The Sales Paradox
There is an image of sales that pushes people away. It’s the aggressive, high-pressure stereotype embodied by figures like Jordan Belfort, The Wolf of Wall Street. It’s the relentless pursuit of the close, an agenda so clear it makes prospects fearful and skeptical.
This approach is built on a fundamental misunderstanding of human psychology. Chris Do, founder of The Futur, argues that it’s not only unpleasant, it’s ineffective. “I find that people who try to sell, who try to close, who have a very clear agenda that they're not really trying to help me, it pushes me away,” he explains. “It makes me to lose trust.”
This leads to a core paradox that most creatives and entrepreneurs fail to grasp.
The harder you try to sell, the fewer clients you get.
It’s a counterintuitive truth. We’re taught to pitch, present, and persuade. But these actions create resistance. When a client feels they are being sold to, their defenses go up. They retreat. The conversation becomes a battle of wills you are destined to lose. If this feels familiar, if you’ve tried to sell your services and ended up feeling slimy or rejected, it’s time for a different approach.
Forget everything you think you know about sales. To close more jobs, you must stop selling. You must start serving.
From Seller to Doctor
The first step is a mental reset. Erase the four-letter word “sell” from your mind and replace it with “help.” Your new objective is not to close a deal. It is to determine if there is a problem you can genuinely solve.
Think like a doctor. A doctor doesn't walk into an examination room and immediately prescribe medication. They start by asking questions to diagnose the issue. They work to eliminate possibilities and narrow down the cause of the pain. Is it cardiovascular? Is it neurological? They must understand the problem before they can offer a solution. Sales should be no different.
Most creatives get this backward. A potential client says, “I need some help with web comps,” and the creative immediately launches into a pitch: “I have a lot of clients that were really happy with the work that I've done and I'd be happy to work with you too. I also do brand strategy... partnering with me would be a great idea.”
This is a critical mistake. As Do points out, “You're just pitching me right now... you've asked me zero questions. How can you diagnose if you haven't asked me any questions?”
The goal is to shift your entire posture from one of persuasion to one of curiosity. Your job is not to convince. It is to understand.
- Do they have a problem?
- What is the nature of that problem?
- What have they tried so far to solve it?
- What is at stake if they don't solve it?
When you approach a conversation with this diagnostic mindset, the dynamic changes. You are no longer an adversary trying to extract money. You are an ally trying to provide help. This shift is explored in detail in Do’s lectures on The Art of Listening & Communication, where he stresses that understanding must precede advice.
This mindset shift liberates you from the pressure to perform. You are not a snake oil salesman. You are an expert diagnostician. Your job is to serve, ask, listen, empathize, and summarize. This is the new definition of sales.
The Power of Asking (Not Telling)
If diagnosis comes before prescription, then asking questions is the primary tool of your trade. But not all questions are created equal. The most common mistake is asking leading or binary questions that corner a client into a “yes” or “no” answer.
“Would you like to eat spaghetti for dinner?” Do asks, illustrating a bad question. “First of all, you're assuming that I'm hungry, that I want to eat dinner, that I want to eat spaghetti... you're driving me down a shoot.”
Instead, you must ask open-ended questions. The best questions often start with “what,” because “what” is neutral and unbiased. “How” questions tend to rush toward tactical solutions, and “why” questions can sound accusatory if your tone isn’t perfect.
In his book The Coaching Habit, author and coach Michael Bungay Stanier provides a powerful sequence of questions that are perfect for a diagnostic sales call. As Do notes, “I didn't realize this is an amazing sales coaching book... that's how I sell.”
The framework encourages you to be slower to give advice and to stay curious longer. The key questions include:
- “What's on your mind?”
- “And what else?” (This is a prompt to get more detail. Keep asking it.)
- “What's the real challenge for you here?” (This brilliant question presumes there’s a surface-level challenge and a deeper, more critical one.)
- “What would be a big win for you?”
- “What’s getting in your way of accomplishing this?”
These questions open up the client’s mind. They help the client think through their own challenges, often leading them to insights they hadn’t considered. Your role is to facilitate their thinking, not to tell them what to do. The goal is to inspire them to make a decision.
When a prospect says they need you to create micro-content, don’t jump to solutions. Ask, “What’s the pain point you want to solve?” When they say their team could do it but it would take a while, you can summarize: “So it sounds to me like you’re saying you need to be hands-off... and right now you're mostly concerned about the output. Is that right?”
By asking and clarifying, you guide the conversation and uncover the true need driving the request.
The Art of Listening (And Proving It)
Asking a great question is worthless if you don't listen to the answer. This is the second catastrophic mistake people make in sales conversations. They ask a question, and while the client is responding, their eyes wander or they’re already thinking about their next scripted question.
This signals that you don’t actually care. It breaks trust instantly.
Do advocates for a discipline he learned from coach Kevin T. Day: Full Value Listening. This means treating whatever the other person says as the most important thing you’ve ever heard. You listen with your full attention, not just to their words but to the feeling behind them.
A practical way to force yourself to listen is to take notes. Keep a notebook and write down what the client says. This does two things. First, it ensures you don’t have to rely on memory. Second, it signals to the client that their words have weight. “It’s almost as if I'm reporting whatever it is that you're saying,” Do says. “Like you're the most important person, your words matter so much I must scribe them in a notebook.”
The true test of listening is your follow-up question. If you’re really listening, your next question will be a direct response to the answer they just gave you. If you ask an unrelated question, the client feels like you’re just reading from a script. It’s a common mistake seen in podcast interviews and sales calls alike.
After you’ve listened, you must prove it. Do this by summarizing what you heard. Don't be afraid of getting it wrong. If you misinterpret something, it gives the client a chance to correct you, ensuring you're not building a solution on faulty assumptions.
Say something simple like: “Okay, let me just quickly summarize what I heard you just say. You have a full-time job, you want to get this personal brand going, but you’re not sure what to do... you need someone to take control. Is that correct?”
When you play back a client’s needs in their own language, you create a powerful moment of recognition. They feel seen and understood. It’s at this moment, not in the proposal or the pitch deck, that the deal is truly won. Mastering this is key to building the kind of influence discussed in Do's breakdown of how to influence customers.
Controlling the Conversation About Money
Most creatives are terrified of the money conversation. They wait for the client to ask for a price and then react, putting them on the defensive. This is a losing strategy.
The person who says a number first wins. This is a principle known as Anchoring. The first number spoken in a negotiation becomes the anchor, the reference point around which all other numbers are judged.
Do shares a story where a client told him they only had a budget of $10,000. Do’s partner suggested they ask for $15,000. But the $10,000 anchor was already dropped. Do felt stuck. After letting the effects of the anchor wear off, he tried a different tactic. He emailed the client: “Look, I can help you find somebody for 10, but if you want me to do it, I can do it for 30.”
He ignored the client’s anchor and dropped a new, much higher one. The client initially said no, but a few days later, they came back. “We really thought about it, we totally want to work with you, we'll make the money work.”
A powerful technique for setting an anchor without committing to a single price is Price Bracketing. When a client asks how much a project will cost, give them a wide range with big, round numbers.
“So how much would it cost to do a standard website for you?” a client might ask.
The correct response is not a detailed quote. It’s a bracket. “Without knowing more particulars, we're looking at maybe 10 to 20,000.” Or, for a larger project: “It could be 50,000, it could be 200,000. I don't know yet. Let's get into this.”
Price bracketing acts like sonar. You send out a sound and listen for the reaction. “When they don't fall out of their chair at 200, you know where your budget's coming in at,” Do explains. It allows you to gauge their budget without directly asking, a tactic he expands upon when discussing the minimum level of engagement with author Blair Enns. If they can’t afford the low end of your bracket, you can gracefully end the conversation, saving everyone time.
Framing Value: It’s Their Time, Not Yours
Clients often try to control the price conversation by asking for an hourly rate. This is a trap that punishes efficiency and expertise.
Imagine a client agrees to an $18,000 logo. Then they ask for your hourly rate to understand where the money is going. This leads to a logical dead end. If you work fewer hours, should you charge less? If you go over, should you charge more? The client wants it both ways: a fixed price with the ability to pay less if you're fast.
“You're saying to me you value this logo taking longer rather than shorter,” Do challenges. “So if I just tell you it took me four months to work on it, you will now owe me $36,000?”
The logic collapses. Charging by the hour rewards inefficiency. The real value is not in the time you spend working; it’s in the time you save the client.
Business people value time above all else. If you can deliver a perfect logo in five minutes that saves them months of revisions and gets them to market faster, is that worth less or more? It’s worth more. Your job is not to log hours; it is to deliver a result that lets them get back to running their business.
This is the essence of value-based pricing, a topic Do covers extensively in his deep dive on how to price the client, not the job. The value you provide is relative to the problem you solve for the person you serve. Think of the electrician needed for an urgent repair right before a dinner party. The more urgent the problem and the more is at stake for the client, the more valuable your time becomes.
To quantify this, Do uses a framework borrowed from the late motivational speaker Jim Rohn, who spoke of “minors and the majors.” It’s a simple idea: do not make a major effort for a minor goal, and do not make a a minor effort for a major goal. If a client stands to lose millions of dollars because they can’t connect with the right audience, is spending only a few thousand dollars an appropriate amount to solve that problem?
“It sounds disproportionate,” Do says. The investment must be proportional to the problem. By framing your price as an insurance policy against a multi-million-dollar loss, a $20,000 or $50,000 fee suddenly seems reasonable.
The Un-Sell Playbook
The old way of selling is dead. The high-pressure, self-interested approach that dominates popular culture is ineffective for creative professionals. It creates resistance and destroys the very trust needed to do great work.
The new way is rooted in generosity, curiosity, and service. It is a fundamental re-imagining of what it means to sell. It redefines the purpose of the conversation from closing a deal to helping a person.
The playbook is simple in theory but requires discipline in practice.
- Reframe Your Mindset. You are not a salesperson; you are a problem-solver. Your goal is not to sell but to help. This single shift will change how you show up in every client interaction.
- Master the Two Core Skills. Forget everything else and focus on just two things: asking and listening. Ask open-ended “what” questions to diagnose the real challenge. Then practice full value listening to prove you understand.
- Control the Financial Frame. Never let the client set the price. Use anchoring and price bracketing to establish the value of your work early in the conversation.
- Detach from the Outcome. Be willing to walk away. Recommend other people. Retreat and see if they follow. When you don’t desperately need the business, you gain all the power. Stand with the client to look at the problem together, and if you're not the right fit, say so.
Do tells a story of a coaching client who was tired of being run over by clients. He gave her an assignment: find a client she didn't want to work with and actively try to unsell them. She recommended other people and gave helpful suggestions without asking for the job. The result? The client called back later and said, “I just recommended you to two friends.”
When you are perceived as someone worthy of trust, clients will not only pay you more, they will stop talking to other people and give you the creative freedom you’ve always wanted.
It’s time to stop trying to be a salesperson. Start being the expert advisor your clients are desperately looking for.
TRANSCRIPT
I find that people who try to sell who try to close who they're not really trying to help me it pushes me away it makes me to lose trust and if that's what's happens what what you'll find out is the harder you try to sell the fewer clients you get if we walk
around we have this impression that to sell is to be like a snake then we're not going to want to do it or we're going to have a bad attitude towards doing it if you hate doing something you're not going to get good at it most business people value time time is the
most important thing I have that's it if I could do a logo for you right now and you love it in 5 minutes are you saying it's worth less than 18 or is it worth more now you know you need to sale for the sake of your business but you don't want to
feel slimy afterwards and if you've ever tried it before without much luck I want to give you a different way of approaching sales first forget everything you think you know about sales we have to do a little mental flossing cleanse the pette if you will so what we should do is we should
try to see there's a problem first is there a problem so we ask questions to figure out what the problem is now you may have a clue as to what the problem is so you do what doctors do they generally ask a couple of questions to eliminate possibilities right oh it's not brain
cancer it's not a heart problem right it's not a muscular cardiovascular thing it's not any of those things so what is it so let's ask questions hey how's it going I need some help with web comps I heard you do amazing amazing webcom yeah I really do um I have a lot of
clients that were really happy with the work that I've done and I'd be happy to work with you too I also do brand strategy if that's what you're looking for I um have helped other clients with their work and would really think that um partnering with me would be a great idea um
I love what you're doing currently your um your community is really loving you um I've seen the success that you've had in the past I'd love to um see what's going on and uh see if I can help you're new to this you're new to this I'm very new okay so first of
all you're just pitching me right now do you know that how do we feel when we're being pitched to guys not good we're being being sold again so here's the next thing okay I want you to stop selling stop selling okay you want to close more jobs start serving different s word how
can I be of service to you you've asked me zero questions how can you diagnose if you haven't asked me any questions okay start thinking about some questions you want to ask me remember our goal is to figure out is there a problem we can solve or is there a problem period to
be solved think about that you want to know my hourly rate my hourly rate's this times this so I have a question for you client why do you want to know my hourly rate I guess I want to know what I where my $188,000 is going okay so does that mean mean if
I do work Less hours I should charge you less yeah so if I go over those hours I should charge you more sure really yeah okay so you're saying to me you value this logo taking longer rather than shorter so it means if I just tell you it took me four months to
work on it you will now owe me $36,000 if it's in my budget and if if I think you're worth it but I would also ask why would it take that long to make that logo I want to put a lot of effort into it but I could hire somebody else who would
charge me the same rate but do it quicker so you value time over money then sure as a business person yeah so here's the deal I work really fast I can come up with a logo but I'm being punished for me being efficient and really good you understand the logic doesn't work now
sure that's the problem so clients can't have it both ways they can't say tell me how many hours but you can't go over it I can't put a cap on it it has to have some symmetry to the logic so if I work less you want me to pay me less so then
there's a lot of analogies that you can draw now most business people value time remember the beginning of our talk time is the most important thing I have that's it so if I could do a logo for you right now and you love it in 5 minutes or you saying it's worth less
than 18 or is it worth more now because I saved you a lot of time we can go to market right now it's worth more so charging by the hour punishes me for being good you can hire four interns straight out of school they'll charge a couple hundred bucks total and you'll wait
and then you'll say it's not right but you can't articulate to them and they don't know why and you keep waiting you keep revising and what what aren't you doing now you're not running your business shouldn't you be focused on your business so my job is this J I'm going to give you
an amazing logo that you're not going to have to change for a long time a Mark that you're going to be proud of that people going to look at and clearly understand what it is that you do that's worth $118,000 today come back to me in a year it'll be 26 who wins
who says it first or who says it second second second second second anybody say first okay this is what we're all taught cardi ship how much you how much a car cost so I can then go and low ball you right well I thought that too until I read this book that told
me that was backwards whoever says it first wins hi Chris how's it going um we have a project for you to do some branding um the uh budget is 2,000 and we'd like to start working ASAP oh my gosh when you're describing this project to me I had this delusions of grander and
not even know how to say this part it's going to make me feel a little awkward here's the thing I think I know what you want I'm just not sure I'm the guy to do it for you and I think you can get what you want done for that money for maybe even
less there's this girl I know in Edinburgh they could probably do it for a lot less however I'm just conflicted because I don't know how to do that for that budget usually we start somewhere between 50 to $20,000 or pounds so I can't reconcile this in my mind now I don't want to
say no to you cuz I like your Vibe I like your vision I like your company but I'm not sure this is going to work is there anything else that I'm missing here Sarah maybe there's more budget somewhere else if you want to work with me but otherwise I just can't take it
on what do you think that's point um but uh we have to um put some of that money elsewhere as well um we want to bring certain people on and um we have some marketing that we want to do sounds like you can't do it you probably don't need me I'm sure if
you call a few people you can find somebody else to do it for you it's just not going to be me sadly if you should talk to other people and you don't like what they do feel free to give me a ring the price is still the same but then I can help
you just out of curiosity what's motivating this conversation today what are you trying to get done we're not getting high enough sales um we're not reaching the um quite the right target audience um we want to sort of fit in with a younger Millennial Vibe here's what I heard you say you're not
getting enough sales you're not um connecting with the Right audience those are big problems to solve like if you don't fix this problem what is it going to cost you in loss of opportunity billions Millions yeah probably Millions so it's going to cost you Millions you don't fix this problem yet you're going
to only want to spend what I heard was 2,000 lb to fix the problem now I've been reading this book it's a good book by this author's name is Jim ran and he talks about the minors and the majors that he says that often times in life we get these things mixed up
that we don't want to put a major effort into a minor goal you don't want to spend millions of dollars to buy a suit that doesn't make sense conversely you don't want to make a minor effort for a major goal so if you stand to lose millions of dollars of business and every
single day is going to cost you money does 2,000 seem an appropriate amount of money to spend what do you think I think it sounds disproportionate it sounds disproportionate to me too now you wouldn't want to spend a million dollars to fix a million dollar problem cuz then the best you would get
is you would break even but some percentage of that seems reasonable and I'm a business guy I want to be reasonable too so if you could buy an insurance policy to stop this from happening how much percentage would you spend 30% 30% sounds very generous I don't think we need to spend that
much cuz 30% of a million dollar but math is really not that good I think it's 300,000 here's the the great news I can help you for a lot less than that we haven't gotten into the whole thing so I don't know all the parts and pieces that need to be fixed but
I know at least we can get started in the $20,000 20,000 lb range that does seem pretty reasonable doesn't it I find that people who who try to sell who try to close who have a very clear agenda that they're not really trying to help me it pushes me away it makes me
fearful it makes me to lose trust in this person and if that's what's happens what what you'll find out is the harder you try to sell the fewer clients you get so it's counterintuitive what should a creative who is currently pricing their work actually be looking at to measure the value of what
they do relative to the person that they're serving okay and and here's the answer it's going to seem strangely like hypocritical you should be selling time you're wait wait wait what what did I just miss something yeah you should be selling time you've been measuring time in the wrong way you're measuring time
in which you work on it not time for the client so the person who buys a service or product they have some abstract value of time so let's take it to the real world again so here I am I'm about to have a dinner party and have a bunch of guests coming over
and for whatever reason the oven or the stove isn't working and I need an electrician to come out and fix the problem for me right away way given the added urgency the importance of Who's Coming to Dinner the social standing I have within my family or with my guests all of a sudden
my time becomes really important now and I'm starting to stress out now if I happen to be a well-to-do person well-off person then the electrician who can come here and do the job is going to get a better tip and I'm willing to pay more double triple their normal rates that's the time
that matters how long You' been running your business um a year a year okay you've been in business for a year and um you I don't know if you know this but I do business coaching one-on-one right I charge $1,000 doar an hour but I'm GNA help you out how much can you
afford realistically I can't afford it not at all monetarily I'm going to give you the best price in the world I normally charge $1,000 an hour how much can you afford Z really forget about it what I was trying to prove to you is as soon as I say $1,000 an hour what
are you doing in your mind you're like oh my God that's a lot of money if I say 400 I thought a lot but now I can't say it relative to a th well so that's that's why I'm saying I can't afford it because if I know that you're charging a th000 that
means you're worth I mean I'm thinking oh okay he must be worth a thousand oh I'm worth more than that that's I'm saying so that's what that's why I'm saying well I can't afford it because I don't want to go lower than a thousand because you see what's happening there it's called anchoring
whoever says the number first you're thinking about that number right yeah if we walk around we have this impression that to sell is to be like a snake then we're not going to want to do it we're going to have a bad attitude towards doing it if you hate doing something you're not
going to get good at it so I think what we do is we need to have an alternative to Mr Jordan Belfor The Wolf of Wall Street one where it's more permission base where you're actually giving or creating value to others that feels in alignment with who we are that's led by curiosity
and given in the spirit of generosity that sounds a lot more palatable right but that's probably not the image that you have of a salesperson I would like to raise the prices but also I have a fear of losing all of my clients when you look at the money that you've made off
of this business was is the majority off of repeat business or is the majority off of oneoff projects that where the person doesn't come back they repeat okay it's difficult to raise your prices on repeat customers mhm have you TR have you raised your prices on new customers I have they still complain
all of them they still complain so raising your prices on existing customers is just a hard sell because the customer the client is used to getting what they're getting for that price and when you start saying well my prices went up because all they hear is what's the deal every time a new
client comes in you must raise your prices because guess what happens new client comes in you raise your price next month another one another one another one another one this time next year you're charging double triple quadruple what you charge today that's my thought is to see yourself position yourself as an expert
not as a service provider I think I want to focus on mindset a little bit normally i' like do this do this and you'll make four times as much money what's the biggest driver in price supply and demand supply and demand so when there's a lot of supply and little demand the price
is going to go down so this is not even about magic or deception it's just really about controlling supply and demand so when when Banksy makes a painting that's one painting if you want it you're going to pay a million dollars for it the question is how do we get there there's this
idea of mindset and I get it we feel bad when we raise prices we seek approval from others and we feel happy when when clients like our work and they want to give us more work so much so that we kind of repress our own desires and what what it is that we
want to do we repress our own values so what does it really mean to sell well it's not what you think selling is not pitching it's not presenting it's not convincing and it's not a form of manipulation the goal of sales is to inspire the prospect to make a decision not to tell
them what to do you do this by helping them to think through their challenges you don't tell you ask okay so are we talking about a video project here uh yeah so taking my long form content and creating micro content from it this is perfect a lot of people actually do call me
up for helping them out with video content so this is right up my lane and alley now I don't want to get into the weeds with you here generally speaking there's a pain point that you want to solve and I just need to know what that pain point is for you like why
why don't you just want to do this with whatever internal team you must already have I want to be hands off on this yeah I have a team I could use one of them potentially but I'd have to get all that started and get the process going and just getting them to that
level of producing at the rate that I would like I think it would take a while and I would like to just be hands off with this I see that's perfect so sounds to me like you're saying you need to be hands off you got other fish to fry it's going to take
you time to ramp up and scale up your team and right now you're mostly concerned about the output is that right yeah okay fantastic so then the other thing I just need to know and just only a couple more questions I don't want to kill you with all my questions I hope you
don't mind is this is that you're doing content now presumably and you want it to perform better than now is that a safe assumption uh well better it's actually different so I have long content right now and it's performing well where it's at and I want to move into a new domain and
take so what we have on YouTube I want to take that and then push it out to my audience and other platforms so it is a new thing so it's not even that I need it to be better it's just I need it I'd like to work and expand so what I understand
is right now you're doing zero and you anything more than zero is better is it not so sounds to me like you have some really good long form content that you want to create something that's a little more bite-sized is this going to live on Instagram or some other platform yeah Instagram and
Linkedin Chris uh you know I don't think we can afford you I'm like okay this is weird uh and I'm even embarrassed to ask you but somebody in your network and they design our identity system let me try and find somebody in my network so I go to Ben Burns I said Ben
you know I really want to do this project with this guy he's super cool we need to develop a relationship with them I want to do that Ben's like asked for 15 right ask for 15 I'm like no dude he said he can't afford this he told me 10 is what he's got
and then I went home and I was thinking about it I'm like damn it he just dropped an anchor on my face and I fell for it right so I let it chill out the effects of the anchor have wore off me I sent him an email and said look I can help
you find it for 10 but if you want me to do it I can do for 30 see so I ignore the anchor I chop that thing off I drop a new anchor 30 he's like no no no we can't afford this we can't I'm like I I knew okay fine I'll help
you find somebody okay he says sure I would appreciate that and then because now it's dropped to my super low priority list a couple days go by I'm like oh the email I need to refer somebody to this guy right I got to find somebody I'm writing the email and I'm just like
uh okay I'm going to introduce you to this person and here's their phone number and and then in my inbox Chris we really thought about we totally want to work with you we'll make the money work let's get really creative on this I like delete the email right new anchor I want everybody
who's listening to this who's in a position where your survival depends on your ability to sell I want you to rethink the word sell I just want you to change that word it's four letters let's just erase that word in your mind and just help so transform sell to help like I want
to help you and I genuinely and with full enthusiasm believe that where you have a challenge I can actually provide service so but I want to understand what your needs are I want to understand how you make decisions I want to understand what has prevented you from having success up into this point
and if I can truly help you I will if you help the other person if you in their eyes are perceived as somebody who is worthy of being trusted they will not only pay you more money they'll stop talking to other people and they'll give you more creative latitude than you've ever had
in your life so it's counterintuitive and the reason why is I I think is because in popular culture and media we have too many bad examples of what it means to sell somebody something we have the Wolf of Wall Street we have conmen con women con people who run around saying that's the
alpha prototype is sell cell sell high pressure aggressive and to me it's an old way of selling I think it works in some areas when the seller has a lot of Leverage but in most cases for Creative people it's really ineffective sales is not convincing it's not persuading it's not manipulation selling is
helping it's about being curious selling is learning selling is an act of generosity so that's a lot to remember in process so serve ask listen empathize and summarize I just want you to focus on the two key skills you don't need to know anything else if you can do the these two asking
and listening listening you'll nail this thing so focus on these two things to me when you ask a really good question it's like magic you open the client's mind and there's a great book I don't know if you read it it's called the coaching habit and there's a framework in there that Michael
bung St here talks about I'll share the questions with you but I didn't realize this is an amazing sales coaching book it's not it's about something else but in it as I read it I'm like that's how I sell this is perfect number one he says be slower to give advice ask more
questions be curious longer and here are the six or seven questions that he has and the ones that I highlighted for you is what's on your mind and then you keep asking and what else and what else and then you ask and what's the real challenge for you the next thing you need
to know is if you ask but you don't listen the question is worthless and people do this all the time and you they'll do this later today with you they'll ask you a question about what how your life is going and then their eyes will be somewhere else they don't really care so
you have to listen they're twins asking and listening so you want to do this thing that Kevin Dy talks about it's called Full value listening full value listening is whatever the other person says is the most most important thing you've ever heard you have to listen with great attention to detail with what
they're saying and to feel what they're feeling the mistake that I'm talking about here is when you ask a question they give you an answer the very next question should be a followup to the answer they gave you that's how you know you're listening and I see this happen all the time somebody
asks a question you get an answer and then just ask a totally different question unrelated to the first question because then you feel like oh I think you're reading a script right now and unfortunately this is how most podcasters interview people they have 75 questions they literally just go from question to question
so the question I'm getting to right now is what metrics matter to you so if we start creating content for you when you look at it what are you going to say like yeah it's it's working really well well it increase sales because at the end of the day I want to expand
my audience so that they convert into email subscribers so that they convert into sales so at the end of the day it would be an increase in sales okay since I don't have control over those parts what's the best thing that the video can do for you reach just reach reach oh I
would also say that if we can get those uh viewers to take action which the one action would be to convert into an email subscriber and if we can't go that far I would say at least to click on the website at minimum okay so it sounds to me if there's a certain
audience size that's looking at this and they actually just click on whatever link then the video has done its job right yeah all right so we're talking about click-through rate or something like that so do you have a number in mind as to every piece of content that you create how many views
you want to get or what kind of Engagement you're looking for um I'd have to look at my numbers I could work backwards from the click-through rate that I currently have and the views that I currently have on uh the posts they're not videos I hear that videos perform better so um reach
would be about 3,000 per post um if I could do better than that that would be wonderful and then the clickthrough rate rate is 10% 300 for every 3,000 10% clickthrough rate mhm wow you're getting some killer clickthrough rate you must have really good content right now okay that sounds pretty good it
sounds to me uh just just based on my experience that the reach could be actually higher than what you're setting but the click rate since this is new that that sounds really high like internet average and clickthrough rate is like in the low single digits here is is that your experience aligned with
that or is it different I'll have to check the actual numbers it could be lower than that but my clickthrough rate in general is higher than the average okay all right well uh I'm eager to start working with you what's going to make this a no-brainer for you to say like Chris let's
get this thing going I would love to test this out because this is something new that we haven't done before I know the long firm content works I know the content that I'm currently posting is working as well so I would love to to somehow just test this out and um I don't
know how long that would take to see results if that's a couple weeks if it's a month okay all right a couple things here so it sounds like you want to do a trial and that makes a lot of sense to mitigate your risk and I don't want to put you in a
situation where you feel like you've you're overly committed to working with me obviously I'd only want to work with you you felt like we're getting the results that you want Joe's asked for his budget what you want to do is you want to say big round numbers and you want to give them
a couple of numbers it's called price bracketing so Joe what do you do again I'm a web develop so how much would it cost to do a standard website from you without knowing more particulars yes that we're looking maybe 10 to 20,000 okay for a website yeah that was excellent delivery by the
way 10 to 20,000 somewhere and know you did a great job is that how you normally talk to your clients now I'm going to talk to them so what we're going to use big round numbers and what we want to do is we don't want to be messing around it could be 10,000
it could be 50 it could be 200 I don't know let's get into this and you're listening for the reaction that's what I'm doing it's like uh sonar you bounce the sound out you see how far the wall is when they don't fall out of their chair at 200 you know where your
budget's coming in at right and I will even say that I'm like okay cuz I know I know like a client who cannot afford me cuz you know why they're the owner and the founder if the owner and the founder calls me I know it's not going to work I already know that
too small of a company the best questions start with what what opens the discussion what remains neutral what is unbiased how questions focus on tactics and unfortunately we're rushing to find the answer how do we do this how might we solve this why questions sound accusatory if the tone isn't correct so be
careful of using why questions like I don't even know what we're doing yet but I got to tell you my minimum level engagement is $2,500 a month to work with me and that's just for me to dedicate resources so that I can do this for you and it can go on up from
there for up to 12,000 I have a client that I work with that pays me $12,000 a month so perhaps what we can do is figure out together what number feels comfortable and then design a package that will meet your needs based on your budget where are you in that Spectrum my budget
I was I came in thinking it was going to be around 2,000 okay can you that's what I would be comfortable investing in that right can you go a little north of that we're talking about a $500 difference um it's hard for me to take on clients and spend less than that unfortunately
yeah um I'm a little hesitant with that just because I've already budgeted out that but uh what type of results could I expect with with that or is this just because I was ready to test with the 2000 but a little hesitant going higher okay so if you spent $2,500 with anybody me
or some other vendor and you got certain results and we we both know this if you got something that exceeded your expectations then $2,500 would be a bargain but if it's less than what You' hold for then you would feel like it's wasting money so you tell me what results you want how
many videos do we need a post a week how much engagement and we could we could set those as benchmarks and I'll work on it so that until we get there yeah if I could have five videos a week at 2500 I would feel good about that okay five videos a week so
we're talking about doing 20 videos a month mhm okay so there's usually a sliding scale between quality versus quantity it sounds to me you want to do more quantity than quality is that the case well because my longterm content has already been you could say validated by the audience I know that there
is a type of quality that already we're bringing to the table with the video so as long as the cuts are the right cuts and chosen correctly then I don't I I feel like we're already coming in with high quality I see so you're looking for somebody to simply just take those videos
and just cut them down and not actually add a lot to it yeah I don't need it to add a lot to it but I do need someone who is going to pick really well the micro cuts that will connect with my audience that is what I'm looking for right well we could
just look at your engagement graph in YouTube and look at the analytics and just pull from there I mean it's not much of a guessing game at that point right yeah okay great so it sounds to me like what you really need is just a live human being to just grab that look
at the data and give you something I'd like to think I add a little bit more to it than that by adding titles and graphics and maybe pulling in quotes that are relevant or just recontextualizing it so it feels fresh and new and relevant CU you're talking about engagement and designing these things
for a clear call to action at the end but it doesn't sound like you need that what is it that I need then oh just somebody to cut it down oh well to cut it well cut it down cuz I I can't honestly tell you I could do five cuts or five videos
for you week one per day and really given how much I'm getting paid to to actually add all the extra stuff that I think will get you the results that you want I see so what what would in your mind give me the results that I want how many videos I think we
need to scale our way back I think maybe two to three videos a week and that way I can spend some time and also it'll give me time to think and reflect on the engagements you're getting and not just be cutting these things in advance and not paying attention to what your audience
is doing and reacting acting to yeah got it got it so you'd be more involved and engaged in not just there to cut down the video but there yeah that's what I was trying to say respond to the audience and create things that will actually get me to my goal yeah I think
that's kind of what you wanted right so that's what I heard and not just hiring an Editor to to do Straight editing work for you yeah yeah yeah that makes sense okay so does that feel like it's kind of getting you in a place where you feel really comfortable and happy about this
yes yes okay so if we did say three videos a week at $2500 a month we can try this out for 30 days and I I think what will happen in the very beginning there's a little learning curve I would be honest with you I got to still get a feel for your
content and it's probably not going to happen until Midway point so are you are you okay with that knowing that it's going to take a little time to get there yeah yeah I understand that we need that time all right and most likely what I'd like to do with you too is maybe
do um maybe every two weeks give you a report and we can have a conversation and redirect if necessary or you can say I love that give me more of that or a little less of this is that okay too mhm okay great and I got to tell you I want you to
be totally 100% comfortable with this decision because I actually like you I'd love to work with you and I know that you're a big influencer yourself so I want to make sure this is a home run for you thank you yes I feel confident moving forward okay super so I will send over
a one-page deal memo and if you're okay with that we will I'll send you an invoice and you can pay and we'll get started uh I can start as soon as you guys send me a check is that okay perfect okay fantastic thank you very much Melinda thank you if you want to
make a million dollars give 5 years of value do not ask for a single thing what happens is every time you ask for something all right so you give value if you give value you ask you drop to the bottom again you start over you're losing Goodwill the more Goodwill the more value
you create for other people the bigger the ask can be so you give value give value he said 5 years you can be a millionaire just give for give value for free for 5 years whenever you want to ask for something they will sign up people don't ask enough questions or they ask
the wrong kinds of questions instead they just want to advise their clients on what to do so they become an expert and no one likes to talk to an expert because before a client will hire you they need to understand do you recognize me do you understand me do you understand my problem
do you understand my wants and needs my fears and hopes do you understand the problem well enough before you start selling me and we all have this allergic reaction when someone meets us they reach out their hand and they're trying to sell to us immediately or giving us advice even if it's really
good advice it's a turnoff for most of us there's always exceptions to the rule unless you're a really well respected thought leader and Authority in a space where everyone comes to you advice then you can make that assumption but even still I'd strongly encourage you to ask more questions and to be slower
to giving advice now not all questions are created equal despite what your third grade school teacher told you and there are such things as dumb questions how do I know I get dumb questions all the time sometimes when we think about what makes for a really great question if we just think about
what makes for a really bad question it'll illuminate that cuz all we have to do is do the inverse of what a really bad question is what is a bad question for you well a bad question is one that's leading that's predetermined in terms of what the answer is supposed to be like
a question that says would you like to eat spaghetti for dinner first of all you're assuming that I'm hungry that I want to eat dinner that I want to eat spaghetti and you're driving me down a shoot that says I must answer in the affirmative or I might risk alienating you or offending
you and these the kinds of questions people ask all the time they're binary and they're leading so what kind of question should you ask you should ask an open question that is directed towards something that you want to learn from the person so you could say something like if you were to have
dinner tonight and hungry what kind of food would you prefer so this puts them in a state of like okay so if I want to eat dinner and if I'm hungry what is it that I want and so by asking this kind of question you can get a peak into the prospect's mind
and from that you should just keep asking more and more questions until it becomes super clear here are some examples of questions that you can ask what's on your mind what would be a big win for you what's getting in your way of accomplishing this what's the real challenge for you I love
this question because it supposes that there's an unreal or a fake Challenge and often times it's a smoke screen that somebody will present to you as the real problem what keeps you up at night around this what is open for reimagining who else needs to be part of this discussion and what else
hey Christina uh due to circumstances I I I could not control I'm in a car I'm driving through mountains and I want to make sure we get through the important part of our conversation today in the very likely event that we're going to get some interference and I don't want that to happen
wonderful that sounds great okay so tell me a little bit about what you're thinking I'm I'm trying to build my own personal brand to then leverage it to help other women that need to see somebody that represents them and is strong and is an entrepreneur and I need content I need somebody to
manage my platforms and I need to get to a lot of followers fast if you were to have whatever it is that you're describing at least in your mind what's the most urgent things let's just go through really quickly big picture like what are the components that you need to get your personal
brand launched definitely knowing what kind of content I need to post uh somebody to manage that content for me and and being able to increase my followers like by the end of the year I want to have at least 100,000 people fantastic you just gave me a lot of highlevel objectives in terms
of like just drill down the deliverables do you have an identity do you have a color palette do you have a brand Voice have you written articles and made posts and videos before none of that I'm just experimenting and seeing what works but I need somebody to be able to manage that and
ask those kind of questions lead me in the right direction okay it sounds like you need a lot of work the only thing I need to know is how how urgent is this for you I'd like to get started as soon as possible and let me just ask you this question is a
very realistic question if you don't get this thing done is there any real Financial impact to you right now no because I'm I'm fulltime employed so this isn't my only thing oh okay I see and is your employment contingent on how quickly you can set up your personal brand is still plan to
quit your job and do this full-time I think that's long term but I actually want to leverage my position uh in my company for my personal brand that makes a lot of sense okay so let me just quickly summarize what I heard you just say okay you have a full-time job you want
to really get this personal brand up and going you're not quite sure what to do with the Social Media stuff you need somebody to really kind of take control of that get this thing off your plate so you can focus on your main job and then developing the real content for your second
company there is urgency behind this but really it's because you need to get something going to build the groundwork for some eventual transition right so it initially sounds a lot more urgent but it really may not be as urgent as you think the only reason why I say that I want confirmation from
you is because if it's urgent you're going to have to spend money and you're going to have to move really fast that does not sound the case is it no okay fantastic now just based on our preliminary discussion what we're just talking about right here I need to float some numbers in front
of you because what I don't want to do is to have this this really long protracted conversation with you only for both you and I to realize that as much as we love each other we can't tie the KN because you can't afford it is that okay wow yeah okay that's actually great
okay so now I'm going to break the project down so it sounds like you need a Content strategy you need to develop probably even a brand Bible for who you are what you want so there's some visual identity stuff there's some design work that needs to be done and then we have to
kind of figure out the strategy to get you to 100,000 now while driving here I'm not driving I just looked at your account you're at 10,000 followers so you're talking like a 10x growth here yeah right and if you even break that down into months it's like this is a lot of work
to get you these people organically because we want organic growth don't hold me to this but in a ballpark in the universe that I'm in it could be as much as $40,000 to do this and probably at the low end probably like 18,000 now how does that sit with you is that for
the year that's just to get this thing going like I I don't want to make any kind of firm commitments to you I'm just telling you kind of the range of where we need to be and it could be for the year it could be in a month I do not know because
I can't know this in talking to you for 10 minutes right but the first thing is we'd probably have to do some kind of strategic brainstorming which will cost you money but there's no point to do that if you can't afford the rest right that's so let me know where you're sitting with
this that's actually way higher than I could afford I wasn't thinking Beyond four figures what does that mean how much are you talking about I was thinking no more than like 2500 oh low four figures yeah so you got to understand like this is all coming out of my pocket oh I expected
that when you said it's a personal brand the word personal implies that is is there no way to like work up to this this I mean just to be really honest with you not to disrespect you at all there's no way that I can drop even the low part of your it sounds
like we're far apart cuz I gave you a pretty broad range from 40 to 18 and you're coming at 2500 look I can get really creative but I don't know how to stretch $2500 like that just gets us through our first meeting and not deliverables I don't think in good conscience I can
recommend you even hiring me even if you have to leverage other things if you need to spend $2,500 and you think you can get this done from somebody God bless you please do it because I'm not your person and if it works out for you please tell them to call me because I'd
like to hire them too okay right so let's not waste our time here I just don't know what else I can do it could be a function of maybe you have to do this bootstrap yourself and save some money maybe buy some assets and templates I do not know but probably even from
the world that you come from in that corporate world you understand the budgets that they were working with right we're scaling it way back cuz if it were for corporate you could probably add a zero or two to the numbers I just gave you my vision for this was to bring somebody on
and work into it so work up right yeah but even at I mean I don't sell myself on a day rate but even at a $400 a day rate let's just say that doesn't buy you very many days right yeah and that's the problem there's a misalignment between your expectations and what it
costs actually to get a creative human to do this work for you so maybe it's just a recalibration but I hope you found this conversation to be productive and helpful to you maybe just as a first check a temperature check and we're way off here right sales mistake number two these people who
ask questions but don't actually listen so listening is an art and most of us are really poor listeners and we're afraid to play back what we heard to confirm with the other person because we're afraid that we might get it wrong actually if you get something wrong this is an opportunity for the
prospect or the client to correct you so that you have the right information so you're not building on assumptions that are wrong so learning how to listen here's what I recommend that you do instead of making and keeping eye contact which is what many people are told to do during a sales conversation
to give the clients your undivided attention what I would suggest that you do is to keep a notebook and write down what they're saying this signals to the client that I'm paying careful attention almost as if I'm reporting whatever it is that you're saying like you're the most important person your words matter
so much I must describe them in a notebook not leave it to chance that my memory is going to correctly recall what it is that you said and when we play back we should say something like what I heard you say was you need X by Y and you have a problem with
Z is that correct so I'm summarizing what the client had said and whenever possible I'm paraphrasing key Concepts and even the language in which they used to let them know I'm not misinterpreting I'm not trying to change what it is they said I'm just recording and if you are able to listen and
ask better questions you don't even need to hear the other three tips but focus on this so many people screwed this up Anthony is a client I'm the vendor and I push Anthony what's going to happen what what happens when I push Anthony Anthony he's going to push back much harder than I
can handle like what I was just doing with you right watch this what if I just stand with Anthony and say what are we looking at friend what is the problem we're talking about do you believe that identity systems are important not what should we be doing instead increasing productivity stles marketing range
wonderful of those which is the most important which one will make the biggest impact on your model line Siders sales sounds like you need sales help okay maybe I'm not the right person cool is that okay yeah let's save some money don't spend money on identity system correct okay are we fighting no
see how it's done yep okay you see the difference there I don't want to fight with him I don't want to fight with any of you but what you do is you're you're just pounding against him trying to win a fight that you will not win the only thing that clients will do
is what they already want to do so my job is to find out what they want to do in the case of Anthony if Identity Design does not matter to him I'm not going to do that the problem is if that's all you sell you're screwed in the case of Anthony in this
fake role play here he will not be a customer today I'm totally okay with that he might tell three other people look how powerful this is okay let's go step by step what do he do he created content consistently around his subject matter expertise creating massive no social proof people do not want
to buy from people who have never demonstrated they can do this Brian can freestyle if he has a bunch of reals that freestyle I'm like I need to book this guy to hi my parties if you create logos and you don't show that you do logos at the highest level why would anybody
hire you and he knows what sells for Fitness what sells for Fitness everybody yeah that's what he was doing soon I'll be sure less myself you know what I mean that's what he knows what sells sixpack Abell and he's got all six of them maybe eight I don't know so you have to
show the goods whatever the goods are Focus I shouldn't have drawing this you see how effective it is and now you can't stop thinking about his ads don't be afraid of playing back what you heard people generally avoid this because they're scared that they weren't paying careful enough attention and by saying what
they've heard they're only confirming what their clients have suspected I thought I was doing a great job until my coach told me you're not doing a great job and I'm like what do what do you mean and he told me how can you guess at what the client wants why don't you just
ask them what they want and after some practice we did it and it changed the entire trajectory of our company by learning this one basic technique of staying in the conversation unafraid of it taking longer than you want because it's not about expediency it's about understanding and I choose understanding over speed every
single time and it became our competitive Advantage when you give voice to a feeling or frustration you diminish the power of that frustration and that feeling you remove the intensity of it so by saying at the beginning of a conference call our process is truly to understand what it is that you want
what motivates you what inspires you so that we can come back to you with a solution that matters to you the only way we know how to do this is to ask you a lot of questions some clients find this process to be uncomfortable but it's the only way we know how to
work M and they say yeah yeah that's usually what they say like yeah yeah don't know worries and then we get into it and 45 minutes into a 15minute call we're deep into it and we're unraveling all kinds of stuff an hour and a half in thank you we don't have any more
questions do you have any questions for us now a lot of people think then when you go away and work on the pitch deck or the proposal that's where you want it the battle was one here mistake number three is related to the first two which is the the desire to close too
early you have an agenda you want to get the business and so you're so eager for the business that it doesn't even appear to the client that you're concerned about listening to them or wanting to solve a problem based on their individual needs and wants I had a person come up to me
after a workshop that he did many years ago and they said Chris great Workshop when are you going to hire me I was like woo help you take me out on a date first when am I going to hire you I I didn't even know I liked you I didn't know I was
hiring and I don't even know what you're qualified for but I know people say this as a joke but it makes it super uncomfortable for me I'm just trying to illustrate and emphasize what some of you do when you try to sell too early in life and in relationships and in business all
things are the same it says I'm desperate and I'm self-interested there's something that I want to get and it doesn't really matter what you want or what you're interested in so avoid trying to close too early I'm going to tell you a quick story this is a real story she now works for
us before she didn't I was coaching her she's like Chris I'm tired of feeling like crap like what do you mean so clients call me and they just run over me I don't feel like they respect me they don't trust me I just feel so bad I said here's what you're going to
do I want you to find a client you absolutely do not want to work with that you would hate their guts she was oh have them so she called me back 2 days later and I told her what they said when your client calls you I want you to unsell yourself I want
you to serve the clients because you don't want to work with them I want you to retreat and see if they follow I want you to recommend other people other options to do what you can for that client client call her she's like you know I just want to let you know front
I'm booked I can't and she just diagnosed the problem and she gave her some good suggestions and then the client left the client then later called called her and said I just recommended you to two friends and she said Chris for the first time in a really long time I felt respected I
felt wanted and it felt like they were going to allow me to Le engagement all of you are chasing your clients and trying to act fakely as a generous person but you're acting your own self-interest that's the problem never justify your price because justification is a sign of conceding the higher ground to
your prospect and if we just map this out to other things then you'll see why it makes sense no you're initial reaction is going to be very emotional like of course your clients need to know how you charge why you charge you got to tell the whole story but if you just pause
that thought for a second and I want to look at things and introduce this concept to you and I've talked about it before it's called the symmetry of logic where if it works one way then it should work in most other ways but if only works in one instance and every other instance
in your life it doesn't work maybe you have to question whether or not this is a truth or is just something you want to hold on to be true what's up Chris hey Mom I'm super glad you can take this call I was hoping that you could cut up one of those Banger
videos that you make that I see on your website I'd love to do that for you what's your budget I have $1,000 1,000 bucks is this video important to you I think it will be if you do it what problem does this solve for $1,000 trying to build awareness no one's walking into
the to the store okay so how much awareness do you want it to build [Music] you know I'd like to have at least two to three people walk into the store and increase of two to three people a day a day sorry a day yeah and so what kind of business would that
generate for you our average product sells for about 100 bucks so you're looking at about $200 to $300 worth of increased Revenue okay so let's say 250 we split the difference that sounds good to me times 30 days right 30 days in a month on average what does that work out to be
that's $7,500 of new revenue for you a month mhm spending $1,000 seem appropriate for $7,500 of Revenue per month it's more than 10% right a month are you going to do a $1,000 video every month maybe if you do this one good okay I'm a little concerned this is not enough money and
I I'd like to share with you um a quote I love from business philosopher J Jim Ron so it feels a little disproportionate doesn't it when you say that quote I think it does you can't just roll right into my can't just roll you can't but I mean you do business you don't
want to you don't want to overspend and there's are you going to guarantee me $7,500 a month I'm not saying that at all H I'm just trying to measure effort versus result okay when somebody comes to me and they say I don't have a lot of money to do something my first instinct
is say let's not do it it's not important wouldn't that be your instinct too yeah where else can you spend your $1,000 to make a bigger impact on your business cuz I don't want to take your money to do something that's not important is it important or isn't it I mean I think
it's important not $1,000 important I don't know don't break Mo can you elaborate on what you mean by not $1,000 import yeah like if you look at the expenses and things that you spend on personal and business where does a $1,000 rank in the things that you spend is it on the high
end or is it on the low end like how much did that refrigeration unit cost you and how much is the AC and when you wanted to do to do the Polish floors what did you spend on that and how did that have any material impact on your business you see what I'm
saying now I do and I saw the BMW parked outside the Five series The M5 and I think you see what I'm saying that was really important to you so I find that in my my life and my experience that people tend to spend money on what they value that mean that makes
perfect sense don't you think like if you like a fancy pair of pants you'll spend the money for that and if you don't you'll buy the cheaper version so when somebody comes to me and say I have a real business problem Chris and I want to spend th000 big smackaroonies on it I
think I don't think that's a real problem and let me just caution you on this I know what happens a lot of times businesses like yours see other businesses produce video and then we have video envy and then we create it just to create it to say like yeah we're keeping up with
the Joneses I don't know if that's good use of your money now in order for me to do those properly I'd probably have to spend quite a bit of time sitting down talking to you about what the purpose of the video is what your goals are and how it may or may not
work if it's going to even be targeted to the right people that's going to take a long conversation but it would seem disproportionate the length of that conversation for your time and my time to talk about a $1,000 problem what would you like to do I don't want to spend more than that
then you shouldn't but I'm probably not the person to do that for you then and I would encourage you not to spend that money with anybody not just me [Music] what would you like to do probably find somebody that can do the video for $1,000 that is your prerogative would you can you
recommend anybody yeah I hear there's a site called f r could do for five bucks thanks Chris you're welcome mistake number four you have no filter anybody with a heartbeat and some money to spend you'll take on as a client it's really important for you to be able to say you're a good
fit for us or you're a poor fit for us and in order to be able to do that you need to know under what conditions will you accept a client's money well the first thing is can you deliver value to them would it give you Joy to take on this project do you
like this person is the budget and the timeline appropriate for the things that they're wanting because often times our need to make money to keep the lights on to pay rent supersedes our ability to filter out poor fits and what it's also saying is I have no standards I'm not discriminating enough and
I'm not probably someone that you can trust notice how the highest paid people in the world are not only highly specialized in what they do that is a form of a filter notice how the most sought-after people are able to charge the most amount of money and to be able to have a
long wait list for people who want to work with them what is it they're doing they're creating sometimes artificial and real filters or barriers in order to be able to work with them and it makes us want to work with them even more so by being more selective and being more discriminatory you're
going to create the desire in the client's mind that this person doesn't need me doesn't want my business yet they still want to work with me I trust them a little bit more I need some advice okay we have a client objection that I need to overcome today at 4 so we literally
have two hours to do that okay is this a fairly large job yeah yeah it's a okay so if you were to you might be a little gun-shy too so let's start from a place of empathy and try to understand what their concerns are and why are they gun shy why are they
hesitant to pull the trigger and just not award the job and begin the whole process I think that the CEO has been burned in the past by agencies so I think that the the main decision maker the reason why he's gunshot is that he's just been burned and the way that I find
to get around this is to just ask them back for clarity what is it that they're asking us to do often times when you ask for this out of their mouths comes something very ridiculous and you're just only going to confirm that and I know that making a gigantic commitment like is a
lot maybe what we can do is then provide options like a phase engagement where we can do part of the work so that we mitigate the risk and what we want to do then is to lean in with empathy to say we understand is a large sum of money we understand and can
appreciate the fact that you've been burned before let's try to come up with a scenario where you can feel relatively safe reasonably comfortable about moving forward with us if that's what you would like to do so it's kind of putting us on the same side we're always on the same side to be
honest because remember what we've talked about before and that there are always three outcomes of any potential perspective client interaction one is they hire us which is what we always think we want to have happen two they hire somebody else and three they do nothing our only obligation is to be clear and
provide them with information so they can make a decision as to how they want to proceed I'm not trying to pitch I'm not trying to sell I'm not trying to convince you of anything so the first thing is let's try and find out what the ask what the ask is because sometimes we
hear or something and it's not exactly what it is so if you say to them can you tell me what the request is and they're going to say yes we would like for you to do some of this work without getting paid and they need to say in that in those words that
I help them realize that right and if they don't you can help I need to ask other questions questions so so what I'm hearing is the part where we put into our bid for 50k you wanted to do that work for free or some portion of that work for free is that what
you're asking me would you do that would you recommend that I go tell my bot to do that work for free okay so what kind of assurances can I make to you so that we mitigate the risk that you're feeling the anxiety what can we do alternatively I mean we've already walked in
through one case study but we kind of glazed over the discovery session what if we we did a deep dive on a case study on what the discovery session was if that's what they say they want okay I'm going to caution you here lot of people come in like I'm going to talk
about that case study cuz that's going to be it and they don't actually hear what it is that the client's saying you have to be able to listen to what they're saying right so ask what the ask is get clarity and get them to say it and the objective there is to help
them realize that may be an unreasonable request mhm and then say it back to them here's what I heard so now they can even hear the absurdity of their request you you really want red apples in the middle of the desert yep and then you can ask how do you propose we do
that how can we do this how can we make you guys feel safe no no no no not yet okay how do you propose us getting red apples in the middle of the desert how do you propose we bring our creative team to your office to run a strategy session and not get
paid for that oh I see how do you propose we do that as a business how do we do that and be sustainable you're just driving that point home that I have to help them understand that right you can also ask them where their warning signs of the last vendor who did this
that burned you I want to be really sensitive to this right it's like I had a bad feeling uh they had a really small team they they didn't have a legitimate office and then you can say okay is there anything that I'm saying that you feel uncomfortable with would you like to meet
the owner you want to meet the executive like is are there other people you want to meet would you like to come to our office or I can send I can create a virtual to so I'm just going to try and address whatever it is I want to be deeply empathetic and understanding
MH and through that people start to feel like you know this guy cares mhm so we are going to do this together how can we help you show empathy through you got to show empathy to demonstrate understanding does that help you it does okay I think I'm ready so go on this call
ask be open don't expect anything let me know what happens and then we'll Circle back and see how you did thank you sir you go in and ask a car dealership why is the car price this way try that go to Andy Supermarket ask me why does a can of beans cost $78
cents why does that head of lettuce cost 54 cents or $3 why does this green juice cost $9 go to the car wash ask him why is it $9 some of them will explain some of them will not but many of them you're like this is uncomfortable to even ask so if it's
uncomfortable for you to ask why do you think it's good for you to answer this kind of question your prices are your prices and through a series of your own calculations in terms of overhead profit margin cost of living everything that you need your level of experience your level of quality you've determined
this is your price and at this point all you can do and all you should do is present to your prospects this is the price I'm not really negotiable on the price if you don't want to work with me I totally understand cuz for every customer there's a vendor and I probably am
not the right person for you and I find that any Prospect who immediately challenges me on the price and asks me to justify I already know it's going to be a long day and I've done enough business where I'm like you know the last time I took on a client like that I
didn't enjoy the experience and I want you to reflect back on your life the last time I dated a person that asked me all these questions for me to justify myself to make me prove myself to their parents that relationship did not go well and maybe it did work out for you and
if it did by all means keep doing it we have to understand that if it doesn't apply in most cases in our life why would it apply in this one way because you know why because we're so used to answering questions justifying ourselves pleasing other people cuz we're people Pleasers we're conflict diverse
and we think every question is a legitimate question it is not not all questions are legitimate answering why is it this much or Justus ify your price it's not a legitimate question of M when you start to develop the real skills and this kind of thinking what you want to do is reduce
the 1 and half hour question down to two questions take your two best questions and ask them up front why do you need a new logo why not do nothing at all and why would you want to work with me the next mistake is people use the wrong tone of voice it's not
something that we're super mindful of espe an everyday conversation we're not paying particular attention to the words that we choose and being intentional in the tone in which we deliver you'll notice that if I were to speak really fast I'm going to do that in a second and you're going to see my
energy change just by changing the speed in which I talk so hey everybody I'm super excited to see you here today I have something to talk to you about I think you're going to get a lot of value these are five mistakes that people make what's it creating inside your mind just listening
to this your heart rate might be going up you're going to start to feel really anxious cuz why is Chris talking so fast at me right now is there something that he wants is is a house on fire is he desperate to get out of here is he in a rush and those
things signal to the client that for the wrong reasons you're not the person to trust Instead try to master your tone of voice uh Chris Voss talks about in his book never split the difference about the late night FM DJ voice speak in slow low tone of voice take lots of breaths and
it'll calm people down imagine you're driving down the PCH on a beautiful moonlit night and the the smooth jazz FM DJ voice comes on you're cruising down to PCH listening to kjzz 101 hoping you have an amazing night tonight this shout out goes to all the lovers out there and it just puts
you at ease so if you can speak from a lower register slow your voice down it calms the other person down you'll notice too if somebody's really angry and you speak to them in a slow calm deliberate voice it starts to calm them down and if you want somebody to get really excited
about something you start to speed up your voice you might even change your pitch and intonation when you chase after someone and you chase after a job their tendency is to want to run away and it happens in dating it happens in nature if you feel chased you feel threatened you feel like
the other person's desperate that there's something else at hand but what you want to do is practice something that he calls Retreat and follow every relationship this is true which is you take a half step back to see if the person's interested and they naturally will follow for example if you are at
a party or something and you just take a half step back people will move towards you if they're interested or they'll leave and we like to pursue people we don't like to be pursued so when I say you should try to kill an engagement at least three times is you say things to
make sure that the other part is really engaged
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