Stop sending proposals - do this instead

WEBVTT
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We've all been there. You have a great call with a client.
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You put together a really detailed proposal, send it
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across, and then sit there holding your breath,
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checking your inbox every single day, waiting for them
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to come back to you to let you know if they're
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going to go ahead. I used to hate that feeling.
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And For many of the clients that I've coached over the past few years,
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that is no longer a feeling that they have.
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In this episode, I'm gonna talk about why and how you
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can avoid getting ghosted or having that horrible period of anxiety
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between sending the proposal and waiting for the client
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confirmation.
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Welcome to the Creative Courage Podcast. My name's Matt Essam. If you're new
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here, this podcast is all about exploring the relationship between courage
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and growing a successful creative business. Now,
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we've all had the experience of sending off a proposal and
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waiting patiently to hear back from the client.
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It's a horrible feeling, it's anxiety-inducing,
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and If you get ghosted and they don't reply,
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or worse, you get an email back that says, sorry, we're not
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going ahead, it can feel very demotivating,
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demoralizing. Now, the good news is you don't have to have
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this experience. So if you are still sending proposals,
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if you're still hiding behind proposals, then this episode
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is for you. And I'm going to break down an alternative method.
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So I really believe that proposals are one of
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the worst ways to enroll
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clients. And I'm going to give you a few reasons
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why, but you've probably had this experience
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yourself. You probably don't need too much convincing.
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So the first reason I believe that proposals
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are a terrible way to enroll clients or to
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sell your services is because we
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lose control of the frame. Now, what does the frame
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actually mean? It's really the context in which you
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present your offer. So if you've ever received
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a proposal from somebody, you might have opened
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it briefly and then scrolled as fast as possible to the bottom of
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that proposal. To see the price and then have a
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gut reaction about that price. Either, oh,
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that's a lot of money, or I can't afford that, or it's out of my
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budget, or, oh, that's cool, that's cheaper than I thought it was going to be.
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And essentially that's the, that's the only control we have over the frame. So I
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remember many years ago when I was learning sales,
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one of my mentors was a guy named Daniel Priestley,
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who you might be familiar with. He's written a lot of books. He's a serial
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entrepreneur. He's been on Diary of a CEO. And he always used to use this
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metaphor. And he said, you know, if you went to a children's
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nursery and you walked in and on the wall
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was a big painting and it was just like a red square,
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someone had painted a red square. And someone asks
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you, how much do you think that painting would sell for? You'd probably say,
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well, maybe £20, £30, not a lot
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of money, right? It's in a child's nursery. A child's probably painted this big red
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block on the wall. Now, if you went into
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the National Art Gallery in London and you walked in and
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there was a section, there was one room and it had security guards outside,
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it had red rope around it. It was a grand room with huge ceilings.
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And the only painting in this room was this big red
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square on the wall. And someone said to you, how much do you think that
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would sell for? Even if you knew nothing about art,
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I'm pretty sure you would say more than £25.
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And his point was that you could take an artist like a
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Rothko, and if you put it in the frame of a children's
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nursery, we don't think it's worth a lot. But if you put it in the
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frame of a grand art gallery,
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then we just perceive it to be worth more. And that
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is the idea of a frame. A frame is the context in which something is
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presented. Now, if you send somebody a PDF proposal,
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you have lost control of the frame. You've lost control of where they
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open that proposal, how they consume it,
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and essentially what they do with it. You know, they could be sat
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on the toilet on their mobile phone and you ping that across on WhatsApp
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and they just scroll straight to the bottom. They've lost all of the context of
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everything else in that proposal. And all they're looking at is
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the price. So you haven't controlled the frame in which you present
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value. So that's one of the key reasons
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that I think sending proposals is a terrible idea.
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The second reason is that you aren't able to uncover objections,
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or you aren't able to uncover what's really going on in that potential
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client's mind, because it's not a conversation. You are presenting it
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and they are having that conversation in their head, and you're not privy to that
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conversation. And so how do you improve
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your sales process? How do you handle
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concerns and objections if you don't know what they are?
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And so, so many agencies, so many creative
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business owners are hiding behind proposals because they don't
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want to have what are often uncomfortable
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conversations because they don't want to be rejected.
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And that's really at the essence of this, in my opinion. So that's the second
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reason that I think they're a terrible way
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to present what you sell or enroll clients.
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There are actually many, but the third main one is
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that it doesn't give you
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the opportunity to grow as
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a person. And it doesn't give you the opportunity to develop the
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skill of influence, of persuasion,
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of clarity, of all of
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the things that are possible when you have a sales call.
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So my advice to my clients is always this: always
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present your proposals.
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Never just send a proposal to a prospect
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for those exact reasons that I just went over.
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And it's easy, right? It's easy to hide behind a
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proposal. It's easy to say, well, I'm just going to send this off and
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hopefully this person likes it. Now you might've already had a call prior to
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this to learn about their business or whatever, but the important part Where the rubber
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meets the road is when you say to somebody, okay, cool. Would you like to
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move forward? That's the point at
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which you get the actual truth from
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somebody. And not always the first time, by the way. And this is why it
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can often be quite uncomfortable because people will say things like, oh yeah, sure.
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I just need to go away and have a think about it. Or I need
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to speak to so-and-so. Now the real skill in sales,
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in my experience, Having had thousands and
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thousands of sales conversations, had personally sold over a million pounds
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worth of coaching and consulting,
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I would say the real skill and the real sales
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conversation happens when you challenge that answer.
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When you say, can I just ask you a little bit more about
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that? That's when you uncover the real objection,
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what's really going on, because most people don't want
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to have an uncomfortable conversation about money.
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They don't want to offend you. So it's
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very difficult to really know what's going on in someone's
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mind if you don't have that conversation with them.
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And what I will say is that when you do
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have the courage to have that conversation and you do,
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I guess, be curious and push back and ask for more details,
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you will get some of the most valuable information
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out of your potential clients that you will ever receive.
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And it informs your marketing, it informs your positioning,
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because if you can call out what is going on inside
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somebody's head before they've even had a chance
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to articulate that concern,
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It will give you so much power in that conversation.
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It will allow you to make that
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person feel seen. It will allow you to build
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trust and rapport with them. It's such a
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powerful tool to be able to understand
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in depth that client's world. I've spoken about this
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a little bit previously on other podcast episodes, but there are essentially
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3 types of problem or objection
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or concern in a sale. There's the
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known and the spoken, which is things that they know and
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they're happy to tell you about, which are things like budget, which are things like
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timeline, stuff that everybody says, right? Then there's the
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known and the unspoken, which are usually things like,
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I'm not sure if this will actually work. I can't, I don't know if I
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trust you to deliver this in this timeframe. You know, is it going to be
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you delivering this or somebody else? And how's it actually going to look? What's that
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experience going to be like? Actually, I'm a little bit worried that if
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I choose you as a supplier and you don't deliver, my job is on the
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line. Like all of these things that they don't say out loud. Right.
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And then the final layer. So if you think about it a little bit like
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an onion, the final layer of problem is the unknown and the unspoken.
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And this is the thing that they're not actually aware of, and therefore
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they can't tell you. But through the right sales conversation,
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through the right questions,
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you as a salesman slash saleswoman are
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able to uncover things and bring things
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to that person's awareness that they weren't aware of before.
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And when you can do that, in a way that
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is compassionate and curious,
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people will pay you an extraordinary amount of money.
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And the reason is because people value
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somebody who can see what they can't see in
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relation to their goals and their challenges. And so if
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you just hide behind a proposal, if you send this thing based on a relatively
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shallow, often superficial logistical conversation
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about what somebody wants and you just send a PDF
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off, you're not getting the real gold in
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that interaction, in that conversation. You're not really
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uncovering what's going on for that person. And in my experience,
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the people get paid the most, the people that win the highest value clients,
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the people that win the clients who are a joy to work with, who respect
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them, who treat them like a partner, are often just the people
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who are willing and have the courage to push that little
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bit further and point out things that
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that person hasn't necessarily thought about, at least in not that
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way or in that context before.
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And so all of that to say in this very short podcast episode,
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because I just wanted to have a little rant about it. Stop sending
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proposals. It's okay to send the contract afterwards.
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It's okay to send the outline of the work being delivered
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afterwards, but don't send a proposal in replacement
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for a powerful sales conversation. So if
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you're up for it and you're up for having a powerful sales conversation, I've actually
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created a framework for
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running those calls. I call it the One Page Sales Framework
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because I have a very original imagination.
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It used to just be something that was available for my paying clients.
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But if you're listening to this episode, I'm really trying to build
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up a community of listeners, of real people.
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And so my offer to you is if you have the courage to have
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a powerful sales conversation with your potential prospects,
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your potential clients, then I would like to gift you this
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framework for free. All you have to do is find me
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on LinkedIn or Instagram and send
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me a message and just say, please, can you share your
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one-page sales framework? And I will share the whole thing with
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you, including the training. That is my gift
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to you for listening to this podcast and
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having the courage to take action.
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My name's Matt Essam, and you've been listening to
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the Creative Courage Podcast.