. But for us, we typically want to ensure that whatever we do for you, making sure that we're going to get it right. You know, and I would encourage you to take a look at some of World work and just to kind of understand if this is something that you see yourself in. And we typically have a process that we go through in order to ensure that we're delivering the right stuff for you. And that's something we can talk about again, based on the fact that if you see alignment there or not. But yeah, it's something that I do encourage people to make sure that they do get comfortable in knowing what they're doing and they approach it in that sense, because sometimes you don't have the right alignment with the people you're working with. And then it can kind of be very much of a painful process. So that's always asking how important is this for you to get right, you know? Right, right? OK well, I'm glad that you called me. Said I kind of checking around and doing what I need to be prepared for. I guess it's great because then I just started doing, OK, yeah, we can end it there. Do you hear me? Yeah, I can hear you. Unmute myself, OK, fantastic. All right. OK so for expediency, because I want to try and get through as many of these calls as possible, some of your calls are quite long. I'm just going to cut to it if you guys don't mind instead of asking everybody. So I'm just going to prompt you right now to give your everybody that's listening to us a moment to write down a few thoughts in terms of what role could do a little differently in terms of how he can improve that call. OK, I'll queue in the prices, write music and everyone just write it down, I just want to give you a second to think about it, to write some things down. And let's play a game. How many of my answers do you agree with and how many of those things did you pick up during this call? I give you guys a few more seconds, and then I'll jump in. OK at the beginning of your call, it was really hard to hear her, your voice was obviously clear, so it took me a little while to get into that conversation. But perhaps it wasn't so much the quality of the audio recording. I couldn't tell what the heck you guys were talking about for a really long time. And I don't know if this is typical of one of your calls where it seems to like dance around a lot. This is why I say to you guys, like, get focused, get fast, because whenever somebody new calls you, they have a tendency just to have diarrhea of the mouth and they just start talking, oh, it's like vomit all over the place. And I don't know what to do with that. So I need to take control of the conversation pretty quickly and give it some direction. I believe what you told us was this was from a referral. And that's a very positive sign because you already have social proof. Somebody that likes you and knows this person they trust has recommended you. So this is a very warm to possibly hot lead. We just need to get into the specifics and the price. It took a really long time to get there because people just want to tell you all kinds of things. So I'm going to ask you a question. How can you phrase something to take control of the conversation so that it just doesn't wander all over the place? Because I get the feeling, I get a feeling that I may be wrong about you specifically, but probably right about how most people get into this kind of conversation. First, you're filled with excitement. You're just glad for the opportunity you're trying to figure out while they're talking how you can bring up money and figure out if this is a fit for you. So even when they're talking, you might not be 100% present because you're thinking, how do I get it there? How do I get it there? And they may or may not say things that are relevant to you. So at the very beginning, we just need to get it there. So how might you do that in a way that's not. That fits within your style of communication. I think when I was really listening to this right off the bat, she said a bunch of things and I could have I could have stopped her there and just said, hey, this seems like a lot of or I could have understood that she's somebody that likes to do a lot of things and just gotten right into it. Hey, you seem like a busy person. And from what I understand, this is what you're looking for. Is that correct? Just dive right into it and then don't even ask more questions. Just get into the minimal level of engagement and let her know the price that this is what we start at. Is this something that you're comfortable moving forward with and then have a deeper conversation on everything that she's passionate about? OK, so let's do you know what we're going to do right now? You do know what we're going to do. I want to be the client. I'm going to roll with you right now and we're going to see. OK so I'd like for you to figure out a way to say it so that we can start talking about what's important for you to know and do in a way that's friendly, that's open and transparent. OK, I'll tell you how to do it. Role-play after we watch you spin your magic. OK so I'm just Chris, and I'm just going to be the future. I'm going to call you up, ok? I'm going to get right to it. You ready? All right. So you need to get something from this conversation. Hey, Roy from Tina will that you're an amazing designer and you know, that's the future. We have this content education platform, and we really need to sharpen up identity. I feel like we're all over the place. We have a YouTube channel, we have Facebook and Twitter, and we do a lot of social media posts. And I have a team of 10 people that are in house and a couple of people that are out of house. And I don't know, I kind of heard good things about you and should I tell you more about our business, what we're trying to do? He said a lot of things. And first of all, Thanks for calling me, and yes, TNN will are awesome. OK, so how can I like, like I mentioned, you said a lot of things. If you were to focus on one thing right now, what can I help you out with? Oh yeah, I think we need like a brand. We need like voice and messaging. And so many parts and pieces, lower thirds and pages, which is there's a lot of design work we need to do. And I just feel overwhelmed all the time because I need stuff done, you know? OK and why do you need all these things? Because we're moving fast as a company, I feel like we're scattered. OK, so you have a lot going on. What kind of timeline are you looking at for this project sooner than later? But I don't know. We're using our stuff all the time. Our team is growing. And I think it would be better if we could get on board quicker. You sound. I'm just going to I'm going to stop right there. You sound a little frustrated. Is that OK to say to somebody, Oh no, no, don't break the role. Play with me. Oh no, don't break. OK, all right. Don't break, don't you? You sound a little flustered. I want to. I want to kind of give you a heads up before we get started. We do have a minimum level of engagements about 10,000. And it can go up from there. Noticing that you have a lot of work that needs to get done before we even dive into this. Is this something that you are comfortable with moving forward? Yeah, no problem. 10 thousand, we can do this. OK, great. So what is the quickest way to get to it? All right. It wasn't that hard for you to say no right now. I'm actually not frustrated or anything. So you're reading that. I'm just I got a lot of energy to do things. So ceos, executives, they were just ready to go. They're just like, I'm ready, I'm ready, I'm moving, I'm making decisions. I need people to move fast with me, and you may want to match my energy. Ok? this is what Tony Robbins calls magic mirror. You match them and then you bring them to yourself. OK so I was hoping you would interrupt me because I can keep talking, and then I feel like you would not interrupt me at all. And normally I would say never interrupt a client, except for when they're doing the brain dump. OK, right? So I'm going to tell you how I would do it. If a clients come in talking really fast. But I got a lot of things like, whoa, whoa, bro, you have so much energy going on. I can't contain it. Let me ask you a quick question. I'm sure you're busy and you have a lot of people you want to talk, to figure out who's a good fit for you. How will you make that decision and can we talk about budget sooner than later? You see what it just did there. I match the energy level and it brought it back to normal. So they go crazy, you're going to go crazy if they're chill, you're going to be chill and then you bring them to where you want to be. So a lot of times when I say when we're on these calls, I'm just managing energy, I'm just managing it all the time. Does that make sense at all? Yes, it does. And I seem to be getting a lot of clients that have the brain dump. So I got to figure out that. I'm going to be honest with you, if you're actually talking to real clients. They're going to be like that. It's not you. Yeah my initial thoughts are just to sit and listen, and that helps me. Like, I've always looked at it as if I interrupted or if I said something in between. It might feel like I don't really care. I'm in a rush, and that's been my problem. Yeah look, these are people who have lots of things to do. Allowing them to talk doesn't create any value for you, believe it or not, because they assume everybody they talk needs to be talked to like this. You have to disrupt their pattern. In a way that's non-confrontational, not disrespectful. That's why I'm like, whoa, whoa, hold on, hold on. You're telling me too much. Right, and I'm trying to process everything you're saying, but I think ultimately what you're trying to do on this call is to figure out who you want to work with and whether or not we're a good fit for each other. So the way I need to know that is we've got to talk about scope and price. And before we get into the details of the scope, I'm hearing x, y and z, if that sounds about right for that, I'm going to need at a minimum this kind of amount. See, a lot of us are afraid to talk about money. A lot of us are afraid to interrupt the client and generally, the rule of thumb is never interrupt the client, except for when they're doing the brain dump. OK, I need everybody to write that down. Never interrupt a client unless they're doing the job, because you cannot make sense of all this stuff. You cannot write fast enough. So that means you can't listen and you're trying to catch up to the conversation. And there are seven layers deep into it. Or if the clients are using terms that you don't understand, like, I deliberately started talking about lower thirds and end pages and all these kinds of things that you might not know anything about. Whoa, that sounds fantastic. I don't even know what that means. So you have to stop them. Because pretending like you understand, is not good, either. Now there is one thing I heard on your client call that a So here's the crazy thing. Most of us don't interrupt, but when we interrupt, we interrupt for the wrong reasons. So we need to interrupt the brain dump. We should never interrupt the compliment. I don't understand that on that call. As I was listening, she's like, I heard so many great things about you from. And then you cut her off like, no, this is the time for them to tell you how much they love you and you cut her off. I'm like, what are you doing? Are you uncomfortable with people showering you with compliments? And I don't know, maybe, maybe, right? So when somebody gave me a compliment, just. When somebody is like, I want to work with you. Don't say anything. Just listen. Just like, wow, that's cool. I'm going to have to send Mary flowers later. This is fantastic. Right? nice bottle of wine or something. I don't know what you do. OK so in that conversation, it was really all over the place, amorphous, having a hard time finding it. When we got to the number, you said a number and she didn't know how to react. And you have to remember people don't know how to react to numbers. Because we need context, everybody needs context. So this is one of the big ideas from pricing creativity that you are encouraging your potential client to go out and get two more bids so they can find out whether or not they can afford you. That's why he recommends putting out three numbers. So that they don't have to do that. Now, this is a little bit more advanced, so I'm going to say this very specifically for me and everybody like me on the call. You don't need to do this, you guys. You don't need to do the three pricing things because it gets pretty complicated. It's a more sophisticated client. But just remember, they need to compare you to somebody, so you might as well help them compare you to somebody right now. So what was the woman's name again, the woman you were talking to on the call? And it's Candice. You can say, Candace, I'm sure you need I mean, this is where we're fully transparent. I'm sure you need to talk to a few people or are you ready to make a decision based on how this conversation goes? And she's like, no, I probably need it. OK, so how will you decide? And you can talk to somebody on the lower end of the spectrum. As a matter of fact, you can go to five or 999 design and spend a couple dollars and get that done. If that's a good solution for you, if that's a viable option and encourage you to do that. You're wasting your time talking to me. You can find somebody for 4,000. And this is what they might do. I was going to come in at 7,000. And I'll tell you why it cost as much and then let them talk and then they can figure it out. And then if they throw an objection at you, then you can start to use some of the questions that we've taught you how to do. So if I've been in business for a long time, I know what every client sounds like and he hasn't had a lot of clients, he's going to have to pretend like he knows what every client sounds like by borrowing some of these conversations that we're having right now. Right? whenever a client calls me, they either want this, this or that, or they need to compare this or that. I know this because I've had hundreds of these conversations, and so at some point you want to start to adopt some of that in your dialogue with your client, even when you're starting out. You wanted to say something. Yeah, I think it was just I'm trying to I've been trying to work on figuring out what the framework is to get to those right questions, and I think that's the hardest part is like, yeah, I know I need to ask them, how will you decide? But then asking them a one simple follow up question to lead to that is the issue. And I'm taking those down on all the right questions, how can I just simplify this process and what prompts can I use? And it's yeah, I find that that's going to help you. I'll help you. I know what's going on. You're a smart guy and you have all these notes and you have this script and a notebook full of ideas. And then when you're in the call, you're like, where am I on this conversation? It doesn't follow the script and never does. Because we're humans, we're not robots. We'll say different things at different points in time. And then you're trying to figure out, I have an answer to a problem. I'm listening to the point. So you're trying to match us all up and it's very, very difficult for you. I'm going to tell you something very different than what I told me. OK, so everybody that's in Raul's position, this is what you need to lean into right now. OK all right. In order for you to do business with anybody. Two parts have to happen. The client needs to find out something about you to figure out, am I a good fit? And you need to also find something about the client to see if they're a good fit. So everybody right down right now? Just take a piece of paper or anything you've got. Draw a line down the middle and write down what does the client need to know about me? Write three things down. And then what do I need to know? Three things about the client? Write that down. OK the left column, what are the three things the clients need to know about me and I already know the answers to this. What are the three things I need to know about the client and you'll find if you know clients, well, this are a remarkable amount of overlap. So I'm going to give you a few minutes to write this thing down. And I'm going to make a note of this. OK and you guys tell me. Hey, you guys. Was that enough time? We're digging a little more time. I think we need a little more time. OK, OK, good. Just keep working because I'm making the notes from this conversation. OK, and then second, I'm going to share my deck, so take as much time as you guys need until I'm done and then that's all the time you guys get. I want to browbeat you, but you should know the answer to this already, because what the heck are you doing on the call if you don't know? But this is good because these are things that my business coach taught me. It's like, what the heck are you doing the call, chris? I'm like, I don't know. Well, that's why your calls sound like the way they do. Oh, OK. I need to change that, right? Yeah I should just share with you my deck as I'm doing it. Shared the screen. 60 point. And I hope you guys are finding value in this, and I'm happy to do this as many times as you guys want me to. OK, I'm going to share my screen now. So what do they need to know about me? Is that is that not sort of kind of determined if we're mirroring them? Should we not adjust what they need to know about me according to their needs? Or is this so you need very different things, potentially. Don't worry about that. We'll just stick with me. All right. All right. I have nothing here. These are just generic bullet points that come from my deck, right? So what are the three things the client need clients need to know in order to work with me? Number one answer on the board. If we're playing family feud, I've surveyed 100 pro members. The top answer on the board is what? Abilities, capabilities, that's not the number one answer, keep going. Cost, Yes. Price price, right? They have to know the price. Thanks experience experience. OK, I'll write this down. So then we'll figure out what else what? Timeline timeline. You can help them. If how would they know that though? Well, that's why they're talking to you, right, to determine how you can help them or if you can help them? OK, who's talking right now? What's your name? I can't see you. Agnieszka, you need OK. If if you hire people. Not yet, you've never hired anybody, ever a freelancer. OK, Yeah. OK, well, how do you decide how to work with them? Um, I have a budget, and I try and determine how if they can get what I want done Well and how will you do that depends on. What I'm buying, but either a portfolio or a password. Yes, that's it. Body of work, ok? Oh, OK. What else? I think this is related to the. Let's go a little bit more basic here, like the kinds problem is solved. Well, you say that one more time, the kinds of problems that they solve that they can help solve. OK, so your capabilities, somebody said before. Yeah, sorry, capabilities, right? Like, do you do what I need? Right OK. I trust you. Yes testimonials. OK so they're looking for a social proof. It's the bigger term for that. There's one more word I'm looking for here. I'm just going to write it down just to kind of save time. Ok? will try to know if I'm the less risky option for him. Yes OK. I would say process to OK, and then I'm going to just right in here. I do. I like you. I mean, that's a pretty big one in my book. And that's the one that when we say tone, eye contact and all that kind of stuff, that's where that matters, right? OK, now I'm going to resort this in a second, OK, but we're going to work on your list. Now And what are you going to say? What do you need to know? Can they afford me? Budget how they'll decide. Goals? no. OK, well, that's how they're going to decide, but what did you need to in a very selfish way? What did you say? Goals? I said goals. OK, I want to write that down their ambitions and challenges. The pipeline line, right? Go ahead, keep going. I can hear you as long as you don't talk exactly at the same time, go ahead. I have as say that five people talk at this time. OK, you guys, I can't manage you and right at the same time. So you guys just pick it up next. Does he know the value of my work, especially for strategy? OK do they know what do you need to know, though? Is he the shot caller budget? OK, OK. Are they the decision maker? Do I like them? And do I like them? Points point the pain points or pain points. OK keep going. Anything else? A couple of things I can think of. Are they? Are they engaged? Like, are they married? I'm just kidding. OK, well, what do my capabilities line up with? What they are looking for? OK can they afford me? Where did he do that budget? It's at the top of the list. Can I solve their problem, right? OK Yeah. So fear, what are they afraid of? OK it's very interesting your list, guys. It's a little surprising. That's why we said we need more time like, huh? You guys are coming up with some interesting answers here. Let's Bowl the top three things on the client side, and then let's Bowl the top three things on our side. But I don't know if you guys said this, but I'm just going to right. Schoop I don't know why nobody said scope, but I did. I do kind of need to know. OK, let's do this, guys. I'm going to read through the list here. Everybody can see my screen. Yes why this? Here we go, full screen. So what are the three things the clients need to know in order to work with you, right? They need to know what's the price. You know, if you have the right experience, when can you do it within the timeline? Like how long? Just amend that. How? does your portfolio support what it is that they need? Do they see something there? What are your capabilities? Can they trust you? Do you have social proof? Are you going to be risky for them? Do I understand your process and do I like you? Now this is for the first call. This is for the very first call. OK, now which ones would you say has to be the top three answers? And I know this from crowdsourcing. There's 47 of you on this call right now. If we double this number, I'm pretty sure the answer would be the same. Let's pick the top three. What do you think the top one or two or three are? Personality doesn't even on the list, but I add it like you do, I like you. OK do I like you? Ok? would you guys agree? Mm-hmm All right. OK, if you're not in a noisy room. Go ahead and unmute yourself. I'll talk to you, right? It's got to be. Price got to be priced. And trust, trust, trust. OK all right. Good all right, does that sound about right? So we want to build trust. We want to be clear about the price and we want to establish rapport. That's how I like you. You have to be a likeable person. OK, let's move on to what we need to know now. What we need to know is how we're going to make our decision. So a lot of the answers that you guys gave was like how they're going to make decisions. Forget about them right now. It's all about you. Because they can love you all you want. I don't know, this is not good for me. How will you decide? So right now, the problem. Solve the problem I see here. Can I solve the problem? Can I? Can I solve their problem? Would you guys say that? Yeah I see. Yep OK, I hear, Yes. OK NASA's budget budget got to be budget. OK, what else did you make up the timeline? Timeline scope, OK, fits into, can you solve it? Because if the only reason you can't hit the timeline is you can't solve it. That is true. So that's a catchall, but I'm going to do this. The scope usually includes timeline, OK, so I need to know that. OK, so I'm going to Bowl this one. And do we want to add anything or remove one thing? Those are the three things that you need. I feel like it's almost like the same thing. It's the same thing. Do I like them to say, well, let's do that. All right. Let's do this. OK, you guys, before we do, before we connect the dots, is there anything that you want to change here? I think we can. Sorry I would do goals and do I like them. I kind of put those two things together because if they're not, they're not. Well, let's make a case for it. Then who thinks goals should be one of the top three things? What are their goals? Do you need to know that? So in Demi's case, I need to. I need. What was it? Not a menu. It was a menu. It was about, I need a menu. Do I need to know their goals to take on this project? Absolutely Yes. Yes or no? Yes, probably. I need a menu. Go ahead. Well, if I like them, I'll figure out their goals and they're typically coming to you based on the fact that you have some sort of expertise to execute their goals. So if it's a menu, you've done work that showcases menu design. So I don't know if gold yet. OK, I'll tell you, I feel like it falls under. Can I solve their problem? I kind of feel like that. That's that's a mini. Can I solve their problem? You have to understand their problem where you would cover gold. Like trying to solve the problem to help them reach their goal. It's very similar. OK, here's how we can think about this, because we're slicing words here, and that's OK. If I were to put you guys on a game show and I only allow you to ask three questions. To a prospective client, what would those three questions be, and we could do that right after this? OK, I want you to think about it like that. What would those three questions be? OK, now I want to just try as an exercise, I mean, we're doing this live, so it's totally not work. I'm going to try. You know, bob, this up. OK, so this arrow here. They will make this arrow read. It's a little easier to see. OK, I want to try to line up one of these things right away. So price and budget, guess what? It's a one to one connection. Anybody going to disagree with me, I mean. I mean, you'd be crazy to disagree with me, but. It's one to one relationship, so when we delay the budget conversation, what are we preventing the client from doing? We're preventing them from deciding who to work with. So why the heck are you guys so reluctant to talk about budget? Why is the money conversation such an evil conversation for people that boggles my mind? Right? so when somebody asks you how much? Tell me how much? Don't give me a long explanation. Just tell me how much. OK especially if you're just trying to close a client today, if you're going to talk to any client. Rule of thumb, anything under 10 15,000. Don't try to do this big strategy conversation it's way out of. It's just way out of what they're thinking of. When you're talking to a client above 10 thousand, then the answer becomes much more complicated. Or it can be the answer, then might be it depends. But here's where we start. But for the most part, if you're under 10k, just tell them the price. There's not a lot to gain by telling them the whole complicated answer. OK, let's talk about trust now. How can they figure out if they can trust you? Where would we connect this arrow to, so where would I put it to? I think if you show them that, you know, their pain points. OK, so you're saying here. I think if you understand their ambitions and challenges. Yes, I agree with that. I mean, because if you can anticipate their pain points, they relate to you and they trust you. Yeah, I agree. Goals, ambition, challenges, scope. A pain points and solving their problem are all the same thing. OK so you're saying that there are all the same, but I don't know if a trust is like if I understand scope and timeline, that's just I think I can cross off the list, right? So I don't necessarily know if that's going to be the thing that's going to build you the trust that you're hoping for it. Like if I ask you about your budget and your scope that doesn't build report just yet. OK, what else? Say the same thing. Like the way I build trust with someone is by being engaged and having a conversation. So I wouldn't have put ambition in challenges with trust. OK, so you're going to put engaged, I would engage to make sure that. In fact, I'm going to totally left the conversation. How are you going to trust them to do your work properly? Oh, OK, sure. So you need to stay engaged, is what you're saying. Yeah, and from this side of the column, it's like, are they engaged in this dialogue? So that's fine. It works. OK, so let's move on. Do I like you? Where would this map to? Or does it? No, go ahead. When when you build report. When you're what, when you build a weapon with them? Well, with clients. Yeah but it's kind, it's like a trust. It is, it's similar, right for me, Yes. OK all right. So this is what we need to know for us, and this is what they need to know. So if we were to begin the conversation with a client, I could say, I'm sure you have a lot of people that you need to talk to and you probably need to figure out who you can trust. If the price is right and if you like them. So in order for us to have this conversation, I also need to very similar things. I can be 100% transparent about it because I know. You understand it doesn't have to be a complicated. Before you tell me every juicy detail that we're going to need to know at some point. I'm going to make a guess here, an educated guess, because I've worked with clients for a number of years that most clients need to know what the price is. If you can trust me and if you like to work with me. Capabilities might come into play at some point. Body of work, but if chances are they're reaching out, you've already qualified on that level, so I wouldn't even go there unless they bring it up. And sometimes they'll bring that up. So now we're going to go to the next part of this next part is, what are three questions that you can ask if you're allowed to go in the room and only ask three questions? Keeping this in mind, what are the three questions you would ask? Now I'm going to give everybody a few minutes to write those things down. They're going to ask those three questions, I want to write a list for you. OK so everybody put your thinking hat on. Knowing what they need to know and what you need to know, we're trying to devise a three best questions to figure this thing out. And we're going to crowdsource this with this amazing group. While you do have scope and timeline with three major. You would want to switch up the scope and timeline with the local decision makers because I need to know who's going to get who's going to be decided. OK, that's fine. So here's the beautiful part you get to write the question in which way you want, and each one of us could walk away asking very different questions and be very successful. This is just like, unfortunately, I can't bring you all into the studio with me. We would work this out and we'd spend more time doing this and be a little bit more Democratic about this versus like a couple of people yelled it out, right? But I'm going to pretend like we all came to this process and it was thought through and voted on and all that kind of stuff. But you guys can write whatever you want. But in the meantime, I'm going to update this document. All right. Are you guys ready? Do you get a little bit more time? I'm ready. You got your three questions, everybody. OK, I'm going to be your note taker here. So while Rawls says he's ready, I believe that's who said that. You have a little bit more time. OK, what are your three questions rule? What are your goals? What is your budget and what will help you decide? Sorry what is your budget and what will help you decide today? OK, anybody has any other questions they'd like to contribute. I had my third question was if they were familiar with any of our work, but I actually like rules better because. OK all right. Makes it irrelevant. OK, I just split the first question to. So I asked what their short term goals are and their long term goals. OK anybody else? Yeah my first question is, why are they interested in talking with me? I anybody else? My first question is, how can I help you? What's the problem? Anybody else? What are you doing now? Well heard one go. Why now? Yes, I see a pattern. I just write this. Good how will it look like if we hit it out of the park? OK, next. I had what benefit do you hope to achieve and what is your budget for that? That's two questions you give me, and I was sneaky. Well, we already said, what's your budget, right? Yeah, what's your budget's already there? So sneaky. But are you the decision maker? OK what is your timeline? Anything else? OK done. All right. See, we're doing homework together, you guys, ok? This goes here. This is not this. All right, so you guys get this, I mean, you need to a budget, scope, timeline. And can I solve their problems. So we need to kind of know what the problem is? So here are the questions that you guys have asked. All right. I'm not going to spend too much more time on this and we'll export this. I need to get Sean on the phone, so I'm going to hit pause on this, guys. Hopefully, unless there's something that is burning hot right now that you need more clarity on, then I'll address it right now. Otherwise we're going to keep going. Does anybody have anything they need to know right now or they want to challenge something that we're doing? Fantastic Sean, are you still there or did he have to jump? OK I don't hear anything from Sean. All right, we're back. OK who else recorded a call that is ready to throw themselves into the pit? I got one. OK Mason, you ready, ready to go? Who the other person? I'm sorry, I didn't see you. I was Van OK. Mason, why don't you go? And then we'll try to do this real quick. OK, go ahead. Mine's pretty quick. So we can kind of jump through it pretty quickly, I think. OK go and share the audio. She there's a real plot to share my screen. Yeah, it's real. Yeah share, share your screen of the audio player and then everybody else hit yourself on mute. Well, and. Is there a specific one? Oh, sure, computer sound. Here we go. It's ready. I still hear good. We don't hear anything yet. Yeah actually, what we're designing would be if you hear that. Yeah, we hear it, so it real quiet. It was a lead that came in. Um, I'll just leave it from there. OK peace awareness that this would be a subscription service where, you know, it's maybe a few hours a month and so you'd be willing to pay, you know, 10, $20 a month for it. So, yeah, I mean, I have a brief understanding of what it is. We'd definitely dig more into that Down the road. But what kind of project are you guys looking to do? What do you have in mind? So what we are imagining, we basically have a prototype of the back end and when we want it to feel very kind of tangible and and you know. Cool, cool. I feel you. I'm just curious, what do you do for your main job? I'm an academic. Oh, very cool. You programmed this thing? Yeah OK. It's in Python. I think I saw on your GitHub the back end. Yeah, a fair amount of it's Python. There's some. My thing is like, I won't load times half a second, ideally like I build everything and I SVG so that it's just optimized to load. And under a second, I sounds like that's kind of a direction you're looking for. This is part of the design process, but what I'm imagining is actually something that's a single page. And then, OK, so I saw that you guys had a budget, right? Yeah and usually how this works is I would just make sure that you were called the budget, but I already saw your budget. So I know you're within our range. And typically, what we like to do is the budget was 50 to 80,000. I think something like that, everyone has a discovery process, right? So like our basic discovery process would be scheduling another session with you and put in a small deposit down just for that. But that's just discovery. If what I'd really like to do is potentially take you guys through a core strategy. So what we call it, and this is a lot more in depth where we actually give you deliverables by the end of it and give you strategy and we build user personas and we really nail down what your brand is going to be and who it's going to be for. But yeah, at this point, what I probably do is send you a proposal with some more details on who we are, what we do. Have you seen our website yet? Yeah, Yeah. So I have looked at our on your website and I like, you know what I can see from several of those things. Let me tell you, I have I've talked to about 15, 15 or 20 agencies and groups and designers and stuff, and I've narrowed it down to three who I had, you know who I had sent this sort of request for proposal. That's got more details on the project to kind of what I'm looking for. Mm-hmm You know, given what I've seen on your website and this conversation with you, I would love to send you that request as well. And then, you know, that might give you a better. OK, so from here on, we dropped the call and then we get back on and I just say, hey, I'd like you to come stop by the Office. I think there might have been some point on the call that maybe wasn't recorded, but he was like, we already have the strategy done. So I'm not really interested in that. And I was like, OK, we'll just come stop by the Office and we can meet each other and kind of get a feel for it better. And then he agreed to that. And that's kind of where we left off. We set a time and date, and that was the end of it. OK there's a lot that's going on there. So Mason's engagement is on a different level. So I think this has been fantastic just by coincidence that we have three different people at very different levels of selling. So we had Demi just trying to get his foot in the door and get started with professional work that he gets paid for. So he's at that level is probably the next step up, which he's like. I want to charge $7,000 or $8,000 to do identity design work. That seems like a good jump forward. And then now Mason is talking about something that's between 50 to 80,000. So the bigger the project, the more complicated the selling process is, right? So let's just take a moment to understand this DME just needs to get more price, figure out the scope and get a signed deal, deposit in the bank and gets rock and rolling. Rahul needs to sell a little bit more, he kind of needs to help her understand the process of building a brand and his. The way that he would approach it and Mason is going to need to answer an RFP, he's going to have to have an in-person meeting. They're going to kick the tires. They've looked at 15 people, which is a staggering amount of people. And he made the final cut. And if they agree to meet with them, he knows that they're inching closer and closer towards the goal. I didn't hear enough in there for me to kind of dissect Mason because you've done a really good job of editing it. What are your thoughts on the way that the call went and what you think you could do better? yeah, it was really tough because I was really into selling strategy at the moment, I was like, this is a perfect opportunity to sell strategy. And then I kind of rambled on about it for a minute and he was like, I could kind of sense he wasn't so warm. So I was like, let's just get a meeting, let's meet this guy, and let's make sure that I can just like, get my foot in the door. I think I was a little too salesy for sure at certain points, and I cut a lot of the bulk out where we talked in dense detail. I tried to keep it rolling, so whenever he would be brand dumping, I'd try and interject and be like, OK, next question. But OK. I don't I don't know what I. The worst thing I did was really, OK. I can't tell either. And if you're having the in-person meeting, it seems like whatever you did, what you did was is working for this particular client. There are some technical things here that I think maybe you were trying to demonstrate that what you're doing by talking about Python and SVG and optimize files and load times. Maybe, I think in the world that you guys are in, that makes a sense, a lot of sense in terms of building rapport, making sure that he understands that, you know, the experience and the one thing that I heard, they're kind of separate to what I was just saying is this is that perhaps the way you guys phrase the whole strategy discovery thing, maybe you should open it up with a different kind of question versus telling them, I need to do this and this is how I work. Maybe you can ask them. And again, I don't know that much about the nature of this project. It's a little bit more technical than I'm used to talking about. But maybe you can ask them, have you done strategy or discovery before? Do you understand your users pain points and their challenges? Have you mapped this out all along the user journey? And yes, we've done all that, then you're a fantastic will you please for that document over me so I can review it? What kind of behavioral or consumer insights have you been able to figure out? Yeah, that's where I salesy instead of doing that. Yeah, like he was just like, yeah, we already know our demographic and blah blah blah, and I just kind of took his word at face value when if I would have really drilled him down on it, it probably would have revealed that he doesn't know much about it at all. That's exactly what you're trying to do. So if you guys can take one thing away from what Mason did and how you can improve on your sales processes, this is instead of telling them what you do. Just ask them the questions and then they will know, oh, then think about this if you ask them, do if you've done strategy before? Do the behaviors of your customers, not just their demographics or psychographics? Do you understand the pain, points and challenge? Do you know what a win is for them? Have you built out a customer journey? And if they can answer all of that fantastic? See, now you don't even have to explain to them what discovery is because you've just done it. Now, most people, sadly, either think they've done it or have paid somebody else to do it, but they've done a really piss poor job at it, and that's the crime that's been committed here. So now they've already feel the pain point, the burden of having somebody else do it and feeling they didn't get much from it. So now how do you make right on that? Because you're going to sound like a charlatan, just like the other person who sold them a bill of goods? So then you then I can share with you a document from a previous client. And you can see how in depth we go. Go ahead, Jason. Sorry the one thing I remembered, I definitely should have asked that I didn't is obviously shopping around quite a bit. I should have asked how he going to make the decision. I didn't ask that once, and I'm still clueless to the day how they did make their decision. Yeah, of course. Ask more questions, ask more questions. And then if he's like, well, we need to know if you understand SVG and Python and then you're like, well, Yeah. So we assume that's a question they're asking. Let's not assume that. Go ahead and ask them and then hear what they have to say, and then as they're saying, go down your little mental checklist, I need to talk about this, this, this and that to reassure them. So they don't feel like I'm a risky option. All right, now, I don't know about you, Mason. I don't know how many speeds you have in terms of the way you communicate, but you come across like one energy level. If possible, I would start asking you to learn how to modulate between different speaking tempos and energy level. So that we know like, oh, Mason is really excited or no, Mason's really angry or Mason said, it seems like there's just Mason and it's pretty across the board. OK like if you into snow sports, like snowboarding or skateboarding or skiing or anything like that, do you get excited? Like, dude, I can't wait to hit the slopes. Man, we're just going to kill it. It's going to be awesome. So when you're excited, you need to convey that kind of energy. I'm pretty monotone most of the time, but yeah, I suspect that's the case, right? And that's going to be tough because you're just like. We got to just spice you up a little bit. So, yeah, exactly. You just get jiggy with it, so maybe if you're always operating a five, maybe we're not going to get you to be a 1 in at 10, but maybe a 4 and a 7 and just operate between those. So I just want you to expand and all of it's possible if you were an actor, you would have to learn how to act this way. So think of yourself as an actor now. OK, if you're excited telling me I'm excited. I'm thrilled. Oh, that's disappointing. OK all right, then. Drive us home. All right. So this is a warm lead that I have. They have seen my work. They know that they want to work with me, so I didn't have to sell them on that. And my goal on this call, this was an initial call with them, was to get acquainted with what their needs are. Ask questions. Get them to talk about their business. Assert the value of design in terms of supporting that and then plant the strategy seed because that's what I want to do. So I'll play the clip. I have four of them, but I will just play the first one because that's the one I feel like will set a tone. OK, one SEC. The what you guys are up to and how it is that you come to this place and why you reached out to me? Yeah, well, we've been growing our business. We opened the tasting room two years ago and we've been roasting since 2015 and really kind of just scrapping along like fake it till you make it. You know, we have to learn a lot about business marketing, and we've done a lot of like, OK, this works for now. We need to just maintain and we're at a really good maintaining level right now. Our business is growing. We have a good wholesale local wholesale accounts. We the tasting room is getting really busy, the coffee shop is getting noticed and gaining traction. Our online presence is not strong at all other than just like the social media we do Instagram and Facebook. We have a website. It needs work. That's not our area of expertise. We have labels that are packaging. Ben, your audio cut out. You could pull. Sorry about that, the whole product is like the product, great once people try it, they love it, but it needs to look better and it needs to come across with what the true essence of what we're doing is, which is a lot more than just specialty coffee. Like one of the things we really want to draw attention to is that we only work directly with farms, and we're really just interested in developing long term relationships with farmers to help bolster their economy. It's only going to work well for us. It works well for them and. Really trying to educate people through our marketing that that's part of what we do. It's not just coffee that we're trying to work with the whole, the whole process of the farmers, the growers, the cultures that the coffee comes from and developing a coffee culture around that through our coffee shop and just getting really high quality in the hands of other people. So that's kind of. Student yeah, we only saw single varietals, coffees. Specialty grape juice, all of that. Once you come in and talk to us, you would know. Or if you read through all of our site or blogs, you would find out all of that, but little more than I have to cut you off. Hit pause. OK, at first glance, OK. This is this is a rambling client call, so I have no idea what you're talking about anymore. So this is where we need to take control. Can you start to jump to the part where you think you asked one question? She's talking for like five minutes here. OK, one SEC. OK any of those things? Those are all little things. And we start with there, with some of the things you do. But do you do much web design as well? I do. So what I want to I'll get to that in a second here. Well, that's a really great overview of just all the things that you're swarming around in your head. What I typically do is I bring the conversation down to foundational things and we start with there. And then from there, where what we're trying to do is whittle all of this information that you got going on into something that's really concise that you can then use as a filter to make all of your business decisions and your communication decisions. And so it really starts there in terms of website your packaging, if you want to do a little bit of a refresh like a make over on your logo. Any of those things, those all become prioritized based on what this foundation thing that we develop together, and it really helps you be able to make decisions very easily and clearly when you're looking at. If an idea comes up, you're like, OK, is this something that you should do? You can then go back to the foundation thing and decide, OK, is this serving the greater purpose? Is serving your goal? Is this going to speak to your audience, that sort of thing. So that's what we do. Yes, I can absolutely help you with all of that design stuff, but I really encourage you to be able to think about strategies and just foundational things before we dive into, you know what, all those what all those things look like. And all right, I feel like this is dragging on and where we've been on this call for a while. So I feel bad for taking up time. So do you want me to continue? I mean, there's this call is about 30 minutes long, and so I break it down into four different parts, and I feel like maybe we could have a better conversation. Yeah yeah, OK. Or something? Yeah, OK. Let's get right into it. We have a few more minutes. I want to answer a quick question because somebody is asking this. This is the first time on the call. Are these calls recorded and archived for later? 100 percent, Yes. This call will be uploaded within a week's time, and the deck that I'm working on or the notes that I'm taking will also be uploaded. I don't always do that, but for this call, I will, because you're going to need it. OK, now, van, I think based on the conversations we already had, how would you analyze or diagnose and prescribe solutions for yourself right now? What can you do better on these calls? Yeah, I think that I would like to be able to make the close the sale quicker and have a conversation about budget, which I didn't. I basically went through just all this scope that they needed, which was comprehensive branding. They need logo redesign, they need packaging redesign, they need website. And so we basically broke those down and then talk about why, why they're necessary. So I think I would have liked to just get down to business just like, are we going to do this? Let's do this and how I tend to do a lot of listening. And you know, that's not always helpful. So I think that that's probably my biggest thing is to have a conversation about budget. OK fantastic. All right, all right. OK, very good. OK when we ask big open ended questions, we're going to get big open ended answers. And so the design of the question, this is why I've said in many talks before, you can tell somebody is valued by the quality of their questions. The quality of questions determines the value of the person period. So what are we doing? Well, they're going to talk forever. Now my 12-year-old son? He asked really unstructured, loose, open ended questions, which aren't great for conversation in terms of him figuring out what he wants. I'll give you an example. He asked me, dad, is Obama rich? She well. What is rich? And so we're learning or I'm teaching them how to ask better questions, and if it does Obama make more than $100,000 a year because that's his definition of rich? I would give him the answer that he wants. So we don't want to ask, is this giant big questions? And if the client starts getting out of control, you have to stop it because van, I'm trying to listen to it. And if you're like any creative that I know ADHD starts to set in, it's like, what are we talking about? We're floating to outer space. We're thinking about lunch and the different things. We've got to do. And I got a package. I got a delivery later today and pick up the kids like, I'm not here anymore. So this is where you have to interrupt. You have to stop them and say, you know what? I'm sorry, I phrased that. In a way that was just too broad. I'd like to redirect the conversation. OK, now that you've seen that little matrix that we've designed together, you have a better roadmap to know what it is that you need to know. But just yourself, I need to know three things. One of those three things and then get it out of the way and talk about it. Now, here's where I saw a real opportunity for you to do this, and I've see I'm seeing a pattern obviously here every time somebody else like, do you do web? And then you went into this whole sales pitch? Right? and Mason did something not too not too different from that. He also got into I do court and we do this. Let's not get there. Do you do web? Yes next question. OK, and now let's get into asking her a question back. So, Ben, do you do web? Ask me a question back. Yes why do you need a website? OK, then we're into it. OK OK, now I'll teach you a slightly different way of phrasing that that's exactly literally what I told you to say. Perfect So I'll give you a more nuanced way of asking that question. OK you can say most entrepreneurs come to me and tell me they need a website, and almost always they do need a website. But what kind of website are we building and why do you think you need this? What kind of business problems are you trying to solve? That's just a more complicated way of asking them, why do you need this? OK, got it right? Because a website to a lot of people is just really a digital brochure, and it could be so much more than that. Well, what do you mean then? Well, let me tell you. Do we know what our customers' behaviors are? Who are we trying to sell to who we'd like to sell to more of? What pain points do they have with using our site and why do they return? Why do they engage? You do all the core things which you ask the questions. So the number one thing, the number one thing all of you guys are trying to sell strategy today is stop selling it and just ask these kinds of questions. Stop selling core, stop describing the process and ask them questions. Because every time you ask them a question, they can't answer. You win a point every time you tell them what you do. You lose a point. Everybody got that. That's a question that they can't answer. You win a point because that means like Van Oh my god, I've talked to 10 other people. Nobody asked me these kinds of questions, but everybody describes an incredible process to them. It might as well be Greek. OK that's what I want you to think about and work on now. I'm going to share my deck again, everybody. You guys are good with this because we're out of time here. I'm going to share my thank you. You're welcome. And I'm going to talk about this. Ok? so I tried to write this, and I was trying to listen and write at the same time, so it's not great. I'm going to point you guys to this. Have you done discovery strategy before? Were you able to determine what your customers pinpoints? I challenges are. Did you write a user journey? What did you learn? That's a great way. I mean, not a great way. This is a much better way to ask about core without talking about core. OK, now. I tried to do this on the call, so this might be really rough. So we're talking about how to frame the conversation. And priming the client. So I wrote a little script for you on during this call, so it's not great, but I'm working on it and I may not work on it more than this, but at least you guys have something to work with. So this is a script. And like Scripps, they need to be adopted to how you work and your level. OK, so let me take a shot at this unless you guys how this sounds afterwards and we can modify this together. Hi, client, may I have permission to set the tone intention for our call today because I find that if we are clear about expected outcomes, we could have a very productive conversation together on my end. I need to know the scope, the budget and the timeline. What do you need to know in order to decide who you'd like to work with? And then we can go from there. So for all, you guys are having a really difficult time, take this, excuse me, modify it, make it work for you, it's not great. I need more time to work on this to make it feel a little bit better and flow. But ultimately, I'm just saying what we've been talking about here. OK just write down for yourself, what are the three things that I need to know to be able to work with this client? And each of you are going to write a very different thing, depending on who you are, who you're selling to at what level and what you're selling at. And realize the higher the budget, the more complicated the sales process, the longer. It should take to sell on the lower end of the budget. It should be much quicker. Just sell it. Get the work. Do it and move on and then start scaffolding up. We can't jump straight there. We need to work up towards it. Any questions, you guys? Anybody? yeah, I think do I have one? Go ahead. Yes I still don't understand the difference between educate the client and prove yourself to explain how it's working. What I understand on this call and is have to ask question to have to answer to the question you asked. But when they don't know the goal of your question, it's there. I'm trying to educate the client of the benefit to do it. If he doesn't, if he doesn't know where to go with my question, is it clear? Yes, more or less. I think if I understand what you're asking is on the issue of educating the client. Most people think educating a client is telling them all about everything, and we're going to give them all this information that they may or may not want. And I believe the word educate comes from the word induce the root word, which is to draw out and not to put in. So to educate the client isn't about you telling them what it is, it's about asking them questions. So that they start to figure out what it is and anything. That's key difference because if you go and talk to art school graduates, new graduates and you're like, oh, I'm going to educate the client, I'll tell them about how printing is done and Pantone colors and the difference between C and why k and Ruby and reflective light and blah blah blah. Nobody cares. So I think you have to work on structuring your questions. And if your questions are questions they don't understand. That's one thing. But if they understand the question but don't have a good answer to it, that's what we're working towards. Well, I'll ask you a question right now. Why do your clients choose you over your competitor? That's a question they can understand if they don't have a good answer to that. That's an opportunity for you to say, well, later on. The reason why we do strategy and discovery is because we want to figure that out together. OK, is that ok? Yeah OK. Next, you're welcome. Who's got another question? How should you follow up? Or should you follow up? How should you follow up with what? So both my conversations ended off with not really having a clear decision. So should I. Candice, should I message her back on LinkedIn, saying, hey, do you need any more help or have you made a decision? Like, how should that follow up? What should look like? OK, how did you end that call in the first place? It ended with me referring or me telling her to look at more designers and let me know if you need help with anything else. OK and did you tell her that because you felt resistance to the price? Yes also, because she hasn't shopped around before. OK and did you ask her, how does that price sound or what did you have in mind? Yeah, and she didn't really say this. She didn't tell me it's expensive. She just said, I don't know what these things cost. So I had no idea that this would cost this much. That was it. But she didn't say, no, that's too expensive. OK see, when people say, I don't know, it's because they're afraid to tell you what they were thinking. And so when you're in a conversation with a client, I would rather have you have the conversation, the first talk conversation together and versus postponing and doing multiple follow UPS because you've taken what should be a short to medium sales cycle and you've made it a really long sales cycle. When when you're like in Mason's leave and you're doing 50 to 200 thousand, it's going to be a long process for sure. But for you under $10000, you should be able to close it within one or two calls and not do a lot of follow up. OK if she feels and if you feel there's buyer resistance and she's not going to tell you what she's thinking, she's like, oh, that's more than what I thought and you said, what were you thinking? You just have to get it, and I don't know what you're thinking 4,000. No more like six. You see, it's like we just need to help them figure it out. If you guys subscribe to Jonathan Stark's email list, he sent something out last night, which I thought was really helpful that I wanted to share with this group. He's a lot of people think there are things that can't be measured. Like, is your dog happy? Or was he happier than yesterday, so we have a baseline, we're going to set that up, everybody has a baseline. You just need to figure that out. You have a conversation with them. So if we know that she's thinking 1,000 the chances of her coming up to 8,000 is very unlikely. And then you would then say, well, based on that, I think there might be somebody in my network or you need to just go look at these sites and do that. Why not just have the conversation in real time with her at that moment in time? Telling her to go out and look at a bunch of other work, you're sending the client away to never call you again. So now you have to do a follow up to say, hey, it's been a week. I'm not sure if you were able to find other people that could do this. Where are you at in your process? Is there anything else I can do to help? That's the best that you can do now, because now it's up to email and whether your email will hit her, whether she reads it the right moment in time and day and thinks I need to respond to this. But she gets buried in email as often as people do. You never know now. So I'm just going to suggest that if you have buyer resistance and you guys are all going to have buyer resistance, address it right on the spot. Talk about it right away. And then you have a chance to use words and conversation and build rapport and to address the client's objections in dialogue form versus via email. OK go ahead, shoot her in email. I would say a week about enough time to send her something, or even a couple of days. That perfect thank you. You're welcome. OK any other questions? Chris, I just wanted to add to that, this is Matthew, regarding the follow up. You could also, when you're following up, if you found something of value, some kind of insight that you picked up from the conversation. And then let's say you found a resource link, I was like, you know, I found somebody who's just like you, who wants to be a speaker, and here's how they grow and check out this article. It might just be nice to drop that in if you're already thinking of them, like I was thinking about and your challenge. And here's something that I found that might be helpful to you. So there's just another way to show them that you're trying to provide value. Of course, don't go out of your way to spend 10 hours trying to figure this out for them. I'm just saying if there are little moments where you can add bits of value in every interaction, that's also very helpful. That is an excellent pro tip for Matthew. That is a super power bomb right there at the end of this call is sending articles. That'll help them. My my business coach does this, and this is how he brings clients in all the time because like he's been thinking about it in his day, he's just doing things, reading articles and he finds something he's like, you know what? Just thinking back on a conversation. I think this article might help you solve that one problem, or you might find this really interesting. Whether or not they read it or not, it's like, Wow. This person is really think about my business, they're really sharp, they're reading, they're out there, they're learning new things. I need to work with this person. Excellent tip, Matthew. Somebody was going to say something. You know, I was just saying that's perfect, I actually can think of three things that I can send right off the bat. And that's a good way to up the conversation. It's also them the best one and just leave it like that and see what happens. Don't give them too much to read because they won't read any of it. OK, and if you can write a little lead into why the article might be relevant to them, that they'll be more likely that they'll read it. People on the internet send me articles to read all the time, I read 0 of them unless they say this, this didn't solve this problem and I see how it maps to what you talked about. Then I'll read it. So this is just a social media tip, you guys, a lot of you guys find really great articles and all you do is copy paste the link and you get share. That's not really building any expertise on your part. It's not compelling people to read it, because don't give me another thing to read, write a little something as to why you think it's important for somebody to read this article. Give me a bit-sized summary of it, and then I can read the rest if I want more. Madiba is saying these are called, by the way, emails. Don't understand this message. Tina and Ali saying, sorry, Chris, I've done that. What have you done? I've sent you articles like links and apologizing. People do it all the time. Then you never respond and I'm like, maybe he doesn't like me. I like you a lot. I just don't remember because you have you've told me nothing. It's like, I know, I know. And that makes sense. Now, like, you really say that I'm like, yeah, I don't either. I'm bored. I'm like, I don't have time for this. We don't have time. I'm not that bored. I just don't have time. It's the problem. So just like, so if you're and Matthew, I want to hear from you, too. So if you were going to send them an article, would you take like a screenshot or would you just take like a block from the article and send it? What would you do? There'd be specific. Ah, for me, I would just like Chris, I would just pull out the insight from the article if there's one thing that you could learn from this article that applies to your situation. Then I would just highlight that and that's just a sentence or two or a few bullet points. It's like, oh, I found this person who found their way. She started her own company. She started speaking on the side, and now she runs a, you know, $2 million company making content. And that's fantastic. And I think the key thing that changed her life was this. I think you should dig in to see if that might resonate with you. So I would just pull out one thing and just illuminate that for them. It's like the hook. If you're trying to pitch why they should read the article, what is the one thing that's going to make them open that article? And read more. That's what I would do. Wanted to hear life because so much better life than when you're actually hearing it after it's recorded. But in the little in and out, it was just it's so great to hear other people because I feel like we're all doing the same mistakes and I thought some of the calls were really good. And then I was. I would say this. And then when you break them down and people are giving feedback, I was like, oh, wow, this is right. I didn't realize that. So once a quarter would be really a good thing too. Yes, I agree. Great and we could do this for other topics. Besides sales, it could be anything. It could be an art direction or managing a difficult client situation, whatever it is, as long as enough of us feel that pain point. So you guys, as you're moving through your life, I would encourage you to do this. Everybody try to record things, study it, break it down, and hopefully over time, everybody starts to critique it the same way. That's how we know we have this shared framework of what works and what doesn't work. That's how I know it's working. That's how you learn design when everybody critiques the design in the same way. Then the teacher has done a great job of sharing what they're looking for with.