Ian Altman 0:00
Do you have any examples or anything you'd like to share with us?
Unknown Speaker 0:04
Now I'm sorry, I spoke up. No, I'm kidding. Yeah. Our team was discussing this beforehand that this might be a good example to bring today. I don't know if it's about something taking a long time and what do you do, but it is possible that it could turn out to make the process longer because of the way it was handled. So, let me throw it out there. We have an account that we've been working with as a prospect for years, developing the relationship. The product that we sell is called The Practices, and it's a complex product that needs a buy-in from many departments. So it's usually a year-long or longer process. We are at the proposal stage. So, we're getting there. The relationships are great. They asked us if we could, so we've given them the price, and what they're asking for is formatting the documents. Which are, we do that, and that's included in the price. But they want us to do that times, you know, 30. So now, we're talking about a lot more work than we typically do for the price that we gave them for the proposal. It is not engineers who do the work, so it's not like the additional work would cost us a ton more. But regardless. So we sent them the proposal, they said, do you mind if we send you a couple of sample documents. Show us what you'll do in this formatting so we can show it to upper management and let them see that this is going to be the end result. It's not the only thing we do. It's just one of the many things that this product does. So the person, there's a person in the company that responded to that email after they received the documents, saying, this will take, this is going to take us a couple of weeks. We're going to have to try and work it in with the other projects that we're working on, and it's going to be at least 20 to 25 hours of our time for these two documents. So we'll do our best.
Ian Altman 2:30
This is your internal people?
Unknown Speaker 2:32
Yes.
Ian Altman 2:33
Okay.
Unknown Speaker 2:33
Now, I was, I have a different opinion about that. I wasn't asked before that email was sent out. I feel like it's not, my opinion is they don't need to know how hard this is going to be for us. Her opinion is, yeah, but we're probably going to have to ask for some additional money for this because it is more than we normally do. So I want them to know right up front that this is a lot of work because now we're going to be asking for more money. But I just want you to know, in the original meeting, when they told us they'd like to send us some samples, sample documents, and how many they have, we did warn them, in the original meeting, let us take a look. Let's see the amount of work. And it may cost additional. But, let us look at it.
Ian Altman 3:28
So, what's, in the overall scope of the project, what's the cost differential between what you were envisioning doing and what you're actually going to be doing -- everything included? Meaning, yes, there's an additional amount of time for the formatting, but it's not like it's an engineer doing it. So, in other words, is it, oh, we're going to add $20,000 on top of a quarter of a million? Is it we're gonna add 25,000 on top of 50? What's the relevance?
Unknown Speaker 3:59
If it's $100,000 it's probably 10% of that or less? Definitely not more.
Ian Altman 4:03
Okay. Okay. So so there's a few things that that I want to throw out there. And I want to open up to other people to chime in as well, because you and other people, Maria, can have rebuttal to what I'm going to suggest. So the first thing is that the trap that we, that it sounds like you may have fallen into, which is a common trap for many of us to fall into is, we give a price, and then we find out what the reality is, and then we scramble to try and figure out how do we adjust the price to reflect reality. So the first lesson in all this is, in the future, we want to be able to say to people, look, here's the range of what it can cost. Here's the low end and the high end. And the high end is if they really have a lot of complex formatting and their documents are a mess, which is what the case is in this situation right now. So if we'd given them a range and said, Look, it can range on the low end 90,000, the high end 130. And then you came in and said it's 110, they'd be like, Oh, At least it wasn't over the top. That's fine. In this case, it was more like, okay, it's $100,000. And now it's oh, it might be 110. And they're like, well, I thought you said it was 100. Yeah, but this is different. And now we're, we feel like we're kind of tap dancing around the issue because they have different expectations. Now, we can say to them, look, originally, here's remember, we said, it could be additional work. Here are the three reasons why. Now in a perfect world, what we would say is, here are the five factors that could lead to things costing more. And if we do that in the meeting, then we get to come back and say, remember, we mentioned these are the five things that could increase it? Yeah. Let me just illustrate to you, here are three of them that are present your situation, which is why it's more. I just want to make sure we're on the same page. The other thing you could do is you could say, here's the level of work we could do for you at the 100,000. If we go to 110, it'll look like this. You kind of give them two different options. You know, we can do it either way. We think it's probably worth the additional 10% investment to get you to this level. We just want to make sure you're comfortable with that. And that way, they feel like they have a choice. If we make them feel like they're painted into a corner, they might just say, we're not doing it. If we give them options, so they feel like it's their choice, and they can decide which way they go, that's great. The other thing I encourage you to look at is, and I forget which lesson it is. Kathleen may know and may provide a link to it before I finish this statement, but the client success roadmap is one of the lessons in the core lessons of the Same Side Selling Academy, and it talks about mapping out the process for them. So the extent that you could do that early on with a client that says, Look, when we're taking on this type of project, here are the different departments that get involved at which stage along the way. Here are the different complexities. So we map out all the steps from the initial conversation, through implementation, and through them getting results. And that way, it's all transparent upfront, which gives people confidence. It says, Wow, I know exactly where we are in the process, and yes, we're on board with it. As opposed to, they could push back and say, oh, we didn't know this was going to be involved, and now it's like they don't want to go down that path. So for things that are consistent, recurring type activities, if you can map out that client success roadmap, then they kind of get a feel for this is the process we go through. So I'm going to stop talking to give you an opportunity for a bottle and see if anyone else has any opinions.
Unknown Speaker 7:33
First of all, thanks, Kathleen. You sent it. I appreciate that. I think that'd be good. My thoughts on what you've said yeah, you've got my wheels turning. Well, first of all, what okay, I want to just ask you, the way it was sent, where it says this took, this is going to take us time. You know, we have to fit this in between other projects, and it's going to be at least 20 hours. The strategy behind that was to let them know right now that this is a lot of work so that they could be prepared for the fact that we are going to come back and ask for some more money.
Ian Altman 8:20
So my preference in that scenario, Maria, is that your internal people communicate that to you, and then you figure out how you want to present that to the client. Because it could be, for example, if it's an engineer saying that, if it's someone who's doing the work, it can sound like, well, I'm frustrated, and we'll get to this when we can kind of thing. As opposed to, we can take the same information and say, hey, when we met initially, we said, depending upon what was involved, it could change the scope of it. It turns out that this task is going to be about 20 to 30 hours, and right now, I'm working with our team to schedule that in. As soon as I have a timeline, I'll get back to you. I just want to let you know that we hadn't dropped the ball. Guess what? You're conveying the same information, but now you get to frame it in a way that says, hey, it's going to take this time. We're not billing you for that. We're going to take care of it, so you get this back. It will actually, based on what we're seeing, there could be an increase in cost. We're going to give you a sense of what it would be like at what we quoted you and what it would be like if it was done completely so you can make an informed decision. And by the way, because it's enough effort, we do need to schedule it out. As soon as I have an idea of the ETA of when this is going to get back to you, I'll let you know immediately. How does that work for you? And now the clients like, oh, this was great communication.
Unknown Speaker 9:43
I also think, you know, I would have sent an email saying thank you so much for the sample documents. We're getting, you know, we're going to get started on these. I anticipate it will take a couple of weeks. The other great thing that came from this, that I'm appreciative that you sent us these documents. Now we know that we can have a discussion around what additional work it is going to take to get you what you need from us. So we can have that follow-up discussion to be more specific. So almost like with gratitude, thank you so much.
Ian Altman 10:21
I agree with you. The challenge is that the people doing the work, it's totally natural for them to get this and be like, oh, man, this is going to be a lot of work. Oh, I want to make, I want to put them on notice as to how much work it is because it's a lot of work. Well, guess what? The client knows it's a lot of work. That's why they're hiring you to do it because they don't want to do the work. So, it's good. It's like, that's good news. Like, it's a lot of work you don't want to deal with this will take care of it for you. Isn't that great? Right? So that, it's just, so I would, I would encourage you to have some sort of a process that you can work with internally that says, hey, when this comes up, send the email back to me. I'll make sure to communicate it to the client within a couple hours. And that way, we can streamline the communication with them but also make sure that people doing the work don't get inundated with direct requests from the client or whatever. So it's not like someone did something wrong. It's just very often.
Unknown 11:19
It could have been done lighter.
Ian Altman 11:21
Yeah, I mean, so you know, what, if you think about it, it's it's not, I would say that in fairness to John from earlier, my guess is, John probably sent several text messages that on the surface seem like the same text message that I had just read to him to say, hey, send this message. And at a certain level, John was probably thinking to himself, I've already sent the same darn message. No one's going to respond. Right? And fortunately, we got a response. Similarly, with you, someone on your team is going to send a message that you're like, oh, I would have phrased it this other way. I would have delivered the same message, but I would have packaged it in a different way to get the different response. And that's part of our job, as professionals in sales and business development roles, is to sometimes deliver bad news and make it sound like good news. Right? So it's, you know, the, I often joke that when someone says, oh, so it cost that much for you to come speak. We don't have that much money. We only have and whatever, they're, they're short $7,000. And I say that's great news. We only have to find $7,000. Sometimes people have to find more than $20,000. You only have to find seven, that'll be easy for us to find. That's like, Oh, is that good news? I guess it is. But someone could say, Oh, that's horrible. You know, there's a big gap, but it's just in how we present it. So that said, does anyone else have any thoughts on this for Maria's situation? Maria, is that helpful?
Unknown Speaker 12:55
Yeah, you know, my wheels are turning. I'm thinking an option is to say, Okay, we will do this certain number of documents included in what we've already proposed, sent in the proposal, but if you want more than that, here's a package for this many, here's an additional package, you know, so it's kind of an everybody, you know, it's a happy medium.
Ian Altman 13:19
It's almost like, we told you, it's gonna cost 100,000. I know it may not be exactly 100,000, but we're just using that number. We mentioned it would be $100,000. Here is what we can do in that scope. Here's some additional things that it appears that you might need. But I want to give you things that, look, these are things you absolutely have to do. These other things, we could argue you have to do, or you could hold off for a little bit. We just want to give you the option. Since it's an additional $15,000, we want to give you the option on how you want to handle it. And the client might say, yeah, just do them all. Great. But now they don't feel like they're backed into a corner. They feel like you're giving them choices and trying to respect the number you originally gave them. And by the way, it's this, it's the reason why the most common question I get from people requesting me to speak is, hey, so we have this event. How much does it cost? And I always say, well, let's get on a call. I need to understand what it is you're looking for. Like, well, we want you to speak at this event. Okay. Do you want reinforcement afterward? Do you want people to be part of the academy? Do you want videos that you can have afterward? Do you want books at the event? Do you want people to have the quadrant journals? All that stuff could dramatically change the scope of the engagement. So, I need to make sure that people understand that I'm not evading their question. I just want to give them accurate information. Cool, thanks, Maria.
Transcribed by https://otter.ai
Ian Altman 0:00
Do you have any examples or anything you'd like to share with us?
Unknown Speaker 0:04
Now I'm sorry, I spoke up. No, I'm kidding. Yeah. Our team was discussing this beforehand that this might be a good example to bring today. I don't know if it's about something taking a long time and what do you do, but it is possible that it could turn out to make the process longer because of the way it was handled. So, let me throw it out there. We have an account that we've been working with as a prospect for years, developing the relationship. The product that we sell is called The Practices, and it's a complex product that needs a buy-in from many departments. So it's usually a year-long or longer process. We are at the proposal stage. So, we're getting there. The relationships are great. They asked us if we could, so we've given them the price, and what they're asking for is formatting the documents. Which are, we do that, and that's included in the price. But they want us to do that times, you know, 30. So now, we're talking about a lot more work than we typically do for the price that we gave them for the proposal. It is not engineers who do the work, so it's not like the additional work would cost us a ton more. But regardless. So we sent them the proposal, they said, do you mind if we send you a couple of sample documents. Show us what you'll do in this formatting so we can show it to upper management and let them see that this is going to be the end result. It's not the only thing we do. It's just one of the many things that this product does. So the person, there's a person in the company that responded to that email after they received the documents, saying, this will take, this is going to take us a couple of weeks. We're going to have to try and work it in with the other projects that we're working on, and it's going to be at least 20 to 25 hours of our time for these two documents. So we'll do our best.
Ian Altman 2:30
This is your internal people?
Unknown Speaker 2:32
Yes.
Ian Altman 2:33
Okay.
Unknown Speaker 2:33
Now, I was, I have a different opinion about that. I wasn't asked before that email was sent out. I feel like it's not, my opinion is they don't need to know how hard this is going to be for us. Her opinion is, yeah, but we're probably going to have to ask for some additional money for this because it is more than we normally do. So I want them to know right up front that this is a lot of work because now we're going to be asking for more money. But I just want you to know, in the original meeting, when they told us they'd like to send us some samples, sample documents, and how many they have, we did warn them, in the original meeting, let us take a look. Let's see the amount of work. And it may cost additional. But, let us look at it.
Ian Altman 3:28
So, what's, in the overall scope of the project, what's the cost differential between what you were envisioning doing and what you're actually going to be doing -- everything included? Meaning, yes, there's an additional amount of time for the formatting, but it's not like it's an engineer doing it. So, in other words, is it, oh, we're going to add $20,000 on top of a quarter of a million? Is it we're gonna add 25,000 on top of 50? What's the relevance?
Unknown Speaker 3:59
If it's $100,000 it's probably 10% of that or less? Definitely not more.
Ian Altman 4:03
Okay. Okay. So so there's a few things that that I want to throw out there. And I want to open up to other people to chime in as well, because you and other people, Maria, can have rebuttal to what I'm going to suggest. So the first thing is that the trap that we, that it sounds like you may have fallen into, which is a common trap for many of us to fall into is, we give a price, and then we find out what the reality is, and then we scramble to try and figure out how do we adjust the price to reflect reality. So the first lesson in all this is, in the future, we want to be able to say to people, look, here's the range of what it can cost. Here's the low end and the high end. And the high end is if they really have a lot of complex formatting and their documents are a mess, which is what the case is in this situation right now. So if we'd given them a range and said, Look, it can range on the low end 90,000, the high end 130. And then you came in and said it's 110, they'd be like, Oh, At least it wasn't over the top. That's fine. In this case, it was more like, okay, it's $100,000. And now it's oh, it might be 110. And they're like, well, I thought you said it was 100. Yeah, but this is different. And now we're, we feel like we're kind of tap dancing around the issue because they have different expectations. Now, we can say to them, look, originally, here's remember, we said, it could be additional work. Here are the three reasons why. Now in a perfect world, what we would say is, here are the five factors that could lead to things costing more. And if we do that in the meeting, then we get to come back and say, remember, we mentioned these are the five things that could increase it? Yeah. Let me just illustrate to you, here are three of them that are present your situation, which is why it's more. I just want to make sure we're on the same page. The other thing you could do is you could say, here's the level of work we could do for you at the 100,000. If we go to 110, it'll look like this. You kind of give them two different options. You know, we can do it either way. We think it's probably worth the additional 10% investment to get you to this level. We just want to make sure you're comfortable with that. And that way, they feel like they have a choice. If we make them feel like they're painted into a corner, they might just say, we're not doing it. If we give them options, so they feel like it's their choice, and they can decide which way they go, that's great. The other thing I encourage you to look at is, and I forget which lesson it is. Kathleen may know and may provide a link to it before I finish this statement, but the client success roadmap is one of the lessons in the core lessons of the Same Side Selling Academy, and it talks about mapping out the process for them. So the extent that you could do that early on with a client that says, Look, when we're taking on this type of project, here are the different departments that get involved at which stage along the way. Here are the different complexities. So we map out all the steps from the initial conversation, through implementation, and through them getting results. And that way, it's all transparent upfront, which gives people confidence. It says, Wow, I know exactly where we are in the process, and yes, we're on board with it. As opposed to, they could push back and say, oh, we didn't know this was going to be involved, and now it's like they don't want to go down that path. So for things that are consistent, recurring type activities, if you can map out that client success roadmap, then they kind of get a feel for this is the process we go through. So I'm going to stop talking to give you an opportunity for a bottle and see if anyone else has any opinions.
Unknown Speaker 7:33
First of all, thanks, Kathleen. You sent it. I appreciate that. I think that'd be good. My thoughts on what you've said yeah, you've got my wheels turning. Well, first of all, what okay, I want to just ask you, the way it was sent, where it says this took, this is going to take us time. You know, we have to fit this in between other projects, and it's going to be at least 20 hours. The strategy behind that was to let them know right now that this is a lot of work so that they could be prepared for the fact that we are going to come back and ask for some more money.
Ian Altman 8:20
So my preference in that scenario, Maria, is that your internal people communicate that to you, and then you figure out how you want to present that to the client. Because it could be, for example, if it's an engineer saying that, if it's someone who's doing the work, it can sound like, well, I'm frustrated, and we'll get to this when we can kind of thing. As opposed to, we can take the same information and say, hey, when we met initially, we said, depending upon what was involved, it could change the scope of it. It turns out that this task is going to be about 20 to 30 hours, and right now, I'm working with our team to schedule that in. As soon as I have a timeline, I'll get back to you. I just want to let you know that we hadn't dropped the ball. Guess what? You're conveying the same information, but now you get to frame it in a way that says, hey, it's going to take this time. We're not billing you for that. We're going to take care of it, so you get this back. It will actually, based on what we're seeing, there could be an increase in cost. We're going to give you a sense of what it would be like at what we quoted you and what it would be like if it was done completely so you can make an informed decision. And by the way, because it's enough effort, we do need to schedule it out. As soon as I have an idea of the ETA of when this is going to get back to you, I'll let you know immediately. How does that work for you? And now the clients like, oh, this was great communication.
Unknown Speaker 9:43
I also think, you know, I would have sent an email saying thank you so much for the sample documents. We're getting, you know, we're going to get started on these. I anticipate it will take a couple of weeks. The other great thing that came from this, that I'm appreciative that you sent us these documents. Now we know that we can have a discussion around what additional work it is going to take to get you what you need from us. So we can have that follow-up discussion to be more specific. So almost like with gratitude, thank you so much.
Ian Altman 10:21
I agree with you. The challenge is that the people doing the work, it's totally natural for them to get this and be like, oh, man, this is going to be a lot of work. Oh, I want to make, I want to put them on notice as to how much work it is because it's a lot of work. Well, guess what? The client knows it's a lot of work. That's why they're hiring you to do it because they don't want to do the work. So, it's good. It's like, that's good news. Like, it's a lot of work you don't want to deal with this will take care of it for you. Isn't that great? Right? So that, it's just, so I would, I would encourage you to have some sort of a process that you can work with internally that says, hey, when this comes up, send the email back to me. I'll make sure to communicate it to the client within a couple hours. And that way, we can streamline the communication with them but also make sure that people doing the work don't get inundated with direct requests from the client or whatever. So it's not like someone did something wrong. It's just very often.
Unknown 11:19
It could have been done lighter.
Ian Altman 11:21
Yeah, I mean, so you know, what, if you think about it, it's it's not, I would say that in fairness to John from earlier, my guess is, John probably sent several text messages that on the surface seem like the same text message that I had just read to him to say, hey, send this message. And at a certain level, John was probably thinking to himself, I've already sent the same darn message. No one's going to respond. Right? And fortunately, we got a response. Similarly, with you, someone on your team is going to send a message that you're like, oh, I would have phrased it this other way. I would have delivered the same message, but I would have packaged it in a different way to get the different response. And that's part of our job, as professionals in sales and business development roles, is to sometimes deliver bad news and make it sound like good news. Right? So it's, you know, the, I often joke that when someone says, oh, so it cost that much for you to come speak. We don't have that much money. We only have and whatever, they're, they're short $7,000. And I say that's great news. We only have to find $7,000. Sometimes people have to find more than $20,000. You only have to find seven, that'll be easy for us to find. That's like, Oh, is that good news? I guess it is. But someone could say, Oh, that's horrible. You know, there's a big gap, but it's just in how we present it. So that said, does anyone else have any thoughts on this for Maria's situation? Maria, is that helpful?
Unknown Speaker 12:55
Yeah, you know, my wheels are turning. I'm thinking an option is to say, Okay, we will do this certain number of documents included in what we've already proposed, sent in the proposal, but if you want more than that, here's a package for this many, here's an additional package, you know, so it's kind of an everybody, you know, it's a happy medium.
Ian Altman 13:19
It's almost like, we told you, it's gonna cost 100,000. I know it may not be exactly 100,000, but we're just using that number. We mentioned it would be $100,000. Here is what we can do in that scope. Here's some additional things that it appears that you might need. But I want to give you things that, look, these are things you absolutely have to do. These other things, we could argue you have to do, or you could hold off for a little bit. We just want to give you the option. Since it's an additional $15,000, we want to give you the option on how you want to handle it. And the client might say, yeah, just do them all. Great. But now they don't feel like they're backed into a corner. They feel like you're giving them choices and trying to respect the number you originally gave them. And by the way, it's this, it's the reason why the most common question I get from people requesting me to speak is, hey, so we have this event. How much does it cost? And I always say, well, let's get on a call. I need to understand what it is you're looking for. Like, well, we want you to speak at this event. Okay. Do you want reinforcement afterward? Do you want people to be part of the academy? Do you want videos that you can have afterward? Do you want books at the event? Do you want people to have the quadrant journals? All that stuff could dramatically change the scope of the engagement. So, I need to make sure that people understand that I'm not evading their question. I just want to give them accurate information. Cool, thanks, Maria.
Transcribed by https://otter.ai
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