Proposals and pricing

Ben: 00:00:00

What am I saving you for?

Ben: 00:00:01

If I'm saving you for something, then I may just go away.

Carlos: 00:00:04

Oh, no.

Carlos: 00:00:05

Saving me from trying to shoehorn an anecdote that, I was about to share with everyone while I was filling in.

Ben: 00:00:12

Filling the void.

Carlos: 00:00:18

Today we are talking about proposals and pricing.

Carlos: 00:00:22

That is the theme.

Carlos: 00:00:23

It's inspired, by Hazel coming onto last week's podcast where we're talking about pricing and value, with Beccie D'Cunha.

Carlos: 00:00:31

And she shared with us, and I really appreciate you being honest and sharing this with us, a situation where she was writing a proposal or she's written a proposal, send it off to a client, and is in the third phase of conversations, or has actually had the third conversation.

Carlos: 00:00:46

She was conscious of that conversation, maybe about negotiating her price.

Carlos: 00:00:49

And there's some things about ri or maybe I should put a higher price and just like, you know, what the, what the price is and how do I describe the value, blah, blah, blah, blah.

Carlos: 00:00:56

There's some specific questions that she was asking that we addressed in the last episode.

Carlos: 00:01:01

So if you're interested in that.

Carlos: 00:01:02

But what that for me, sparked an interest is because this is one of the things that we talk about on the course and I've learned from Ben, is just this whole thing about proposals and putting prices in proposals.

Carlos: 00:01:14

And something that was linked to that is also because one of the, the thing that, Hazel was offering is a, I call it product, is already a package service.

Carlos: 00:01:22

and I later already has a price, but I think there was something here around selling products, which is very different to selling our time.

Carlos: 00:01:32

And so there's thing about putting prices in proposals, selling products, and I think they're kind of blended in some way.

Carlos: 00:01:39

There's a connection here that I thought we could explore.

Carlos: 00:01:42

So if you're, if you are trying to write a proposal at the moment and you're trying to work out what price to put it in, I hopefully we've got something for you here.

Carlos: 00:01:48

And if you're selling a package service or a product and you don't know what price to put on it, hopefully we'll have something for you here.

Carlos: 00:01:55

Before we kick off, I think it would be very helpful for people to know a bit more about you, Hazel.

Carlos: 00:02:00

So, Describe, however you want your role or what you do and I would say, who is it you love to help and what is it you love to help them do?

Hazel: 00:02:09

Do you know what?

Hazel: 00:02:09

I was actually exploring that with, the client I was just coaching, because, this was her first session and I said, well, what do you think coaching is?

Hazel: 00:02:18

And she gave a really good answer actually.

Hazel: 00:02:20

I align that to, having a sports coach.

Hazel: 00:02:23

So, if you're a top athlete, you have a coach to help you improve and a coach, will help you figure out the stuff alongside you.

Hazel: 00:02:32

What's holding you back?

Hazel: 00:02:33

And enable you to see different perspectives and figure out what's really important to you.

Hazel: 00:02:39

And, ultimately it's about, your true potential, whatever your true potential is.

Hazel: 00:02:44

and I was using phrases like trusted advisor, sounding boards, or that's what the client was using.

Hazel: 00:02:49

And I said, yeah, it's true.

Hazel: 00:02:51

So the people I love to work with are ultimately it's people that want to make a difference in this world.

Hazel: 00:02:57

so I'm very connected to people who are heartfelt.

Hazel: 00:03:01

It's not just about the money.

Hazel: 00:03:02

It's about, yeah, how can I genuinely make a difference to this world?

Hazel: 00:03:06

Or it could be a local community.

Hazel: 00:03:08

So my background's charity sector, not-for-profit.

Hazel: 00:03:12

I did work in a bank, but it was not-for-profit, part of the bank.

Hazel: 00:03:16

And I've always, been very closely connected to people who want to have deeper and meaningful conversations, like exponential crisis and all the rest of it.

Hazel: 00:03:26

because these are the things I find interesting to talk about, Mental fitness is one area I love, because people know how to get physically fitter.

Hazel: 00:03:35

you go to the gym, you go for a run, you move your body.

Hazel: 00:03:38

but people are less aware of what they can do to change their mental fitness, especially with all that's happening in the world, You know, if you look in America and all the trouble in America, you know, that impacts on us is, in our nervous system and how we show up.

Hazel: 00:03:53

So I've got a real passion for mental fitness, which is actually about the program, we're talking about with pricing.

Carlos: 00:04:00

So we have this, I feel now we have the backstory of what motivates you and what drives you to do the work you do.

Carlos: 00:04:06

And it sounds like, well, I'm hearing the intention that you have for the people that you wanna work with.

Carlos: 00:04:12

Now, sort of like sitting into the kind of, the situation at hand, or maybe not at the moment, 'cause it's a moving, kind of evolving space it sounds like.

Carlos: 00:04:20

But maybe talk us, remind people where you were at just briefly in terms of, how you got to pitching, you know, in the first place and presenting this proposal and a little bit of how you went about putting the proposal together.

Carlos: 00:04:35

and the price actually.

Hazel: 00:04:37

Yeah.

Hazel: 00:04:37

Okay.

Hazel: 00:04:38

I got to meet this, um, dad, through my local school, primary school, through my kids.

Hazel: 00:04:43

We just got talking about coaching and his company had invested in BetterUp.

Hazel: 00:04:48

we got talking about that and, the fact that I was a coach and, I was asking the question, you know, Would you invest in a coach who hadn't necessarily been a chief exec level, 'cause I've never been a chief exec.

Hazel: 00:05:00

I've, you know, in a big company anyway.

Hazel: 00:05:03

And he said, yeah, absolutely.

Hazel: 00:05:04

I don't see why not.

Hazel: 00:05:05

You don't have to have run a CEO business.

Hazel: 00:05:08

And then we got talking about mental fitness and, we went for coffee a couple of times and I talked about this program that I'd been on myself, I'm very open, been sharing my own experience of mental fitness.

Hazel: 00:05:21

and my own journey with it.

Hazel: 00:05:23

And, he said, oh, that sounds really cool, really interesting.

Hazel: 00:05:26

I'll put you in touch with my HR partner in the company.

Hazel: 00:05:30

So we organized our virtual meeting, and that was very much about getting to know me, getting to know the product, mental fitness.

Hazel: 00:05:40

it's a six week goal.

Hazel: 00:05:41

It's usually a seven week program.

Hazel: 00:05:43

after that first session, you know, what would be the price?

Hazel: 00:05:46

We need to have an indication of price because we don't have the budget allocated.

Hazel: 00:05:50

So we need to free up budget within the company to allocate to this.

Hazel: 00:05:55

I looked at the current pricing, which is 995 US dollars 'cause it's an American product, Cognitive behavior, positive psychology.

Hazel: 00:06:05

it is basically looking at all the psychology and going, Hey, performance psychology, you know what, what helps people be mentally fitter?

Hazel: 00:06:13

it's an app on your phone, which you download and it gives you exercises during the day to interrupt your day to help you refocus.

Hazel: 00:06:22

I'll look to that price, which converted to UK is 825 pounds the last time I looked.

Hazel: 00:06:28

And they wanted to pilot it with five of their senior leaders, and they wanted to have coaching alongside the product and, weekly facilitation.

Hazel: 00:06:39

So I'd be facilitating, basically, uh, there's a video that they watch.

Hazel: 00:06:44

so I'd be facilitating the video session.

Hazel: 00:06:47

So I thought, well, what's my time worth?

Hazel: 00:06:49

for three sessions or six sessions plus a group session.

Hazel: 00:06:55

So it works out at seven group sessions and then either six, six times five coaching sessions or three times five coaching sessions.

Hazel: 00:07:03

so I kind of take the eight to five.

Hazel: 00:07:05

I times it by five, and then I looked at my time and what I would value myself out at.

Hazel: 00:07:11

I think I got to, I can't remember what I got to.

Hazel: 00:07:14

I think it was either two, 200, I don't know, or half an hour.

Hazel: 00:07:18

I might have put less actually.

Hazel: 00:07:19

Uh, so the first price I put has, I think it was 8,000, 8,000 209 5, and the second price for the three sessions, I think I put in as three, sorry, six, something.

Ben: 00:07:31

So, how big are they in sort of numbers, money, people, any of those kind of things?

Hazel: 00:07:35

I haven't actually looked at total number of employees, but they are global.

Hazel: 00:07:40

Uh, so this is a UK arm.

Hazel: 00:07:42

And my understanding is, you know, I haven't looked at the numbers of the company, truth be told, but they're very big.

Hazel: 00:07:50

They're well known.

Ben: 00:07:51

And I guess just one other question.

Ben: 00:07:52

so the initial conversations you were having with the MD around coaching, they were specifically around the benefits of the product, yeah?

Hazel: 00:08:02

Yeah, I mean, it's basically being pitched around leadership development, So, I mean, it wasn't the MD I was speaking to.

Hazel: 00:08:08

It's actually the equivalent of the sales director, And it was very much pitched as, you know, I want our leaders to excel in mental fitness.

Ben: 00:08:18

I mean, do you have a kind of feeling for the likelihood of, of this proposal being successful, this sort of sales sequence being?

Hazel: 00:08:24

Um, I mean, I had a third call, um, last night, and, um.

Hazel: 00:08:30

I don't know.

Hazel: 00:08:31

She said I feel slightly embarrassed the fact I don't have an answer for you, Hazel, and I don't like taking up your time.

Hazel: 00:08:37

You've already given up a lot of your time And she's basically writing up to present back to the person I know around what her proposal is.

Hazel: 00:08:48

And I know that the dad, I bumped into him on the street and he says, oh, Hazel, by the way, I've picked some budget approval.

Hazel: 00:08:54

We're talking about you this morning.

Hazel: 00:08:55

I've put, I've tried to, request budget for the, I, I really don't know.

Ben: 00:09:00

So I guess the first thought that I had is that, it kind of feels a little bit like, there's potentially things going on that you don't fully know, right?

Ben: 00:09:08

sort of stating the obvious in a way, like there's a sequence of conversations or thinking, which has maybe been started by you having the first conversation with them, which turned into the conversation with their HR people.

Ben: 00:09:20

And at some point someone's gone, well, if we're spending money on that, then maybe we should be spending money on this.

Ben: 00:09:25

I think this is more of a general thing around the sales journey more than it is about the price bit.

Ben: 00:09:31

Because I think they kind of, they feel quite sort of, there are potentially two quite distinct sort of challenges in this situation.

Ben: 00:09:37

One is around how this is sold and the other is the price that ultimately goes on the label and how you arrive at that figure.

Ben: 00:09:44

So I think this bit for now, it's just really on the selling, the selling side of it And of course it's very difficult selling, when there's a whole range of things that we don't really know about.

Ben: 00:09:54

and also then by extension it's also very difficult pricing if there's a whole range of things that we don't kind of know about.

Ben: 00:10:00

'Cause in a way, the price is just the sum in a sense of, you know, the value of what we're selling to who, and by the value of what we're selling in terms of the, being clear about the thing that they're buying.

Ben: 00:10:11

So it feels that there's, that you kind of, you are operating a little bit blind because there clearly are other things which have been brought into the process, which you didn't know about.

Ben: 00:10:21

And that also then just kind of vers the, the difficulty of really writing a proposal if we don't really know all of the things which are kind of ultimately sort of important to them.

Ben: 00:10:32

And so I think that this would be just a, a kind of more of a kind of process point of view of the, how you would go through the journey at, you know, at a a, if this situation sort of arises again, how it is, you can go through a journey so that you understand the, the kind of key considerations before you would get to the point of writing a proposal.

Carlos: 00:10:53

What springs to mind is, through an, a sister community called Better Bolder Braver, I learned about this idea of the journey of consciousness of a customer.

Carlos: 00:11:01

And I'm linking this to what I'm hearing was a lack of clarity and maybe whether that's due to lack of information that's been given to you, Hazel, or lack of internal clarity as to what is it we're trying to do here with this money.

Hazel: 00:11:13

Mm-Hmm.

Carlos: 00:11:13

And with the journey of consciousness, there's going from this idea of problem unaware, I don't even know I got a problem to solution aware or fully aware.

Carlos: 00:11:22

I know what the solution is, I know what the problem is.

Carlos: 00:11:24

I know what we need to do about it.

Carlos: 00:11:26

From my understanding, the best place to be when you're selling something is that endpoint, they Know what the problem is, they know what the solution is, and they're just wanting someone to help them do that.

Carlos: 00:11:35

So there's that kind of like, it was very, I, I found hearing it, my sense was people, these people or the people making a decision, the HR person who isn't necessarily making the decision isn't fully clear.

Carlos: 00:11:48

And so the person she's gonna report to might not be fully clear either.

Carlos: 00:11:51

So there's this thing of like, what, how much do they really know what problem they're trying to solve?

Hazel: 00:11:55

Mm-Hmm.

Carlos: 00:11:56

And, and so with that, there's the, you know, what, what is the outcome that they're trying to create?

Carlos: 00:12:02

And that then talks to what Ben was saying, like, that outcome, without knowing that outcome, it's hard to put a number on it.

Carlos: 00:12:09

Actually, and the final thing is when Ben was talking about what are people buying to break it down Sim simply, simply at the moment, they're either buying an outcome or an experience, and maybe the experience is an outcome.

Carlos: 00:12:19

But in a sense, I could think, I could simply put, alright, the positive intelligent program is an experience.

Carlos: 00:12:26

It's an experience where you actually connect and there's something personal about it.

Carlos: 00:12:30

And the BetterUp there's an outcome, less people leaving the work and less people being unproductive in a sense.

Carlos: 00:12:37

there's a very, simple tangible outcomes that they're trying to explain on their landing page.

Hazel: 00:12:42

Yeah.

Hazel: 00:12:42

So I mean I went through the BetterUp process.

Hazel: 00:12:44

so I was a coach with BetterUp, but I chose not to follow through because the p to the coach is actually not great.

Hazel: 00:12:50

And I didn't want to be a number.

Hazel: 00:12:53

I felt like I'd be a conveyor belt factory machine, so I, I decided to bail out of BetterUp.

Hazel: 00:13:00

But bottom line, I'm a coach BetterUp employee coaches as associates.

Hazel: 00:13:04

I know their business model.

Hazel: 00:13:05

They're global.

Hazel: 00:13:06

They've got a lot of tech sitting behind it.

Hazel: 00:13:08

They've got a lot of investors sitting behind it.

Hazel: 00:13:10

This positive intelligence for me is it's a combination of things.

Hazel: 00:13:17

So it's enabling someone on a daily basis to interrupt their thinking patterns.

Hazel: 00:13:25

'Cause it's our thinking patterns that get in the way.

Hazel: 00:13:28

So the app is a prompt to prompt someone daily to consciously choose at the beginning of a day what am I consciously choosing to focus my mind on?

Hazel: 00:13:40

Because in a given day, we are throwing stuff, you know, whether it's emails, phone calls, I don't know, a difficult conversation.

Hazel: 00:13:49

And it's almost consciously bringing to mind on a daily basis, okay, who, who's the person I want to be in this workplace?

Hazel: 00:13:57

So for me it's enabling someone to have that prompt, supported by evidence space.

Hazel: 00:14:04

So Shazad has a video you watch, it's an hour, so it's educating the employee or the person, the stuff that gets in the way, so it's training combined with coaching.

Hazel: 00:14:16

So not only are they getting the insight, they're also getting, well, how do I apply this?

Hazel: 00:14:20

So I coach people, but I take them through positive intelligence.

Hazel: 00:14:24

So I'll bring that into my coaching so they don't have to do the app.

Hazel: 00:14:29

But when I quiz 'em, I mean, I'm very coach-like when I'm interacting.

Hazel: 00:14:36

So my questions were, well, what's the challenge you want to solve?

Hazel: 00:14:41

What's your biggest challenge you want to solve?

Hazel: 00:14:44

And it was one around productivity.

Hazel: 00:14:46

And then I quizzed them around, well, what else are you looking at?

Hazel: 00:14:51

You know, what else is important for you to consider as a business?

Hazel: 00:14:54

So I was trying to be very open question and to ascertain what was truly important to them.

Ben: 00:15:02

What did they say?

Ben: 00:15:02

Just outta curiosity when you asked that?

Hazel: 00:15:04

It was three main areas.

Hazel: 00:15:06

so they're very aware because of covid and hybrid working that they haven't actually been in person for a long time.

Hazel: 00:15:13

So they wanted to create an event where they got people together in face-to-face situation.

Hazel: 00:15:18

And they had a very informal way of interacting rather than a formal, official way.

Hazel: 00:15:24

So that was the first thing.

Hazel: 00:15:25

The second thing was they recognized that actually to improve as a company needed to be, there was something around talent retention.

Hazel: 00:15:33

So they noticed that talent was leaving quickly, and the company, so they were coming in maybe being trained up on, under a scheme, and then they would leave after a year.

Hazel: 00:15:43

So that's costing the business a lot of money.

Ben: 00:15:45

I think that it's potentially just a little thing around the sales approach.

Ben: 00:15:49

'Cause I think like your questions, what you're doing, you're understanding what's important to them.

Ben: 00:15:54

it's understanding both those things of course is important, because ultimately a companies buy things.

Ben: 00:15:58

People buy things, company, people in companies, companies and whatever.

Ben: 00:16:02

We buy things because we're trying to change something.

Ben: 00:16:04

We're trying to solve a problem.

Ben: 00:16:06

So a company will buy something when they believe the thing that you provide solves the problem that they want to solve.

Ben: 00:16:12

And they believe you that the thing that you are offering.

Ben: 00:16:14

Is going to be the solution to that.

Ben: 00:16:17

But of course, what then happens is there are also different stakeholders in the process.

Ben: 00:16:22

And so on the one hand, yes, we can get a view from one person potentially, who has a view about what the most important problem that they want to solve, but if we don't also know whether there are other people who are unseen to us, at that point, who might have a slightly different view.

Ben: 00:16:38

one of the other questions which is really good to surface early is who needs to be involved in the making of this decision?

Ben: 00:16:45

And the extent to which that was kind of surfaced or not, because that might kind of, you know, your, your friend might then say, oh, the HR person, the HR person might also say, oh, you are also gonna need to speak to Brian because Brian's got this whole other brief, which is around diversity or whatever, and so just IT services as much as possible.

Ben: 00:17:02

So the more that those conversations have been had, before you send a proposal, you and you are gonna save yourself time because you might find out in.

Ben: 00:17:11

All of those different conversations that it feels like there's a little bit of a kind of spaghetti red flag.

Ben: 00:17:16

How am I ever gonna get 'em to decide on these things?

Ben: 00:17:18

Because it feels quite different as a worst case scenario or best case scenario in some respects.

Ben: 00:17:23

Because if something isn't going to happen, we want to know that as soon as possible, so we don't, you know, we're not in a situation where we are kind of, you know, we're investing over and over and over.

Ben: 00:17:33

And sure, some you need to invest in these things.

Ben: 00:17:35

But equally what we want to know as soon as possible is if something's gonna be a no.

Ben: 00:17:40

Because from a sales point of view, it's kind of chasing.

Ben: 00:17:43

The maybes, which really kill us in a sense, because they take all of the energy, they take all of the resource, they take all of the time, and maybe they don't ever get to a kind of conclusion.

Ben: 00:17:53

So the more that we can be bringing opportunities into the dialogue, almost, you know, as frequently as we, giving them an opportunity to say no, giving yourself an opportunity to say no forces the conversation a little bit, you know, like the, in the first conversation, yes,

Ben: 00:18:08

there's clarity around what they're buying, but is there also clarity around who needs to, you know, who will, who will decide on this?

Ben: 00:18:15

And at each point going into those meetings with a, you know, the objective here potentially is to decide if it is worth going to a next stage.

Ben: 00:18:22

So you kind of have that on the table all of the time so that you can take a call as much as possible, and I appreciate there's always gray area, gray area with these things.

Ben: 00:18:31

But you are, you are basic, you are managing them and you are guiding them through the process and you are retaining some control over it because otherwise stuff starts to happen that you are not aware of and then somebody has decided somewhere else, oh, but this isn't about retention, when actually it is about retention, but somebody else decides that it isn't based on an incomplete picture.

Ben: 00:18:52

So it's about you wanting to have oversight as much as possible over who decides a complete understanding or as much of an understanding as possible about what is important and then try to manage them to a point.

Ben: 00:19:04

Where they can either buy or you are getting to a point where you are managing them to a no as quickly as possible.

Ben: 00:19:11

And you know, people, especially where there's like a personal sort of connection and a personal sort of relationship, don't like the feeling of letting other people down.

Ben: 00:19:19

Reassuring them that it's okay that this is not right for lots of people and if it's not right for you, that's okay, sort of gives them permission to say no if it is gonna be a no.

Ben: 00:19:29

Only because that is just helping you and it will ensure that you don't, you don't invest too much time where something is not gonna work.

Carlos: 00:19:36

Another thing that sprang to mind from previous conversations with Ben is like a no doesn't necessarily mean no.

Carlos: 00:19:44

And way I understanding it is a no invites a question as to why, you know, and how clear that no is.

Carlos: 00:19:51

So maybe that no comes from a place of ignorance and you can then explore actually why is A triggered no or is it a knowing no.

Carlos: 00:19:57

And I heard also in that person that you're talking to say, oh, I don't wanna waste your time Hazel.

Carlos: 00:20:03

And that for me is like, maybe she needs permission to say no.

Ben: 00:20:06

Hmm.

Carlos: 00:20:06

Sorry Ben, I interrupted you.

Ben: 00:20:07

I was just going to sort of in the kind of cliched salesy talk sense, the no just means, I don't know.

Ben: 00:20:13

There's, I just have an incomplete thing now.

Ben: 00:20:15

and that's not to say that you keep pushing them until you get to a place of Yes.

Ben: 00:20:20

Not saying that at all, but it might be that the no does invite the next conversation.

Ben: 00:20:24

It might be that the no is just like, okay, good.

Ben: 00:20:27

We're all kind of clear.

Ben: 00:20:28

Let's just kind of go and then what happens in the future happens in the future kind of thing.

Ben: 00:20:31

So it's just about kind of making the processes manageable for you because, you know, to the conversations going on with Beccie, the idea that you are needing to educate them in a sales process is too much because it takes too much time.

Ben: 00:20:44

And investing all of that time to get, uh, you know, people, because we're talking about people, right?

Ben: 00:20:49

Whether they are spending a company's money or whether they're spending their own money, we buy something at the point when we've already made the decision, you know, that's, you can't really persuade somebody to buy something because people buy things when they've decided that they need it.

Ben: 00:21:03

And the thing that you have is the solution to their problem.

Ben: 00:21:06

And if we, you know, if it can, of course, take a huge amount of time to get somebody to that process, and I know Carlos made the point that is, you know, essentially around a marketing point there.

Ben: 00:21:16

And it kinda is like in a sales process, that's kind of too much, too much to ask for, I think because, you know, it takes too much time and the outcome is unknown.

Ben: 00:21:24

The outcome is unclear for the person who is selling essentially the person who's offering the thing up to be bought.

Carlos: 00:21:30

I think a final comment from me, just to bring it a little bit back to pricing is when you were talking about, I think it was a positive intelligence product, it sounded like a very much like a Swiss Army knife.

Carlos: 00:21:41

You know, I could do it for this, I could do it, that I could do, you know, there's so many things I could tackle.

Carlos: 00:21:45

And so as a customer it's like, whoa, I'm not sure what I want now, or which bid is it?

Carlos: 00:21:50

And so I've added a level of decision making or cognitive load to now this process.

Carlos: 00:21:55

When you said though, oh, it costs this much to train someone up, and then they leave, and then we have like 10 of those a month, and that's a number.

Carlos: 00:22:03

And if there's a way, even not saying that I'm gonna fix that number, but if that number is like a hundred K a month, they're spending 1.2 million a month on people who sign up and leave.

Carlos: 00:22:13

So, well, I could be part of a solution to that, maybe because they'll be in a more stronger place to stay resilient, or the managers will be able to deal with them in a better way that they don't leave.

Carlos: 00:22:23

I'll be able to affect the change of the culture so it's more open or connected.

Carlos: 00:22:27

I don't, you know, whatever the language is, but 1.2 million in lost revenue or basic in expense 10,000 pounds sounds like peanuts.

Ben: 00:22:35

Yeah, because I think that in that situation, if churn is a thing that they are worried about, which of course lots of organizations are, but if that was their motivation to act, if that was feeling like the problem that they want to solve, that's the thing they're trying to make go away in many sense, it's kinda unlike a lot of coaching actually, where outcomes might be more ambiguous.

Ben: 00:22:54

A company could get to a point of, clarity.

Ben: 00:22:57

They could tell themselves a very clear story, which they could understand and believe about what the cost of that problem is, you know, they will have, a figure which they can sort of get to and you can help 'em get to, with questioning.

Ben: 00:23:09

And so, like, to Carlos's point, whatever it is, if, let's say the cost of that was a million pounds, or the cost of that was 10,000 pounds or a hundred thousand, whatever, that in a sense that one of the things we talk about in the course is, is about the anchor.

Ben: 00:23:21

So what you are doing is you are offering them that figure.

Ben: 00:23:24

So the problem to you is worth a hundred thousand.

Ben: 00:23:26

the problem to you is worth a hundred thousand pounds every year.

Ben: 00:23:29

what are you willing to invest to make that problem go away?

Ben: 00:23:32

Most people who run an organization think they'll be willing to invest, a good proportion of the cost of that to make the problem go away.

Ben: 00:23:40

And this isn't about saying it definitely does, and you are linking your pay to that sort of thing.

Ben: 00:23:45

What you are doing is you are equipping somebody with the tools to feel comfortable about the decision that they're making because that's what all of this is about.

Ben: 00:23:54

That's what the questions are about, is about how comfortable are they with the decision that they're making.

Ben: 00:23:59

Because, you know, like you will know, we make these decisions emotionally and then we look to justify them rationally.

Ben: 00:24:04

We justify them with logic and so people would be investing in the, you know, because they're really clear it feels like the right way of solving the problem that they want to solve.

Ben: 00:24:14

To Carlos's point around the Swiss Army knife, you know that there is a blade there.

Ben: 00:24:18

They'd make an emotional decision.

Ben: 00:24:19

It's about this.

Ben: 00:24:20

Then they're looking for reassurance and clues and all those sort of things, which justify why they make that decision, which also is where it kind of opens out into the money and where there is something like churn, which you really can put a figure on a kind of cost on, that's a great way to start talking about the money to Carlos point, because then it's relative.

Ben: 00:24:38

It's about, relative to the cost of the problem, not relative to what it might cost if I bought this.

Ben: 00:24:43

From somewhere else and you want to get away from all of that sort of stuff because then you you are being compared to things that you have no control over.

Ben: 00:24:52

But if you are able to get 'em to a place of understanding what a cost of a problem is, then it's all about comparing what you are offering to that.

Hazel: 00:24:59

What if they really struggle to get to the cost of the problem though?

Hazel: 00:25:02

So, I mean, that's an obvious one, isn't it?

Hazel: 00:25:04

You know, churn rate.

Hazel: 00:25:05

productivity is a much harder one to cost.

Hazel: 00:25:08

you know, what advice have you got for that when it's much harder to measure the, the true cost or, I, I'm

Carlos: 00:25:14

going, I'm gonna give you a very succinct answer, mainly because we're gonna have to bring this to a close in a bit.

Carlos: 00:25:20

and I'd like to just get your final reflections and, and maybe what we can do is Ben can share over, we have a little WhatsApp group for you so we can share an answer there.

Carlos: 00:25:29

my gut feeling is like, if it's really hard to put a cost to the problem, it's gonna be hard to put a price.

Carlos: 00:25:36

And so there's a, there's gonna be a bit to what, Beccie was talking about in terms of this like unpaid time to raise people's consciousness.

Carlos: 00:25:45

Do you want to invest time to help them get to the understanding of how much something's gonna cost?

Carlos: 00:25:49

And that will really depend on in the end, how much is your time worth?

Carlos: 00:25:52

How much will the ultimate project be worth, and how long are you gonna do that for.

Ben: 00:25:56

I think what you can do in that situation, this also links to Beccie's point around the, the sort of selling process.

Ben: 00:26:02

What it is possible to say to somebody that whether it isn't clear is, you know, one of the things that you then recommend to clients, you could say to your prospect is, look, I have clients who invest upwards of a hundred thousand pounds in these kind of programs.

Ben: 00:26:16

Where it is not clear to them where there's a feeling that it's right, but it's not clear, what I often suggest is that we do a discovery session and a client might then invest, say 5,000 in the discovery session.

Ben: 00:26:27

And I use the, it's about the relationship between the two numbers, not the absolute numbers, right?

Ben: 00:26:31

So you are getting them into a process where, they're spending money with you because if they're spending money with you, they're more likely to spend more money with you.

Ben: 00:26:38

And they're also buying their way through the process of clarifying things in their own mind.

Ben: 00:26:42

So that would be just another tactical thing to do in that situation.

Carlos: 00:26:47

how are you leaving Hazel as we draw this to a close?

Hazel: 00:26:50

Inspire and grateful.

Carlos: 00:26:52

how about you, Ben?

Ben: 00:26:53

I'm feeling energized.

Ben: 00:26:55

I enjoyed these conversations, so appreciative of the conversations and feeling energized.

Carlos: 00:27:00

Yeah.

Carlos: 00:27:00

And I, I'm really grateful, Hzel.

Carlos: 00:27:02

I really, I am grateful that you came on and you, you shared your question because I find through exploring answers.

Carlos: 00:27:09

Not necessarily giving you silver bullets, but through exploring the situation, new ideas, new thoughts, and new clarifications arise for us as much I hope for you and for anyone else listening.

Carlos: 00:27:20

Right.

Carlos: 00:27:21

Thank you very much.

Carlos: 00:27:21

Take care.