My Biggest Tip For Closing Consulting Deals (It’s So Easy…)
90% of clients are an absolute pain in the you know what.
Let’s be honest, most consultants suck at consulting and most clients suck at being clients.
It’s not like you can read a book on how to be a better client and make people who work for/with you love you.
And at the end of the day, most client/consulting relationships usually don’t end up good.
So let me help you break this crazy cycle.
If you’ve ever heard that “clients suck” from a consultant, it’s normally because they allowed the client to…
1. Dictate the terms of the agreement
2. Control the conversation at every step
3. Ask for more work after the agreement is agreed on
4. Nag every day while the work is being done
5. Whine because you didn’t increase sales by 10X with your work
6. Etc, etc, etc…
And trust me, the list goes on.
Now let me explain my biggest tip that will help you manage clients and their “expectations”. If you do what I’m about to tell you I believe that you, the consultant, and the client will have happy endings, and no, not that type of happy ending.
Alright, here we go…
You must always understand that it’s impossible to manage a client. Remember, we’re talking about human beings who are generally emotional, don’t know what they need or want, and have baggage deeper than you probably imagine. So when you’re speaking with them, you’re never going to make them bend to your will, and you don’t want to either.
But what you do want to do is manage their EXPECTATIONS. And this process starts before you even talk to a single client and it happens in two ways. The first way is in YOUR head. You have to realize that you can never manage another human being because that will make you go insane.
The second way is to manage their expectations. Expectations are defined as “the act or the state of expecting”. So here’s the big tip… You must ALWAYS LOWER their expectations without sounding like a delta bravo (douche bag).
So you understand how this can be done, here’s a quick example of what a conversation may sound like as you present it…
“Alright John, that sounds great and I really think we’ll be able to increase your conversion for sure with some new positioning, a better follow up e-mail sequence, and a better video script. But John, you know I’ll never BS you and I’m always going to be honest with you. So with saying that, do know that all of this can fail and even cost you money. But do understand that on average only 3 out of 10 promotions normally work anyways so even if it does fail, at least we know what we created didn’t resonate with the market and we can do a 180 and try a completely different model/technique. So no matter what, it’s not like we did this for nothing.”
And once you lay that foundation, you move on to more benefit driven conversation.
This approach has never NOT worked for me. I said a lot in the paragraph above but what you need to understand is that I totally set them up for possible failure which is VERY important and you MUST do this before you even dare talk about details of the project, fees, etc.
I’ve closed more consulting gigs BECAUSE of this paragraph than anything else I’ve said in potential client phone calls.
And it works so well because they know I’m honest and real. Which I always do my best to be.
And guess what, everybody else they are talking to is telling them how great their product is, how much more money they are going to make, etc. I completely flip that around and say “Hey, this could fail…”, “It may not work because we have to see how the market reacts…”, you get the point.
So that’s my big tip and it’s so easy to implement. I highly recommend you try it. Remember, you can’t manage a human being but you can manage expectations. You manage expectations by the sample conversation I wrote above or a variation of it.
Now, I don’t personally do much consulting at all anymore because I’m working with my wife on our businesses and we’re launching a ton of new stuff in the future.
But if you are a consultant or want to be in the future, then you must sign up for my good friends e-mail list at ClientsSuck.net. I get nothing for mentioning Jason, I just believe in his in depth knowledge of making money and getting clients. Hopefully you learned something today and if you haven’t check Jason out and also make sure to grab his Monday Hotsheet. I’ve been a member of the Monday Hotsheet since the beginning and always come away with something new from his research.
