Episode 48
Write a proposal they can’t refuse
You're about to draft a proposal, and you're wondering whether it will convince the client. Have you included everything necessary? You've poured hours into creating detailed, lengthy proposals in the past, only to face rejection. You've tried mirroring successful proposals from others, but the results are disappointing.
In this episode, Carlos and Ben explore the pitfalls of overcomplicating proposals and how simplicity can be your greatest asset. They uncover why proposals aren't the heavy lifting tools we often perceive them to be in the sales process. Most importantly, they discuss how to navigate these challenges with ease and confidence.
Transcript
Hello.
Speaker:Good morning everyone.
Speaker:Uh, we're just doing a bit of a free amble.
Speaker:As we wait
Speaker:A free amble.
Speaker:Did I say free amble?
Speaker:If I did, that's great.
Speaker:I, I preamble.
Speaker:It's the new thing.
Speaker:Free amble.
Speaker:You've heard first
Speaker:To freely give in a loose and meandering way.
Speaker:Thank you very much for being here.
Speaker:You were talking earlier about, what I thought I heard was clarity all time.
Speaker:Uh, just, just intention and motivation.
Speaker:And there's this thing around this feeling sometimes I think we get
Speaker:where we don't have enough time.
Speaker:Mm-Hmm.
Speaker:Not enough time.
Speaker:Uh, we need more time.
Speaker:And I know that with myself, I've been very much governed by effective
Speaker:and efficient use of my time, because I feel I need to make sure
Speaker:I get everything done, when in fact I will never get everything done.
Speaker:What is everything?
Speaker:Ex, well, exactly what is everything?
Speaker:And unfortunately it is everything.
Speaker:I always try and get everything though because there's a need to make sure that
Speaker:I don't drop the ball on something or I accomplish something or achieve something.
Speaker:So, on one hand, like also with people in our community and people who do
Speaker:Vision 2020, there's this thing about all I need, I need to know how to spend
Speaker:my time, you know, how can I spend my time impactfully purposefully, happily.
Speaker:And that also, yeah, then that sort of comes to the question like,
Speaker:how, how do you know whether it's purposefully impactfully or happily?
Speaker:What does it do?
Speaker:We need to ask ourselves.
Speaker:How does it make you feel?
Speaker:That's the question.
Speaker:How does it make you feel?
Speaker:But then is it about how it makes you feel now or how it
Speaker:will make you feel in the future?
Speaker:Oh, now, because maybe you'll be dead.
Speaker:You may be dead, but then, you know, I know to a certain degree,
Speaker:having a nice spliff right now would make me feel amazing.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:And make me really sh feel shit later.
Speaker:And so.
Speaker:Yes.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:So there is some wisdom, some wisdom needed in the decision making.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:I don't do that anymore.
Speaker:And similarly, if I go out on the bend on a bender on a, on school night.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:Um.
Speaker:I know it'll feel amazing, uh, Wednesday evening when I'm in the pub.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:Uh, and really rubbish Thursday morning when I have to get the kids to school.
Speaker:Right.
Speaker:Okay.
Speaker:This is true.
Speaker:This is true.
Speaker:So it does need some wisdom.
Speaker:It's not just purely a, uh, what is it?
Speaker:It's the, something like the hedonic.
Speaker:Oh yeah.
Speaker:It's hedonistic.
Speaker:Sort of like pull.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:Right.
Speaker:What gives me pleasure right now and I'll do it.
Speaker:Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker:I was listening to thing the other day and was saying that, um, the, the
Speaker:kind of chemical difference between the feeling of contentedness and the
Speaker:chase, I think it was around Happiness, but I may have got that wrong.
Speaker:So the thing around Happiness is a bit more sort of dopamine associated.
Speaker:So, we kind of, we have the kind of, we have the sort of chase in that.
Speaker:But the thing around contentedness is that it's more about serotonin.
Speaker:So is a kind of, is a, is a sort of lower grade, but easier
Speaker:moving chemical reaction.
Speaker:And so, uh, in terms of, it's kind of, sort of, um, the, the kind of, the value
Speaker:we get from it, the chase, obviously we like dopamine things 'cause we feel
Speaker:that as a sort of short, sharp shock.
Speaker:Um, but, uh, but of course there's a cost to that sort of the chase and the cost
Speaker:of the kind of rise and fall, whereas the serotonin, and clearly I'm speaking
Speaker:way out of my fucking lane with all of this, that, that this is what happens
Speaker:when you read one little bit of a book and then you, you turn it into some sort of
Speaker:isn't that all of social media?
Speaker:Um, there's a big good serotonin because it's a kind of lower burn, sort of
Speaker:constant thing, actually is much kind of, uh, better for you and in the long
Speaker:run, actually, a kind of much more sort of, um, kind of sounder place to be.
Speaker:Hmm, yeah.
Speaker:I, I, so that whole chemical aspect of it, um, I appreciate,
Speaker:uh, that little spike versus the
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:A more, uh, longer lasting feeling.
Speaker:I relate that in a more philosophical terms in terms of Happiness or in
Speaker:the moment Happiness versus long-term wellbeing and sense of meaning.
Speaker:Mm-hmm.
Speaker:Or contentment.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:As we're saying.
Speaker:Mm-Hmm.
Speaker:Uh, and there is something I was just listening to, uh, a podcast about regret.
Speaker:I wish I'd listened to that.
Speaker:You are sharp up today.
Speaker:I like it.
Speaker:Uh, but yes.
Speaker:What, there's this idea of making choices.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:And so, uh, some are something along the lines of cumulative benefit.
Speaker:Mm-Hmm.
Speaker:so if you said, someone said to you, oh, you could have, uh, a 50 pound
Speaker:note now, or two 50 pound notes.
Speaker:Mm-Hmm.
Speaker:Which would you choose?
Speaker:If I could choose one or two now.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:One 50 pound note.
Speaker:Now I could give you one 50 pound note or two 50 pound notes.
Speaker:I'll choose two.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:Okay.
Speaker:You choose two 50 pound notes.
Speaker:Okay.
Speaker:And you'll never regret.
Speaker:Choosing one, the 50 pound Nhat, will you?
Speaker:Because it's compensated by the two 50 pound notes.
Speaker:There will never be regret there.
Speaker:So you could either, uh, go on, uh, of a pass in the retreat.
Speaker:Mm-Hmm.
Speaker:Silent, which I know you like.
Speaker:Mm-Hmm.
Speaker:That kind of like very, or you could come to Summer Camp and give a talk.
Speaker:Mm-Hmm.
Speaker:So.
Speaker:I'm not gonna ask you to make the choice, but if whichever choice you
Speaker:make, one of them will never fully compensate for the lack of the other.
Speaker:Mm-Hmm.
Speaker:And so there's this, either this, this kind of real strength sense
Speaker:of regret that could come in
Speaker:Mm-Hmm.
Speaker:Uh, or pain because you've missed out on something that you can
Speaker:never replace and it was never be compensated by the decision or
Speaker:choice that you make right now.
Speaker:And so you either live in pain with all of these decisions we have
Speaker:to make and get blocked by them.
Speaker:Mm-Hmm.
Speaker:Or you find a way to understand that this is part of life.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:This is the whole process we go on.
Speaker:That every decision we make will, will potentially lead to a, an
Speaker:in commensurate benefit or a loss that we can never, the choice A
Speaker:will never compensate for choice B.
Speaker:It will just be something that we will have to live.
Speaker:So what, uh, landed with me was.
Speaker:If you had a very strict set of values or views on life, very clear
Speaker:that, you know, I only like giving talks, I hate vipassana, brilliant.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:That's great.
Speaker:You'll never regret that choice.
Speaker:However, some of us love life.
Speaker:Mm-Hmm.
Speaker:Fully.
Speaker:And one of the beautiful things of life is that we get joy
Speaker:from so many different things.
Speaker:So the fact that we get joy from so many different things, and I'm, I'm guilty of
Speaker:that as well, is like, I've always asked, I could have been a doctor, I could have
Speaker:been a teacher, I could have been this, I could been, you know, all of these things
Speaker:I would've believe I would've loved doing.
Speaker:Because of that, because of, there's this joy that life can give us from
Speaker:all sorts of directions, we will always as a result, feel that loss
Speaker:because every decision we make will cut off that potential source of joy.
Speaker:Mm-Hmm.
Speaker:So, on one hand you could feel like, oh, I wish I only liked one thing,
Speaker:which means I could easily make loads of decisions in my life would be simple.
Speaker:Or relish in the fact that I love many things, which means that every
Speaker:decision I make, I'm gonna have to accept I'm gonna lose something.
Speaker:Mm-Hmm.
Speaker:But then that's great 'cause I love everything.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:I'm sort of thinking about this whole, as you were talking, the whole thing around
Speaker:regrets, and my initial thought was, I'm not really sure that I do have regrets.
Speaker:And then I was thinking, well, is that true?
Speaker:Uh, clearly there must be things that I, I sort of do.
Speaker:And it's not that I just want one thing.
Speaker:I think maybe it's just that my brain isn't very good at sort of, maybe
Speaker:consciously, maybe this is a good thing, not sort of consciously holding
Speaker:on to those sort of, uh, the, the kind of the decision that was going on.
Speaker:So once I have kind of moved on, my brain just can't hold on to what
Speaker:was happening before, therefore, I don't hold onto the code.
Speaker:It could have been this or it could have been that.
Speaker:So the story that um, I was heard this morning was the story of a friend giving
Speaker:another friend a lift to the airport.
Speaker:And so he says, oh, I'll give you a lift.
Speaker:Um, you know, I'll make sure you get to the airport on time.
Speaker:And he falls, he sleeps in.
Speaker:Mm-Hmm.
Speaker:And he says, oh, what an idiot.
Speaker:So, you know, like, really bad friend, you know, get that sense of regret for
Speaker:being just not there for his other friend.
Speaker:Then they re then they find out that that plane crashed in the
Speaker:middle of the sea and everyone died.
Speaker:Mm-Hmm.
Speaker:Suddenly actually there's no regret.
Speaker:It's like, wow.
Speaker:It's like, actually it was a good thing that I slept in, even though
Speaker:I went against my values and my, uh, need to be a good friend.
Speaker:The story, well, the, the kind of, the moral of the story there is like from our
Speaker:position now in the part or in the future, we can potentially say the thing decisions
Speaker:we made in the past that we may think we were regretful because they caused pain
Speaker:at the time has actually got us here.
Speaker:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker:Which I think is where you are coming to instinctively.
Speaker:It is like, well, why would I regret anything?
Speaker:'cause everything I did got me to this point.
Speaker:And I wanted to say.
Speaker:Unless you don't talk about money before you send a proposal.
Speaker:Yeah, and one thing that I've said to you before that is maybe the thing is just
Speaker:do I feel like I lived in a way which was kind of, sort of true to what I'm kind of
Speaker:most inspired by, I'm most interested in?
Speaker:And I think my life does feel like I'm always trying to do that.
Speaker:I'll say I always do it well, but I do feel like I'm trying to do that,
Speaker:which comes back to this, the decision of, what is going on when, when I
Speaker:make a decision or when one makes a decision, am I making the decision, you
Speaker:know, with the kind of best sort of, uh, intent with, you know, as coached
Speaker:to my kind of values as possible?
Speaker:Maybe this kind of is slightly different to what you're talking about.
Speaker:Maybe this is not, not useful.
Speaker:No.
Speaker:Well, I would say, and I we'll put a pin in this, we can, we can
Speaker:have another, uh, sort of complete tangent on the next episode.
Speaker:But I would rela what I was hearing there around, um, the decision
Speaker:making process and what, what, what would lead me to another way
Speaker:is actually do we have free will?
Speaker:Oh God, we're not going there.
Speaker:Shit.
Speaker:Do we do, will we actually in control of all of these decisions
Speaker:that we think we think can control?
Speaker:And so if you, if you do have free will, then yes, there's regret.
Speaker:If you don't, my regret really isn't necessary because we weren't able
Speaker:to make choices in the first place.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:Though we can choose to talk about money before we sent a proposal.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:Woo.
Speaker:Uh, let's bring it back.
Speaker:Okay.
Speaker:Thank you everyone, uh, for persisting.
Speaker:If you're still alive, you won't regret it.
Speaker:Um.
Speaker:So one of the, the, the conversations that I had earlier this week and and
Speaker:have had, had for many, with many people, and I've experienced it myself,
Speaker:is this whole challenge of writing a proposal, uh, and thinking that
Speaker:the proposal was the sales document.
Speaker:But before we go into that, let's start off with Ben.
Speaker:Because you, you have lots of ideas around this sort, the idea proposal writing.
Speaker:Mm-Hmm.
Speaker:Where, where would you like to kick off with what, what's really
Speaker:alive in you when we think about this idea of proposals of pricing?
Speaker:Yeah, so I know when we did the last cohort of the course, there was
Speaker:actually a whole, uh, you know, not dissimilar to what we just spent in
Speaker:the first half of the podcasting.
Speaker:I had a, a sort of massive tangent, talk around this and proposals,
Speaker:you know, what type of proposals to write, what they should be.
Speaker:Should they be one page, should they be 30 pages?
Speaker:Should they include testimonials?
Speaker:Should they include blah, blah, blah, blah.
Speaker:All of this sort of, lots and lots of conversation.
Speaker:And everybody, all the many different voices of the many different people, uh,
Speaker:all had different ideas around, um, what was kind of right and, and what was wrong.
Speaker:And I guess my kind of main, main feeling is that we tend to use proposals, um,
Speaker:as a sort of, so we, we, we oftentimes imagine that the proposal is this sort of
Speaker:very, uh, what's the right sort of phrase?
Speaker:This kind of real heavy lifting tool that, um, that it is going
Speaker:to do the work of, you know, sort of chivying your prospective
Speaker:client or customer over the line.
Speaker:You know, it's gonna, it's basically gonna sort of take them from a
Speaker:place where they're thinking about working with you to working with you.
Speaker:Um, and then it is going to do all of that.
Speaker:But of course, that is actually a big, big journey, really.
Speaker:Uh, and so I think we, we really invest a lot.
Speaker:We think about them, you know, I've done this too.
Speaker:You know, you go back over, you change loads wording in them.
Speaker:You kind of, you, you kind of really imagine it is going to do
Speaker:a huge amount of lifting for you.
Speaker:Um, and the thing that I've sort of found both in the practice of having two
Speaker:companies that write many, many proposals and also having received many proposals,
Speaker:is of course, you know, the, they don't actually do any of those things.
Speaker:And, you know, if you receive a pro proposal, many people will know this
Speaker:too, oftentimes what you might do is depending on where you're, you might whizz
Speaker:down, just go straight to the money bit.
Speaker:Um, and you may have ignored all of the bits beforehand.
Speaker:Um, so I think, yeah, the starting premise for this conversation is probably
Speaker:that we sort of invest a huge amount in proposal writing, and I would argue we,
Speaker:we don't, you know, we expect the proposal to do more than it is ever going to do.
Speaker:Um, I would also say that sometimes we, um, well I would've been
Speaker:guilty about this, around this is I hide behind proposals to
Speaker:avoid difficult conversations.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:It's been very much a, um.
Speaker:We'd have initial calls with the client, we'd, you know, essentially they'd
Speaker:present us the solution that they want.
Speaker:And then it was a case of us working out how to build it.
Speaker:So it was like, okay, then how do we cost up the solution that they want?
Speaker:Mm-Hmm.
Speaker:Uh, and then it is a hit and hope because in the end it is like they
Speaker:know what they want, they just wanna pay as little for it as possible.
Speaker:Mm-Hmm.
Speaker:And I've gotta work out what is that bottom, you know, we
Speaker:had to work out what is that?
Speaker:Uh, the, the bottom level of that for us and them so that we get paid something
Speaker:that we can actually pay the bills with and they get, they pay something.
Speaker:They choose us because we are cheaper than everyone else.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:For example.
Speaker:That's particularly the early, early stage of our business.
Speaker:Um, what I've learned from you and what I've also just recently learned from
Speaker:John Osborne, um, is how we can combine conversations, particularly if you are
Speaker:a coach or a consultant or someone who knows how to speak to people and listen,
Speaker:combine that skill with then making a proposal that they just can't refuse.
Speaker:Mm-Hmm.
Speaker:Not because that's an compelling proposal, it's because they've
Speaker:agreed everything already upfront.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:Before they've even read the thing they've already said yes.
Speaker:Mm-Hmm.
Speaker:That's the premise of this is that what, before you send the proposal,
Speaker:before you send anything, and this is what I heard you say, is like
Speaker:all the proposal is just confirming exactly what they, you talked about.
Speaker:Mm-Hmm.
Speaker:Even down to the money.
Speaker:Mm-Hmm.
Speaker:And so this is for me, if you are in a space of like, oh, oh,
Speaker:what's the price I should tell?
Speaker:You know, what's my day rate or what's the average day rate?
Speaker:What's the day rate of the people that they've already bought?
Speaker:What's, you know, all of these things in your head about rates and time,
Speaker:so that you can like, yeah, it's gonna take me 20 hours, but how can
Speaker:I make sure that I get paid 10 grand?
Speaker:It's like, I don't know.
Speaker:I dunno, 10 grand's too much and blah, blah, blah.
Speaker:Anyway, all of that doubt, uncertainty, lack of confidence.
Speaker:And even, like you say, negotiating myself down because I'm scared that
Speaker:they're gonna reject me, how do we avoid all of that so that when we
Speaker:write it down we know it's a surefire
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:I mean, we have to have done.
Speaker:Yeah, I think, yeah.
Speaker:The, the key thing in that I think is, as you say, the
Speaker:proposal is a summing up document.
Speaker:It's not a sales document.
Speaker:It's never gonna persuade anybody of anything.
Speaker:And you know, critically in the context of this conversation, if it is the first
Speaker:time that they have seen or heard or you've had any, any sort of interaction
Speaker:around money, um, it's also probably gonna be quite surprising for them.
Speaker:Uh, and so the what, you know, the, the kind of, the sorry truth if
Speaker:you like, that sort of comes out.
Speaker:This is the need to have spoken about all of those things in John Osworth,
Speaker:the need to have done, to invest it in the conversation, to invest it in the
Speaker:relationship so far that you are really totally clear what the compelling,
Speaker:impossible to say no to, no offer is.
Speaker:And you can only do that if you've had a conversation you, but you can only do
Speaker:that if you've had many conversations, if you understand what their motivations
Speaker:are, if you really understand the thing that they are hoping and trying to change
Speaker:as a consequence of working with you.
Speaker:The more that you understand those things, the more the document can be a
Speaker:summing up because you've spoken about all of that, you've spoken about the
Speaker:change they want, you've spoken about how you suggest that together you,
Speaker:how you will work together to help them enjoy that change that they want.
Speaker:All of those things will have been discussed.
Speaker:You've spoken to them about what they are kind of willing or able to invest and or
Speaker:different ways that they may be able to.
Speaker:Pay you to get to the level that you both kind of want, which is a
Speaker:level that they want to pay in your words, a level that they want to pay,
Speaker:but the level that you, you need to earn and find that kind of ground.
Speaker:Because there's different ways, of course they can get to that.
Speaker:You may ideally feel that the worth, the work is worth up here.
Speaker:They may initially kind of, they may agree with you but
Speaker:not have the means to pay that.
Speaker:But again, you need to have a conversation because it might be that there are
Speaker:different ways for them to pay, that they could pay, you know, pay with
Speaker:payment terms, they could pay over a period of time, whatever it might be.
Speaker:There's lots of different ways.
Speaker:But the point is, all of these things need to be discussed.
Speaker:These decisions can't be made on the back of a proposal.
Speaker:Uh, a client's never gonna read it and go, okay, yes, I'll do X, Y, Z.
Speaker:All of these things need to be discussed.
Speaker:All of this needs to be invested in beforehand.
Speaker:And you know, so it avoids doing the thing, like you said at the
Speaker:beginning, which is right, is run to avoid anything where we, we
Speaker:use a proposal to hide behind.
Speaker:I don't want to talk about the money, so I'm just gonna drop a number into
Speaker:the document and hope beyond hope that it ends up being the right thing.
Speaker:But of course that isn't really going to serve us particularly well.
Speaker:A much better outcome if a little bit of a harder journey is to step into the kind of
Speaker:awkward, slightly messy ground of talking about the money in the same way you talk
Speaker:to them about all of the, the aspects, the things that they're trying to change.
Speaker:Uh, so in, in the spirit of a seven point plan or a silver bullet for any
Speaker:of you in the process of writing a proposal, hopefully not too late in that
Speaker:process where you're just writing it right now, but just about to engage with
Speaker:the client the way I look at it now.
Speaker:Is have this conversation.
Speaker:And when you have this conversation, and if you're in the community, we've
Speaker:broken it down in a, in a pod, in an article on, on Mighty Networks.
Speaker:Um, first stage like John says is what is, so what is the situation right now?
Speaker:Actually, I'm gonna rewind a bit, but what were all, what happened to me
Speaker:when I was an agency, like someone came, said, can you make this happen?
Speaker:Can you do this?
Speaker:Can you build this?
Speaker:And it's like very prescriptive.
Speaker:I'm, I wanna buy this off of you.
Speaker:Or there's a, uh, they've shared a, a requirement.
Speaker:But then not to assume that that's the only thing they want or that
Speaker:is actually the thing they want.
Speaker:So you go into the conversation, what is, what's the situation right now?
Speaker:You know, what's the context?
Speaker:All the things, the, the challenges they face.
Speaker:Uh, what could be, I think is the next one.
Speaker:It's like, um, where did they want to get to?
Speaker:What is it they wish for?
Speaker:What is it the, things that they want to, and the problems they wanna solve,
Speaker:maybe, or the, the customers they want to get to, or whatever it is.
Speaker:It's like there, there's a, they've defined in their heads what it is,
Speaker:um, the, the state, not the thing necessarily to forget what the actual,
Speaker:whether it's a CRM system or website, uh, 12 month coaching program, whatever.
Speaker:It's, it, forget that's a, what does it get them to, which I think
Speaker:we talked about in the program.
Speaker:And this is where the five stages maybe get mixed up.
Speaker:I, I would say there is like, as a someone of experience, whether you are a coach
Speaker:or consultant, facilitator, an expert in your field, it's like being able to
Speaker:say what, what John called, what wows.
Speaker:It's like, actually, if you did this, or if you looked at it in this way,
Speaker:maybe we could do something else.
Speaker:Maybe you could achieve this.
Speaker:And the wow bit is like for them, the penny to drop.
Speaker:Oh my God.
Speaker:Of course.
Speaker:That's amazing.
Speaker:That's exactly what I want.
Speaker:I, I didn't know that.
Speaker:And Laurence and I had many of those conversations with clients like, oh
Speaker:God, yeah, no, we did don't need that.
Speaker:We need this.
Speaker:And then it was, I think the la the, the other thing was how will we or
Speaker:will we, it's like, okay, based on how I work, based on how you work,
Speaker:timings, et cetera, et cetera, uh, how, how could this practically look?
Speaker:Mm-Hmm.
Speaker:Then if they let, if that all sounds good, then it's the, okay, which is
Speaker:Ben, what Ben talks about is the money.
Speaker:It's like, right, what does this term mean?
Speaker:How do you get to start talking about numbers?
Speaker:Not necessarily bartering or, um, haggling in terms of how much they're
Speaker:willing to spend, but how much would it be worth them to achieve this thing?
Speaker:How much would it be cost them not to do this thing?
Speaker:You know, how much are they spending on other projects?
Speaker:How much are they earning per year?
Speaker:Like, you know, and Ben will can elaborate more on those things.
Speaker:So then you have all of this information where hopefully they're just nodding
Speaker:and agreeing and yessing and all of that stuff, and it's like you're
Speaker:just making notes for your proposal.
Speaker:Mm-Hmm.
Speaker:One of things I'd say, which comes up, as you say, actually, even if somebody who is
Speaker:listening to this is actually just about to write the proposal, I would say pause.
Speaker:Hold on.
Speaker:Actually, just to get back on the con.
Speaker:Have a conversation, even if it's one conversation with your prospect, just to
Speaker:go back to and say, Look, I'm just about to write this proposal now, but I wanted
Speaker:to just double check a couple of things and to spend half an hour exploring even
Speaker:in a kind of headline sense, those topics that John laid out that you shared there.
Speaker:You will get so much from that, that actually the, the kind of propo the
Speaker:proposal will then resonate more.
Speaker:The proposal, you know, then it's not doing the selling.
Speaker:'Cause if the other thing is that, you know, we sort talk about,
Speaker:spoke earlier, this idea that a proposal is a summing up document.
Speaker:There's really two other things that a proposal should do.
Speaker:It should be, when the prospect, when your prospect reads it,
Speaker:they should see themselves in it.
Speaker:They should see the words that they use played back to them.
Speaker:They should see the ideas that they have played back to them.
Speaker:They should see the thing that they want to change, play back to them.
Speaker:They should see themselves in it.
Speaker:And so if you've not yet explored those things, just straight away having a
Speaker:half hour conversation to run through that sequence that John shared that you
Speaker:were talking about there will give you some of that source material so that
Speaker:when they do come to see it, they will basically see those kind of key things.
Speaker:So yes, it is a sort of summing up.
Speaker:Yes, it is a chance for them to see themselves in the proposal.
Speaker:There is a third thing, which is, which is a thing around reassurance,
Speaker:but we can come to that, we can come to that, uh, separately.
Speaker:And, and, and I think so just, you know, even if you are writing a proposal, taking
Speaker:half an hour to have those conversations will make it much more likely that,
Speaker:um, something positive comes from it.
Speaker:And then also, like you're saying, yes, it importa to have
Speaker:conversations around money.
Speaker:So there are some specific things you can ask that you
Speaker:have sort of spoken about there.
Speaker:But A straight away asking whether somebody has a budget for something.
Speaker:And of course we know.
Speaker:That most of the time, you know, 99.9 times out of a hundred clients say, I
Speaker:don't know, uh, tell me what it costs.
Speaker:Even in that situation, actually saying to them, Okay, well in a situation
Speaker:like this, 'cause what you're trying to do is you're looking for indicators,
Speaker:you, you're looking for indicators.
Speaker:You are looking for signals to understand what may be
Speaker:appropriate for them to invest.
Speaker:And you know, with some information, and I'm sure you will, you know, you writing
Speaker:the proposal will have some idea about it.
Speaker:What you wanna do, you ask them, one of the questions asked, like we say, Isabel.
Speaker:What is your budget?
Speaker:What is it that you want to spend?
Speaker:And even if they say, I don't know, then you can go back to them.
Speaker:Well, look, in this situation, clients like this typically invest
Speaker:somewhere between this and this.
Speaker:And you want a kind of X and Y range there, which maybe makes you the proposal,
Speaker:right, to feel a little bit uncomfortable.
Speaker:Because I think always we need to push ourselves a little bit more on this.
Speaker:Oftentimes, particularly for people in this community, and right,
Speaker:oftentimes what we will do is that we will kind of value ourselves down.
Speaker:So what we want to do is go back to them with this idea of a range.
Speaker:Because what we're trying to explore is, you know, where did
Speaker:they sit, where did they fall?
Speaker:And these are kind of good, useful sort of tests when you go back to them
Speaker:with this, well, clients typically invest between this and this.
Speaker:You know, if they fall off their chair, then you know the range that you've gone
Speaker:back to 'em with is probably too high.
Speaker:If they're really sitting there and they kind of.
Speaker:You know, they're, they're kind of relatively unfazed.
Speaker:You'll know that the kind of top end of your range is a
Speaker:very acceptable thing for them.
Speaker:Again, you are always looking for signals.
Speaker:You are always looking for indicators.
Speaker:And there are other things like you also kind of, uh, flagged
Speaker:there that you can ask, which also kind of reveal this a little bit.
Speaker:You know, how much have you invested in similar things in the past?
Speaker:Or the, you know, that really useful question, you know, what is
Speaker:the cost of not doing this work?
Speaker:Uh, and that will point to some emotional things, some kind of,
Speaker:uh, you know, some, a whole range of markers will come from that.
Speaker:But it is also a way into the money.
Speaker:Because, you know, we do what we do have to have a conversation around the money.
Speaker:And that you were kind of making reference.
Speaker:So if we're having this conversation and they're nodding in agreement
Speaker:all of the time, then we know that we, we were on the right track.
Speaker:Why I, Mike, kind of add to that is actually what we really want a little bit
Speaker:is we do want to have flushed out some of the things that they don't agree with.
Speaker:Because then we do know that we're getting to a place which is genuinely
Speaker:kind of aligned with where they are.
Speaker:'Cause of course it's easy for us just to appear like we are not in agreement.
Speaker:Uh, but actually what we want is we want some response.
Speaker:We want, we want to kind of understand, we wanna dig, dig
Speaker:below the surface a little bit.
Speaker:Um, and so that that does require conversation.
Speaker:It requires conversation along the lines that John was sharing.
Speaker:It requires us to do some of this hard work of bringing money to the fore.
Speaker:You know, as we sort of talk about next week, how to have these
Speaker:grownup conversations around money.
Speaker:But the more that we do that, then there's nothing in the proposal, then
Speaker:there's no need, when they receive a proposal just to race down to the money
Speaker:bit at the bottom, which if you've not spoken about it, will, will more,
Speaker:will will happen almost all the time.
Speaker:Because that's the thing that they're also trying to make that ambiguity
Speaker:and that uncertainty go away.
Speaker:So they'll just race to that bit.
Speaker:If you've spoken about all of that stuff in the context of all of the
Speaker:things that they want to change and all the things which are important to
Speaker:them, there are no surprises in there.
Speaker:And also you can then establish upfront because you may find that actually
Speaker:there is no way the client is ever, the prospect is ever going to be able to pay.
Speaker:What you need them to pay.
Speaker:And wouldn't it be better if you knew that before you'd invested
Speaker:the time in writing a proposal?
Speaker:That's why you've got to talk about all of these things in advance
Speaker:for your benefit and for theirs.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:That actually, that really hits home, that whole like agonizing for hours and
Speaker:maybe days and a proposal or went in a backpack, could have just said, sorry,
Speaker:we're not gonna work together because this isn't gonna, this isn't gonna work.
Speaker:Yeah, we can't do it.
Speaker:They can't do it.
Speaker:And yeah.
Speaker:And I feel like if you are in a numbers game and you want to, like Frances
Speaker:was saying, where she receives pro proposals where nothing pertains to
Speaker:her, that feels like a kind of like just cold proposal writing, just
Speaker:inspiring stuff off at random people.
Speaker:It's like, it's that, it feels like that kind of, um, boiler room approach
Speaker:of just like, just crawling around.
Speaker:It's, I got one the other day that said, I looked at your proposal on LinkedIn.
Speaker:No, looked to your profile on LinkedIn and uh, thought that you would be
Speaker:relevant because I have outsourced developer roles for companies in Ireland.
Speaker:I was like, the fuck you talking about?
Speaker:How, is there anything on my proposal on LinkedIn that would give you
Speaker:any idea that I knew anything about writing something for the computer?
Speaker:But anyway.
Speaker:Yeah, it's that kind of, it's the, just the cold emptiness of that.
Speaker:It wastes our time.
Speaker:It wastes their time.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:It just spreads more unhappiness in the world.
Speaker:So if you want more happy people, have more happy conversations about money,
Speaker:which we'll be talking about next week.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:And then you will happily price and you will get happy projects and
Speaker:the world will be a better place.
Speaker:And you'll happily not waste your time on proposals, which are not worth the energy.
Speaker:Exactly.
Speaker:So until next time, thank you very much, Ben.
Speaker:We will, we will, we will tackle, uh, free will.
Speaker:Yes.
Speaker:let's do a dedicated one on that.
Speaker:And, and see how that, uh, connects to, uh, talking about conversations around
Speaker:money, because, you know., Whatever comes out of our mouths around the
Speaker:money, we have no choice of that, so we might as well have a conversation.
Speaker:We can't have, be held responsible for it, we have no free will.
Speaker:It's not my fault.
Speaker:It's not my fault.
Speaker:Thank you very much.
Speaker:Thank you everyone for listening in and, and sticking with the, the
Speaker:Occasional tangents
Speaker:No, the, the broad smorgasbord of concepts and content that we bring to you, not
Speaker:just, it's not just about the money.
Speaker:It's all about the stuff around it.
Speaker:Until next time, thank you.
Speaker:Bye-Bye.
Speaker:Laters.
