CLIENT ACQUISITION

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Smartest Way To Get 6-Figure Design Agency Clients

Business coach Matt Essam reveals a three-step system for creative agencies to stop competing on price and start landing six-figure projects.

Chris Do

Founder, The Futur™ · August 27, 2024

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The End of the Price War

Imagine waking up to a queue of high-paying clients, all eager for your design services. For many creative agency owners, this feels like a distant fantasy. The daily reality is a grueling race to the bottom, a constant battle against competitors who are cheaper, bigger, or simply more established. Every new project seems to trigger the same exhausting conversation about price.

If that sounds familiar, it's because you are playing a game you cannot win. You are stuck competing on metrics that turn your expertise into a commodity.

According to business coach Matt Essam, the path to six-figure projects is not about being the best in a crowded field. It is about leaving the field entirely. “Don’t keep trying to be the best,” Essam advises. “Be the only.”

Based on his experience coaching hundreds of creative entrepreneurs, Essam has developed a proven, three-step framework that his clients use to land six-figure projects consistently. It is not a collection of tips or tricks. It is a fundamental shift in how you position, communicate, and deliver value. This system is designed to make competition irrelevant, allowing you to command the prices you deserve.

The framework consists of three pillars that work in sequence: Differentiate, Communicate, and Deliver. Master them, and you will never again have to justify your prices to a client who just doesn’t get it.

Pillar 1: Differentiate and Become a Market of One

When agency owners are asked what makes them different, the answers are nearly always the same. They point to their experience, their unique aesthetic, their proprietary process, or their stellar customer service. These are all good things to have, but they are not differentiators.

Essam offers a simple test. “Ask yourself, could my competitors claim these things?” he says. If the answer is yes, then those qualities do not truly set you apart. They are merely the cost of entry, the things you do well to keep your current clients happy. They do not make you the only choice.

To break free from the competition, you must dig deeper. The key lies in a concept Essam learned from author Daniel Priestley, whose book Key Person of Influence argues that we are all standing on a mountain of value. This value is composed of everything that has happened to us up to this point, creating a combination that is uniquely ours. Exploring this is a central theme in the world of personal branding, a topic Priestley himself has discussed on a masterclass about becoming a key person of influence.

Essam uses an iceberg analogy to explain this. The tip of the iceberg, visible to all, is what most agencies shout about: their process, their client list, their polished case studies. This is where the competition is fiercest.

The real differentiation, the mass of the iceberg, lies beneath the surface. These are the things we often overlook because we are too close to them. They include:

Your Hobbies: The things you geek out on in your spare time.
Your Network: The unique combination of people you know, from mentors to collaborators to friends.
Your Experiences: The places you have been, the jobs you have held, the life you have lived.
Your Story: What brought you to this point in your career and life.
Your Worldview: The books you have read, the courses you have taken, and the beliefs that shape your perspective.

It is not any single one of these elements in isolation. “It’s the combination of these things that make you unique,” Essam explains. “Nobody else has this exact combination as you.”

This is not about picking a niche from a list of profitable industries. It is about discovering the niche that is authentically and uniquely yours. By mapping these underlying themes, you can identify a specific industry or type of client with a problem that you are uniquely positioned to solve. Essam calls this finding your 'zone of genius'.

Consider the case of Eric and Lucas of Studio Harstrom. They were running a successful but generalized studio, struggling to transition from a freelance mindset to a fully-fledged agency. By digging into their 'mountain of value,' they uncovered a shared passion for music, technology, and design. They decided to focus exclusively on the intersection of music and tech.

Today, Studio Harstrom is the go-to branding agency in that space, with a client roster that includes Spotify and Sony Music. They have done high-profile work for the estates of Elvis Presley and Whitney Houston. This hyper-focused positioning allowed them to win a project that was seven times larger than any they had landed before.

Another of Essam's clients, Sergey, provides a powerful example. Originally from Ukraine and now living in Canada, Sergey's personal story is defined by his experience learning English and navigating different educational systems. He uncovered this as a core part of his identity. Now, he specializes in working with online education businesses. His background gives him an innate understanding of his clients' challenges that no competitor can replicate. He is not just a designer; he is a partner who shares their mission because he has lived it.

This is the power of true differentiation. It moves you from being one of many options to being the only logical choice. You stop being invited to pitches against a half-dozen other agencies. Instead, clients seek you out because your unique combination of experience and perspective makes you an insider, not just a vendor.

Pillar 2: Communicate Value by Solving for Symptoms

Uncovering your unique value is only the first step. If you cannot communicate it effectively, you will still hit the same wall: price. You will deliver what you believe is a brilliant proposal, only to hear the client say they do not have the budget. They see your work as a 'nice-to-have' expense, not a critical investment.

In this scenario, you have two bad options. You can walk away and hope a better client comes along, or you can discount your services and take on a project that is destined for frustration and slim margins. Neither builds a sustainable business.

The problem is a communication breakdown. To land six-figure projects, you must become masterful at articulating the tangible value of what you do. When you succeed, clients stop treating you like a pair of hands hired to execute a task. “They treat you like a creative partner,” Essam says. “Rather than just a worker.”

Many creatives are repelled by the idea of 'active communication' because they equate it with aggressive, high-pressure sales tactics, famously satirized in films like The Wolf of Wall Street. Essam argues this is a misunderstanding. Effective communication is not about pushing a sale; it is about guiding a decision.

To do this, you first need to understand the psychology of a considered purchase. Research suggests buyers move through six distinct stages:

Satisfied: They are unaware they have a problem or are content with their current situation.
Awareness: An event occurs that makes them realize they need a change.
Toleration: They are aware of the problem but have not yet committed to fixing it.
Decision: They commit to taking action and begin assessing their options.
Action: They make the purchase.
Post-Purchase: They look for reassurance that they made the right choice.

The most common mistake agencies make is focusing all their marketing and sales efforts on Stage 4. It seems logical. You want to talk to people who are actively looking to hire a branding agency. But this is a strategic error. Essam notes that only 6-12% of your total addressable market is in this stage at any given time. This makes it the smallest and most competitive segment. When buyers are in Stage 4, their decision criteria are narrow: time, price, and quality. It is a transactional battlefield.

The strategic move is to shift your communication to people in Stages 1 and 2. Instead of joining the fray at the end of the process, you enter the conversation at the very beginning. You become the guide who helps them recognize their problem and understand their options. By the time they reach Stage 4, you are no longer a vendor; you are a trusted advisor.

How do you do this? Stop talking about your services and start talking about their symptoms.

People in the early stages are not thinking, “I need a rebrand.” They are thinking, “Why is our engagement on social media so low?” or “Why do I have to spend 20 minutes on every sales call explaining what we do?” These are the symptoms of their problem. Your service is the cure, but they are not ready to hear about the cure until they have a proper diagnosis. Your job is to become the doctor.

Essam provides a powerful quote he once heard: “When you can articulate your client’s problems better than they can, you then get permission to solve them.” This is the core of high-value communication, a skill that requires active listening and empathy as explored in The Art of Listening & Communication.

To put this into practice, Essam developed the Insight Formula, a four-part framework for crafting messages that resonate with clients in the early stages of their buying journey.

Symptom: Start by describing what they are experiencing right now. (e.g., “You're getting inquiries, but they seem confused about what you actually do.”)
Assumption: Articulate the incorrect conclusion they have likely drawn about the symptom. (e.g., “You probably assume you just need to write better copy or that you're bad at sales.”)
Problem: Reveal the true, underlying problem they have not seen. (e.g., “The real problem isn't your sales pitch. It's that your brand is inconsistent, which confuses potential customers before they even speak to you.”)
Solution: Present your approach as the logical solution to this newly illuminated problem.

This formula turns your marketing from a sales pitch into an act of empathy and education. Amanda, an illustrator and branding studio owner, used this approach to transform her business. She came to Essam with revenue between $50-60k. Within 12 months, her revenue skyrocketed to over $200k, driven by a six-figure project she won by guiding a client through this exact process.

This is not about manipulation. It is about creating 'aha' moments that build trust and demonstrate your expertise long before a proposal is ever written. You stop selling branding and start solving business problems. That is a conversation that leads to six-figure contracts.

Pillar 3: Deliver Outcomes, Not Just Assets

The prospect of a six-figure project can be as terrifying as it is exciting. Agency owners immediately worry about the increased workload, the pressure to deliver, and the potential for burnout. They imagine having to do ten times the work for ten times the fee. If you get this final pillar wrong, those fears can easily become a reality.

The solution is a profound re-framing of what a client is actually buying. They are not buying a logo, a website, or a brand guide. They are not buying your process or your time. They are buying a result. “They’re buying an end result,” Essam states. “They're buying the thing that they think branding or design is going to get them.”

This is the central idea of the third pillar: overcome objections with outcomes. To do this, you must get obsessively clear about the client’s desired future state.

Essam visualizes this as a journey between two islands. Island A is where the client is now, with all their problems and frustrations. Island B is where they want to be, their desired future. A new brand is not Island B; it is the boat you build to get them there. Too many creatives focus on building the most beautiful boat and forget about the destination. The more you understand Island B, the easier it is to design the right boat and the easier it is to justify its cost. This focus on outcomes is a cornerstone of value-based pricing.

To anchor your entire project in this outcome, Essam proposes a powerful thought experiment. Ask yourself this question: “If I only got paid once I helped them deliver that result, what are all of the things that I would need to do to feel confident that I was going to get paid?”

Answering this question forces you to move beyond deliverables and build a comprehensive process designed for success. It makes you accountable for the result, not just the output. The list of things you generate by answering that question becomes your intellectual property, the unique, repeatable system you use to get clients from Island A to Island B.

For most experienced creatives, this process is subconscious. Essam compares it to driving a manual car. When you first learn, you are intensely aware of every single action: clutch, gear stick, mirror, accelerator. After years of practice, it becomes automatic. If someone asked you to explain how you drive, you would struggle to articulate the micro-steps because they are deeply ingrained.

The same is true for your creative process. You have spent years mastering your craft, and you just 'know' how to get results. Unpacking your intellectual property is the exercise of making that subconscious process conscious and explicit. It is about documenting the specific steps, frameworks, and a-ha moments that lead to a successful outcome. This documented process is not generic. It is infused with your unique value from Pillar 1, making it something only you can offer.

Daniel, another of Essam’s clients, went through this process and developed a signature branding methodology he called 'The Unfair Advantage.' This was not just a clever name; it was a promise of a specific outcome. By productizing his expertise into this system, he was able to increase his rates by over 200% and join the ranks of agencies consistently landing six-figure projects.

This approach also prevents burnout. Jay and Andy, who run a film production studio, used this methodology to double their revenue in 12 months. More importantly, they freed up more time. By selling a clear, outcome-focused product, they worked with fewer clients on more significant projects, giving them the space to work on their own passion projects.

When you sell a result, the entire dynamic shifts. You are no longer trading your time for money. You are selling a transformation, and transformations command premium prices. You swap your services for products and, in doing so, build a more profitable, scalable, and fulfilling business.

From Insight to Income

Learning these three pillars is one thing. Implementing them is another. Essam notes the all-too-common experience of attending a seminar or reading a book, feeling incredibly inspired, taking copious notes, and then finding that notebook in a drawer six months later with nothing to show for it.

“I did that for years and years and years,” he admits. Knowledge alone does not produce results. Insight without action is just entertainment. To bridge this gap, Essam uses a final three-part formula: the Insight to Income Formula.

This is the operating system required to make the three pillars work in the real world.

Strategy: This is about doing the right thing at the right time. The three-pillar framework provides the strategy. But strategy alone is not enough.
Support: You need an objective perspective. Someone to see the things you cannot, hold you accountable, and help you course-correct when you inevitably implement things in a slightly wrong way.
Systems: You must measure what you are doing to know what is working. Without tracking outreach, proposals, conversion rates, and other key metrics, you are flying blind. Systems provide the data needed to refine your strategy.

These three elements, working in concert, are what turn a powerful idea into a tangible increase in revenue. Whether it comes from a coach, a mastermind group like The Futur Pro Group, or a trusted mentor, the combination of a clear strategy, objective support, and robust systems is non-negotiable for anyone serious about growth.

The journey to six-figure clients begins not with chasing more leads, but with a fundamental change in mindset. It requires you to stop seeing yourself as a service provider and start acting like a market leader.

Differentiate your value so you have no competition. Communicate that value by focusing on your client's true problems. And deliver that value by selling a guaranteed outcome, not just a set of files.

This is the smartest way to get six-figure design agency clients. It is not the easiest way, but it is the one that builds a business that lasts.

TRANSCRIPT

ought to be like to wake up in the morning knowing you had a queue of high paying clients lining up for your Design Services in this video I'm going to break down my proven three-step process that my design agency clients have been using to land six figure projects consistently once you master this system you won't ever have to worry about those clients that beat you down on price ever again so let's get into it so let's have a look at the framework these three pillars joined together and if you miss the first one the other two become quite difficult and they sort of work in a clockwise motion having coached hundreds of creative business owners over the last8 years and run an agency myself I know that it's really easy to feel overwhelmed often it seems like there's a million and one things that we have to do and there's lots of different people telling us lots of different strategies and so in this video my aim is to simplify this as much as possible for you in my experience these are the only three things that you really need to worry about if you want to consistently land six figure project let's look at the first pillar over here on the left now if you get this wrong it's going to be very difficult to utilize the other strategies that I'm going to talk about about today and you might have experienced getting this wrong yourself how many projects or jobs have you ever lost to the competition whether it's because they were cheaper than you or they had more experience than you whatever the reason how many times has that happened to you how many times has it felt like a race to the bottom where all you can compete on is price and all the client seems to care about is price if that's happening to you then this first pillar is probably why if you get this right it will genuinely feel like you don't have any competition and clients will start to pay you pretty much whatever you ask so what am I talking about well I'm talking about this idea that really if we want to win six figure projects with our ideal clients we have to find a way to differentiate ourselves from the competition and what does that really mean what does differentiating yourself actually look like so for me and a lot of our clients it's really about standing out from the competition and kind of being the goto agency or studio for your idal client so they're not really thinking about anybody else they're just thinking about you and if we're going to do this there are some key fundamental principles that we need to understand so let me ask you a question I want you to genuinely think about right now what makes you or your agency different and just maybe write down some of the things that come to mind initially when I've done this with creative businesses before they've said things to me like uh it's our experience it's the style that we have we make films in a particular style or we design things in a particular style that other people don't it's the unique process that we have it's our attention to detail or how our customers feel when we work with them all these kind of things and maybe that's something that you've written down maybe it's something slightly different there's a test to know whether these things actually differentiate you from the competition or not and that test is to ask yourself could my competitors claim these things and you might even want to look on their website do they use these kind of terms the things that you've just written down could somebody else say that the things that I've just written down are also the things that make them different if the answer to that question is yes then do they really make you different is that really unique or are they just things that you do well that keep your current clients happy so I learned this concept or this idea from Daniel Priestley that we're all standing on a mountain of value his book key person of influence talks a lot about this in the first few chapters and when I went through this process myself what I realized is that Daniel is talking about this idea that everything that has happened to us up until this point is uniquely valuable so when I think about what makes people different I'm really looking under the surface of the iceberg so up here at the top the thing that everybody's shouting about their process the clients they've worked with all of these things these are the stuff that we're trying to put on the surface for other people to see but really the goal the things that actually differentiate us are usually beneath the surface and we often don't even see them ourselves because we're too close to them so some examples here things that you might not think are relevant your hobbies the things that you geek out on in your spare time the people that you know in your network right how many times have you said to a client or thought to a client actually the unique combination of people that I know is really valuable the people that I call on whether they are other Freelancers or whether they are mentors or people you've learned from or maybe just friends that you've got nobody else has the same combination of people in their Network that you do right the experiences that you've had the places that you've been your story what got you here your worldview the books you've read the courses you know we could go on and on and on but these are all the things that are really unique to you and it's not just these things in isolation as individual pieces it's the combination of these things that make you unique and if you think about it nobody else has this exact combination as you your unique combination is the thing that differentiates you from everybody else and I want to talk to you about some examples so this is Eric and Lucas and they run Studio harstrom and when they first came to us they were a successful Studio they were working on some cool projects but the projects were quite diverse and one of the things that they were struggling to do was make the transition from freelance to a fully-fledged studio going through this process which I'm about to tell you a bit more detail around allowed them to win a project seven times bigger than anything else they had ever won and so for Eric and Lucas they now Focus down on the music and text base the kind of convergence between those two so they've got clients like Spotify like Sony Music they recently rebranded Elvis and Whitney Houston they're working on some really cool things and they're now the go to branding agency in that space another example like Sergey now Sergey works with education businesses and this isn't just something that he's pulled out of the air we looked at all of the things underneath sergey's Iceberg we looked at all of the things that make him unique and he's got a really cool story Sergey is actually from Ukraine originally and he now lives in Canada and his story is all about his experience learning English and his experiences in school growing up learning and this is one of the reasons that he now works with online education businesses because it's his unique combination that puts him in a position to solve a problem for those people and then what we do is we put these key themes into a bit of a wheel right and this is often referred to as things like your zone of Genius so if we look at Eric for example things that came from that were music technology design creativity all of these different things and they were pointing in the middle towards a specific person or a specific industry that had a problem that Eric and his business was in a unique position to solve and this is what we do with every single client and it's beautiful because that means you're not just picking a niche out of thin air and you're not just saying hey I'm going to position myself here it's actually based on your unique experiences it's based on things that only you can say or tell or communicate because you're not just making it up these are real world things that actually happen to you so that's pillar number one differentiate being able to stand out in a highly competitive market stop being invited to pitches stop pitching against other agencies and be a market of one don't keep trying to be the best be the only let's talk about pillar number two now this is really a segue into differentiate so you can know that you know there's nobody else like you and you have all these unique things that you offer but if you can't communicate that effect itively then what tends to happen is you have these conversations with clients where they just don't see the value of what you do so you might think you know branding is really important branding is really valuable but the client just sees it as a nice to have and you kind of got two options in that instance you either decline the project because they don't have the budget and just hope that something else comes along or you have to lower your prices and try and make the project work and that just doesn't feel great for us and usually it doesn't really allow that project to flow smoothly and it's never generally a good outcome either for us or for the client and so if we can't communicate effectively if we can't communicate the value of what we do effectively we're always coming up against that blocker that Obstacle of price and if you want to win six figure projects or even multiple five figure projects you've got to get really really good at articulating and communicating the value of what you do and when you do that clients just get it they're like oh I get this I understand the value I see this they treat you like a creative partner rather than just a worker hey we need this logo can you design some cool things for us they actually see you as a creative Problem Solver so the second pillar is all around how we communicate our unique value once we've uncovered that value how do we communicate it to our idal clients so that we get treated like a creative partner and get paid what we deserve one of the easiest ways to gain more traction and to eradicate this inconsistency is to be more active now when I say that to creative business owners they all pull a funny face which basically says I don't want to do that and I think this guy is to blame if anyone's seen Wolf of Wall Street you'll know this idea Jordan Belford sell me this pen I think sales and active communication has got a bad rep because so many people have sold to us poorly and it's made us feel really uncomfortable and it's made us think that's what sales is but I want to show you something and I want to show you a technique that will allow you to be more active in your communication without being salesy and without feeling spammy and without being that person who's just sell sell sell so before I do that you've got to understand how how humans make decisions about a considered purchase and so the research suggests that there's kind of six parts to a decision or the decision-making process and you've probably been through these yourself you start at stage one where you don't really think that you have a problem or you're kind of satisfied with the current solution then something happens and you become aware that you need to change so let's take like buying a new phone as an example maybe you're happy with your phone but then you drop it and the screen cracks right you become aware oh no I've got a problem I can't see my phone properly then a lot of people myself included will kind of tolerate that crack screen for a while it's just about all right and then maybe it gets a little bit worse and we're aware there's a problem but we haven't actually yet committed mentally to fix that problem and decide to take action and that's kind of stage three right we say enough is enough I don't want to walk around with a cracked phone screen anymore I'm going to go out and I'm going to fix this and we look at what are the options well how much is it going to cost me to get a new screen should I maybe just upgrade the phone am I actually really Happ happy with this iPhone or do I want to switch to Android and we start researching we start assessing our options once we've done that to the point where we feel comfortable making a decision we do the thing we buy the screen we upgrade the phone and then weirdos like me you buy the thing and then you go back onto YouTube or the reviews and you keep watching them just to make sure that you've made the right decision right this is how most of us buy now the problem is when I say to people hey be more active what they do is they go out there and they want to talk to people at stage 4 this seems most logical it seems like hey if somebody out there is thinking about doing a Rebrand I want to speak to them the problem is stage four are one of the smallest markets out there so the research suggests that maybe only 6 to 12% of the entire Market the addressable Market out there is at stage 4 I.E assessing options and think about when you're at that stage what are some of the criteria that you're using to decide who you should buy from most people are predominantly using the criteria of time price and quality how quickly can I get this thing how much is it going to cost and is it any good right so we're kind of in this space when we're communicating with people at stage four where it's one of the smallest Market hits the only things that we can adjust are time price and quality and if you think about it that's where everybody else is trying to get the attention it's one of the most competitive markets get to the top of Google you can witness this yourself if you've ever seen one of those posts on social media hey do you know anyone who's great at branding and within 5 minutes there's like a 100 recommendations that is stage four that's what stage four is like so what do you think would happen if we were active AC ly communicating but instead of communicating with people at stage 4 we were communicating with them at stage one or stage two and we were helping them to get to stage 4 we were helping them to assess the options and we were helping them to actually make the right decisions based on their problem well I can tell you what happens based on some of the experiences that my clients have had and they are incredible results so I'm just going to skip through a couple of slides like Amanda um Amanda is an illustrator and a a branding studio and it was amazing because when she was working with us she came to us at a revenue range of about uh 50 to 60k which is a little bit lower than we usually accept people to work with us but I could see Amanda's potential and we took her on as a client and in less than 12 months her Revenue was over2 200,000 for 55 to 200,000 and one of the biggest drivers for that was this sixf fig project that she won and the reason she was able to do that is because she became aware of this decision-making process and she used something that we teach called the onepage sales system and she was really able to uncover that client's problem and take them on that journey to demonstrate the value this works as well I'm using will and Ryan from press record I'm talking about film now because I want you to see that this actually works for multiple different disciplines not just for design clients so these were some numbers that they threw out in terms of their largest proposals because they really started reaching out getting really active reaching out to people but getting them at the right stage so the question then becomes okay Matt how do we get people at St stage 1 and two instead of stage four if this is what it results in and the idea is quite simple but maybe slightly more difficult to implement and the idea is to actually stop talking about your services so don't keep going out into the world saying hey we're a branding agency does anyone want branding because people at stage one and two aren't thinking about branding it's only people at stage four that are really thinking about branding so instead we want to go out into the market and we want to talk about symptoms okay so what are people experiencing that's what people at stage 1 and two will connect with their experience not the end product that you're selling and this is one of the fundamental shifts that our clients make that really changes their gear and allows them to start winning those higher value clients and higher value projects so what does that look like in Practical terms it looks like becoming a guide it looks like not just being a pixel pusher it looks like being a creative partner and one of the ways that we can take people from stage one and two by connecting with them and moving them through that process is by something that I have been practicing for a long time which is to be able to articulate their problems better than they can so I had this great phrase a while ago and I'm really sorry to whoever said it because I can't remember who it was but they said to me when you you can articulate your client problems better than they can you then get permission to solve them and that's always stuck with me I've always thought to myself how can I continuously articulate things in a way that people understand and haven't been able to articulate themselves and that is really the process that we're talking about here connecting with people at stage one and two and bringing them to stage four is the thing that allows you to position yourself as a problem solver and position yourself as high value so I will tell you the system that I developed in order to do that and I call it the Insight formula this took me a while to work out but it works this is what we teach all of our clients so people at stage one and two are focused on the symptom okay they know what they're experiencing so it's the difference between understanding that you have a headache and not knowing why like you're aware of the symptom versus getting to the point where you figured out why you have a headache and you now want to go and buy new glasses cuz you know that's what's causing the problem or you want to go and buy a paracetamol okay we don't want to advertise the glasses because those people don't know they need glasses yet we want to advertise to the symptom okay so think about yourself like a doctor so what are they experiencing right now then the second part is what do they assume about that thing okay so if you're in branding maybe the symptom they're experiencing right now is they're getting low engagement on social media or they're getting inquiries but people are a little bit confused when they come to them about exactly what they do and they're having to spend a long time on sales calls explaining what they do to people and that's the symptom they're experiencing what's the Assumption well they might assume that people just don't understand their product well enough because they haven't communicated it in their copy or because they are bad at sales or some of these things and the more you call these assumptions out the easier it is for you to get this person's attention and build their trust cuz they're like oh actually that is exactly what I was thinking once you've done that you then highlight the problem to them it's like it's not about your messaging the real problem is is that you don't actually know your ideal client well enough to be able to articulate the things that they are struggling with or your brand is inconsistent and therefore it's confusing people and then you can present a solution okay so this works with pretty much any industry and there's a skill to it and there's a knack to it but once you get it it really works and once you can do this consistently you will be able to position yourself as a creative partner the best way to find this information and the best way to do this is to have as many conversations as possible and really just listen what are people's beliefs about the symptoms that they're currently experiencing why do they think they are experiencing these symptoms and then you can start to fill in these gaps and then you can start to challenge some of this thinking so that's part two how we're able to communicate the value of what we do effectively it's about about being more active with our communication and it's about communicating at the right stage of that buying process by switching your services what you sell for the symptoms what your client is experiencing so let's talk about the final pillar deliver often when I talk to clients about this idea of Landing a six-figure project or a six-figure client they get worried cuz they feel like it's going to be more stress for them like oh God how are we going to deliver that or that sounds like a lot of work every project requires these big complex proposals and would I have to deliver 10 times the amount of work and I don't know if how team can handle that and all of these things and if you get this part wrong that can very easily happen and it can very easily lead to burnout so this final pillar is really important once you've been able to differentiate yourself against somebody else and communicate the value of what you do and you actually get to the point where you're going to get that project across the line it's really important to master this so you don't burn yourself out and you can actually do what Eric did from Studio harstrom which is take a month out of his business and come back and everything still be running fine because he had this pillar in place the key concept the key idea that I really want to share with you here is we want to overcome objections with outcomes and what I mean by that specifically is we have to understand as creative service providers that people aren't really buying branding they're not really buying the thing that we sell or the skill set that we've built what they're buying is they're buying an end result they're buying the thing that they think branding or design is going to get them and the more we can understand that and the more we can understand specifically what that outcome is is that they are trying to achieve the easier it's going to be for us to deliver that project in a way that blows them out of the water that doesn't cause more stress for us that doesn't overwhelm our team so I like to think about these two Island when I'm speaking to clients and when I'm educating people around this process I've spoken about this before but I think about these two islands Island a is where they are now and Island B is where they're trying to get to this is kind of the future now I know this is kind of basic stuff but not enough people spend the time to really understand the desired future state of their ideal clients it's not we want a new brand that's not their desired future State it's what they think that new brand will get them and in this process of speaking to the client and communicating your value understanding that outcome that desired future state is one of the most important parts and the reason it's one of the most important parts is because the more confident you are that you can help them achieve that the easier it will be for you to get them as a client and the easier it will be for you to create case studies to get more of those kind of clients so the question that I ask myself and our clients when I'm thinking about these two islands and this desired future state is once they tell me what they want the client wants the question then becomes if I only got paid once I help them deliver that result what are all of the things that I would need to do to feel confident that I was going to get paid I'll say that again once I know that outcome if I was only going to get paid when I help that client deliver the outcome what are all of the things all of the steps in the process all the things that I would need to do with them and all of the things that they would need to have in place for me to feel confident that I was going to get paid or said another way to me for me to feel confident that I was going to get that end result and this informs your process we talk about in unpacking your intellectual property this is really about getting all of that stuff out of your head how you create results for clients how you get them to where they want to be and making sure that is down on paper it's documented it's put into something that you and your team and everybody around you can actually understand and it's not just kept up here where most of our ideas are kept and this process can feel quite strange because it's a little bit like for those of you that drive stick as you say in the States but drive a manual car like we we say in the UK you'll know that when you first started learning to do that it felt like there was a million and one things to do I have to change gear I have to put the clutch out I have to look in my rearview mirror I have to turn the steering wheel all of these different things happening at once and it just felt totally overwhelming but eventually you learned and you got to the point where you didn't think about those things it just happened subconsciously so once you've been driving for a period of years if someone said to you can you explain to me how you drive this car what are the steps as you were doing it it would feel really weird and uncomfortable because it's all happened it's a subconscious process and this is what's happening for most of us as creatives we've spent so many years mastering our craft we just get really good at what we do and someone says to you well how do you design a logo or how do you Rebrand someone and you kind of like um well I've got this process roughly that's like Discovery and then design and then concept and it's all kind of a bit generic but like what are the actual steps in the process of getting this person from A to B and that's your intellectual property that's how you get clients results and it links to your differentiation because the way that you do this will be slightly different to the way somebody else does this because they don't have the same things underneath that iceberg that you do so let's quickly talk about Daniel when Daniel did this process he came up with something really cool called the unfair advantage and this became his branding process the unfair Advantage was the outcome that he was promising his clients and to get them an unfair advantage to help them stand out in the market there were some specific steps that he took people through and as a result of this he was able to increase his rates by over 200% and Daniel is now one of our clients that is in the six fig project Club this was an incredible thing for Daniel because he started to really understand the power of getting obsessed with the outcome not just the process Jay and Andy run a Film Production Studio and in 12 months they were able to double their uh Revenue but more importantly they were able to actually free up more time so by doing this by going through this process they were able to free up more time than they had before so they had less clients and more time which meant that they could work on passion projects so we have to understand that clients are actually buying a result and we need to sell that result we need to package that result swap our services with products so I'm curious out of those three which one would you say is your weakest point right now because this is a clockwise process and these three things all work together you have to be able to do them all together in order for this to get you the kind of clients that you want to get at those projects rates I would love to know in the comments below what were your biggest insights from this video and speaking of insights how many of you have ever watched a video or read a book and you got loads and loads of ideas loads of insights loads of things popping off in your mind you took loads and loads of notes and you were like I'm going to do this in my business I'm going to do that in my business and then you found that notebook full of notes in a drawer about 6 months later and you realized you had done absolutely nothing with it if you answered yes to that you are very much like me I did that for years and years and years I went to hundreds of seminars I spent tens if not hundreds of thousands of pounds on coaches and mentors and courses had all these insights I thought to myself how do I turn these insights into income and over the years I have found a bit of a formula you've probably guessed by now that I like the power of Threes And so I just want to leave you with something if you're watching this video I want to leave you with my insight to income formula how do we take these ideas and actually make sure they make us more money not just give us more knowledge so today we talked about the strategy right that's doing the right thing at the right time and by the way you can do the right thing at the wrong time and not get the result you want so it's really important that we've got a strategy that gets us the right thing at the right time but if it was just enough it was just enough to watch the video to read the book then we would all be exactly where we want to be in business so we also need support we need people to be able to see things objectively see things that we can't see we need someone to be able to turn to when some of these strategies inevitably don't work or we've implemented them in slightly the wrong way how do we make sure that we're implementing these strategies in the right way how do we have someone to hold us accountable to doing these things and then finally we need systems in place to actually measure whether this thing is working or not if you're not tracking how many proposals you sent out if you don't know how many people you've reached out to if you don't measure all of these things how do we know what's working and what we need to change and so there's lots of ways that you can get this but you really need these three things in your business there are some great resources below there's the future PR group the accelerator which I highly recommend you checking out which gives you all of these three things if you've enjoyed this video and You' like some onetoone support I currently have three spaces left to support people implementing the system that we've just been through there's a link below you can click on that and you can apply to work with me I hope you enjoyed this I hope you got value from today if you did please let me know in the comments and as always don't forget if you're not subscribed to this incredible Channel hit that subscribe button and you won't miss the valuable content that is here thanks for watching my name is Matt Assam and you've been watching the future

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Length: 32m
Views: 18,338
Topic: CLIENT ACQUISITION

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