 On this call we're going to be talking about how to run an effective initial discovery interview. Now after I brought up the topic of discovery, I wanted to get more clarity on it because discovery there's different ways of doing discovery. On this call what we're going to be discussing and going through is that very first call that you have with a client. When you try to find out the scope of the project and just understand the client, understand their budget and being able to give them an accurate quote and make them a good proposal. So you might be asking, oh one little too fast, so you might be asking yourself what is a discovery and why do I need to do it? And I'm going to be straight up with everyone. For my first two years freelancing I didn't even, I'd never even heard discovery. I never even heard of it and it is a regular industry term that's used but I didn't know about it. And my idea of the way that I found out about a project with the client was usually I just sent them a list of questions like what colors do you like, what kind of font do you like, what kind of website do you like and that's all I knew how to do for my first couple years until I learned about what discovery was. And discovery is where you can learn as much as possible about the client, their business, their brand, their goals for their project and the current problems and challenges that they have and that they need to get solved. It's also a proper one. It will help you get a clear understanding of the project scope and budget and this way you'll be able to give a better quote and build a more detailed proposal. So first off let's talk about what happens when you don't do a good first discovery interview. And this is how my first couple years were freelancing because I never did this. I never really ran a proper first initial meeting with the client. The first one was leaving open all this room for scope creep. My first two, three years I don't even think I remember a project that I had where there was no scope creep. Some of them had a little bit of scope creep but some of them just dragged on and on and on and I couldn't stop it. Like it just opened up the floodgates and once you open up those gates to scope creep it's really hard to close them. Another one is not catching all the red flags. You know sometimes you need to like really talk to a client to see if there's somebody you want to work with. If you have more of an in-depth conversation with them first you might see those things that says oh maybe I should not take this project. This project might be a headache it might be a stressor. I might lose money it might not be a good fit. And one thing you want to keep in mind in the very beginning is it has to work both ways. You should be able to find out how to you should be able to see is this a good fit for both of us. It's got to be more of a partnership. The other one is not getting a clear understanding and direction of the goals and that is you're just kind of like building and you don't know what you're building for and then this is a big one for me and this is one that that has made me pivot and break away from just trying to close a deal really quick with a client and that is you could turn into an order taker and see a thing is when you're not really talking about the goals finding out who the client is and why do they want to build this and not really getting to the root of it you're just doing what the client tells you to do and when you're just doing what the client tells you to do you're going to be you're going to be treated and put as the order taker and one thing about being an order taker is you're easily replaceable because there are there's there's unlimited resource of order takers out there and it's hard to break out of this and the thing is too it's hard to break out of this because you it's hard to change the client's perspective of you and the way they look at you and also it's hard to break out of it if you're coming from a different background like for myself I came from a background where I had a regular job I wasn't an entrepreneur I wasn't a freelancer I had a regular job and in my job I had certain duties I had to take and I had a boss I had an answer to and I had to do what I was told to do so that kind of mentality it was hard to break out of it the whole point of this you know at this call right here and well one big point of it is to break out of that mentality of being an order taker and start looking at as more of a partnership with the client how can you help them achieve their goals and then there's a good chance of project with them the thing is there has to be direction and a goal and there has to be a clear understanding of the problems what problems is this supposed to solve the client might think they know and they know there's a problem because they feel it and they feel it might be coming from one end but the client is also doing a lot of guessing they might be guessing that this will fix a problem but they're not sure about it and if you don't know what the problems are if you don't know what the goal is then how can you address it how can you you know tell the client uh do you know what I think it's a good idea what you want but we're trying to fix this right here if we do this it'll fix a problem that we need to fix and it'll help you more see but if you don't know what those problems are you know you won't be able to address them they'll just be taken orders and then the most this is the most important communication communication is the key to the whole thing you need to have good communication with your client and if you start it off poorly it's going to be hard throughout the whole project but if you get a good start on communication you position yourself in the very beginning as somebody that's there to help them achieve their goals and solve their problems and that you build that relationship from the very beginning then you start off with strong communication so this right here I had a I had a discovery call with the client uh this week and I asked the client a question and that's what sparked this whole like do I think this would be a great topic for us to discuss um and this is what the client told me it was like a total mind blowing like feedback that I got from the client I asked her why did the last developer fail and this is exactly what she told me she said he did exactly what we told him to do he did not use his expertise and judgment to tell us what was best to do and this this is this is uh I mean it was great to hear a client realize this but I mean this just shows what they really need and what clients are really hoping for it's more than just taking the orders and more than just doing what they tell you to do it's how can you use how can you help them so what will you get out of a discovery interview so this is what you could expect to get out of them this is what I've gotten out of mind since I've switched from just doing my emails with the list of questions uh from just asking you know the basics to a client and since I started uh doing more structured initial consultations initial discovery interviews this is how it's benefited me right here and how it'll benefit you as well uh you'll be able to position yourself as more than a designer and developer you can be seen as somebody that could do more from the very beginning I don't know if you've ever had this to happen to you it's happened to me many times where I'd be hired to develop something but then the client would also hire somebody else for design they would hire somebody else for market for SEO or marketing they would hire somebody else for branding they would hire someone else for consultation and I feel like wait we got people that could help with that like I could be helping you with that but they don't see me as anything else but the developer because I did not start off the relationship as somebody that's more than just a developer when we're creatives and we're designers and we're developers we're problem solvers that is that's the essential skill behind design design isn't about making things look good design is about how can you solve a problem you'll be able to build trust a lot easier from the beginning and building trust is a hard thing to do and something that must get done uh when you start off your conversations your relationship with the client and you're showing from the very beginning you're more interested in their goals and helping them out with their business instead of just how can I build five page website for you you're you're going to be trusted more because the clients are going to have more like they're going to feel you care more possibly than the other developers that they've worked with you'll have a better chance of winning the project your approach you will approach the project from a different perspective as well you'll be focusing more on the client's goals and problems that need to be solved from the very beginning so you're going to look at things differently if you start off by looking at their goals and at their problems and how you can help them you're going to like the whole way you view the project the whole way you view your conversations requests from the clients all that stuff is going to be different because you're going to have a different aim you're going to have a different goal and your goal is going to be focused on their goals it's not just going to be about building the website or making the design and you'll be adding more value to the project and when you add more value uh your rates are higher you should be able to charge more because you are worth more at that point and there will be a clear expectations of there'll be a clear understanding of expectations from both of you from the very beginning it'll be clear you guys will know exactly what to expect from each other and this will prevent scope creep and I have to say that I could not control scope creep for the first few years but since I started opening up this kind of conversation this kind of a communication I have eliminated just about all scope creep out of my workflow I've gotten very good at preventing scope creep from happening because I addressed it in the very beginning a lot of times I found when I'm frustrated with a client because they're asking for too much because they're going after revision after revision it's not the client's fault it really isn't if you have a client that's doing scope creep on you 95 percent of the time it's not the client's fault it's ours we need to build that communication and it comes from communication if communication is clear from the very beginning on this is exactly what we're going to do now if we're going to do something else this is how it's going to go this is how much it's going to be and everything is laid out and you have that you have that uh you have that response from the client like okay they understand it then it makes it so much easier when scope creep does start to happen I mean it's okay it's okay like if somebody wants to go out of scope I'm totally fine with it it's just you got to pay for it and this is how we're going to do it and they're going to understand it because we already have that conversation from the very beginning all right so right now let's go ahead and take a pause I want to open it up I want to give people a chance to ask questions and also a chance to uh give feedback and uh also got to put it out there uh let me start the screen share you know I feel that a few of you right now inside the group it's on this call also has a lot of experience with uh discovery as well so it'd be good to hear from you guys you know like what discovery does with you and what are your processes when you're taking those first initial calls I want to ask Jeff is uh I have a problem about content because usually the project will be much longer because the client doesn't provide enough content they give content a little a little a little so do you talk about content in the discovery uh discovery meeting yeah absolutely absolutely we make it clear the process of delivering content or paying for it and we give options how how do you do that well I first find out what they're looking for like I find out if you know if they need help with content they need help with other services like that so I find out about it and then I also make it clear that you know content is a responsibility but if they need help with it we could help out and I also tell them I'm like and I'm open I tell them like look at one of the biggest headaches clients have is getting content and I tell them I'm like if you want us to help out with that like we have content writers that could help you so it will make the the the project fee is bigger exactly okay thank you thank you I mean will tell me something would you if like you have a major headache that's stressing you out that's holding you back in your business would you rather pay five hundred or a thousand dollars to save you a couple weeks of a headache so that way you could get more business done and yeah that's what you got to like really you know like look at the clients will pay that if it'll help them out okay thanks I want to add something if it's all right no um on what Clement asked somebody was speaking I'm sorry to interrupt go ahead Rajaf and then pass it on to Lauren okay so um this is a person coming from a personal experience so I am in dealing with the client right now and it's been a while so I was not applying the strategy before as Jeff said of asking you know providing content from your own side because as of now I'm working as a freelancer not as an agency I do have some contacts and ties with networking with people who can write content but at that moment I was not really offering but what I learned from this experience is sometimes content is one of the reasons why our projects get delayed and delayed and I think initially we discussed in one of our initial calls that because of that let's say you start a new project and that whole project is still hanging somewhere you know just because the client is not able to provide you client on time so maybe it might affect the client or not that their website is getting delayed but it sure will impact you as a freelancer or as a worker because um you have new projects coming in but the old one is still hanging in the air and you are not able to finish it off so this is what I was facing but what Jeff said I think it's a good solution to offer them that if they think the service is amazing if they don't I think we should have certain guidelines to tell them that look if you will come back to us this is your certain time frame we request you to provide the content 10 days 15 days if you don't use our services and if you are not able to do that you know then probably your website will be lagging way behind because you know you are not doing anything on the website then probably you can in a way tell them that this is gonna be more devastating for you because you are not providing the content and for example we don't want you to come back after six months and say here is the content now please work because you know I forget about the project I was working might be still the demo content so it will get back to you those project again so I feel it's better to set a clear expectation as well with the client to make them aware of their timelines when they can make us aware of our timelines I think we should keep them posted about their timelines as well because it's a two way story we are not order takers in the end right so good stuff man good stuff Lauren no exactly that we had so many issues with content and from content scope creep because you know you might already build the page and then they get you the content and now it's not fitting and now you have to redesign it and you have to reformat it and we had a lot of projects run really late because of content alone where even kind of like what you were saying Jeff where you make the expectations early okay what content do you want we want exactly this they changed later on and that we didn't have a strong foundation to say no you can't change your mind so what we've done recently to help protect us and to help protect them because you know you're you're trying to protect their budget too you want to protect your time and the effort that you've made but you also have to protect them and help their project not be delayed for months and years sometimes so what we what we started doing was one in our contracts we include either content auditing and a very specific certain amount of time so like 10 hours for content auditing or after the project has been built they have 10 hours or 20 hours or whatever you decide to do for changes later so then you can keep track yes we can be flexible and we can change content later but you know we got to agree on a time together the other thing that we started doing was because design depends on content we don't start the project timeline until we have all the content and all the assets in our hands and that helps when you know with them disappearing or it kind of helps them because they want the project to start right they don't they can't drag it out because it it's depending on them for it to start another thing is if they do disappear for 10 days I think or two or three weeks when our contract we as the agency and you as a freelancer have the right to end the contract which helps prevent them disappearing trying to work on content for six months like you said Raj like you've got a life too you've got other clients you have to keep moving the project forward so that's that's some things that we've done to help kind of create a guideline for them and they understand the rules and then you can work together you know there's things you need to change you can work on it but it's like Jeff said you've got to have that foundation at the beginning two of the biggest headaches all freelancers web developers web designers go through are collecting content and scope creep those are the two biggest headaches the two things that'll stop you from completing a project hold you back from getting paid and will keep being a constant stressor so how do you eliminate those two from the very beginning and it all comes down to communication with clear communication clear expectations and a process and a system in place to let the clients know this is how we work and this is how it is you can prevent that and it is preventable I'm like it is I'm going to let you know that preventing scope creep and preventing delayed projects from content collecting content is preventable all right cool I'm going to go ahead and move back on to the slide and let me get the screen share all right can everyone see it okay I can't see anyone so I have to get off the screen share is that a yes all right cool I'm sorry we already had a one time when we did the whole call and the screen share didn't show I spent like four hours on the deck all right so all right so going into the call now so we already just went over like what the discovery is the portents of it and what you can get out of it now let's talk about actually going into it there's going to be two things to start with and these are just like the two like super important things that you need to work on right here and that's going to really help out and that's going to be preparing yourself to ask non-stop questions and to think like a psychologist or psychiatrist or you know just think of like a tv show when you see somebody sitting on the couch and the psychologist is writing notes and they're like so what made you feel that way why did you do that and it's kind of like that you just want to ask lots of questions uh don't jump the gun and start giving solutions and telling clients like what they think they should do spend the whole call asking questions the next one is be prepared to take non-stop notes don't stop taking it this right here is like needed I even tried it on my computer typing there's something about writing notes and when you're writing non-stop and no matter what even if you feel it's not significant and you're writing on it what it's doing is it's forcing you to listen uh and listening is the key to these discovery calls because you're trying to discover uh the underlying stuff the stuff the client doesn't know how to tell you yet or the stuff the client doesn't even know is the issue you're trying to discover it so you have to ask a lot of questions to get to the root of that and then you just got to take those notes so that way you can make sure you listen and then you always could go back to everything so when you're preparing for it uh take the time make sure you take that time to write down your questions to structure how the meeting will go and to remember you're the facilitator uh you're facilitating a meeting when I do this I want the meeting to run the way that I want it to run if it goes any other way and then it just if it goes off track from the way that I want to run it then I always leave it feeling like I didn't do it right I feel like you know like I didn't get what I wanted to get out of that that interview that that that call the meeting the discussion so it's really important to like structure it step by step from the very beginning to the end and when I do it I actually have like this is the first group of what we're talking about this is the next one I have a list of the questions in it to the end all the way through so it's kind of like a script in a way so these are the areas that we want to dig into and keep in mind this is just for the very first call while you're trying to get to learn about them and about the project so in the first call we just want to get to know about their business and their company we want to get to know their brand we want to get to know their marketing we want to get to the know their customers who is their target audience and then at the very end I want to know about the project and I keep the project at the very end because I first want to know about this other stuff so that way when we do talk about the project I can see why are we going to need to work on this project what does this project need to do for the client if I start with the project first then I start thinking oh we could build it this way we could do this way we could you know like I'm not looking at it from their brand from their customers from their goals from their problems that need to be solved so I talk about the project at the end of the call and this is basically this is how I start my structure right here I start off with an overview and the overview I like to set the expectations I like the client to know about what we're doing here I let them know that this is initial call the goal here is for us to get to know each other we want to get a better understanding of you of the project we want to get to know your your goals your challenges we want to know who your customers are and then we also want you to get to know us and like get an idea of our process and this way we can find out for a good fit and I even let the client know we're we're you know I let the client know from the very beginning in the very first part of it that you know I want to see if this is a good fit for us and for you that when we take on projects we like to take them on more as a partnership and that's why we want to know the goals because that's what we're here to do like if we take on your project we're going to be taking on your project to help you hit your goals we want to help you out you know building helping your customers helping you through the challenges so right from the very beginning I set the positioning I set it up and then another very important thing this is super important to do in the very beginning make sure they have time in the call in the expectations tell them you know like usually a call like this will go for about 45 minutes to about an hour are you okay with that do you have time for this call find out how much time they have because you have to be respectful of their time and uh while you're going through the call if they say they only have like you don't want to go through the call put all this time in and like really start getting down to the roots of it and then for them to say like oh I have another call I have another meaning I got to go to and cut it halfway because it takes the full like I said we're only talking about the project at the very end so we need to know how much time it's going to take and it needs time to go through uh for me an average call for something like this just for the very first call this is just the first one uh to get to know the project it takes me about 45 minutes to an hour and while I'm doing it keep an eye on the time I'm watching the time as I go through I make sure we're not getting stuck in one section for too long so I kind of break it down like I have four different sections in my call so I'm making sure we don't spend no more than 10 15 minutes in one section so these are the things we want to go through first one the first uh group of questions the first uh the first group that we talk about is about their business and company and we want to ask about their company when did they start you know how big are they how many employees do they have how many decision makers are there what are their goals what do they want to be from a year from now and once you start getting comfortable talking this way you can even start asking them about themselves how much do they net in a month in a year how much more do they want to make next year you know how how will this project help them make that how will it help them hit their goal and what challenges are they're facing I this is where I want to get a gauge of their budget I want to see how big they are and how much they could afford I want to see how big this project should be how important is it to them you know if they're a mom in pop shop and you know if they're they're only pulling in like five thousand dollars a month and only making 60 000 a year then you know of course you know they're they're not going to be able to afford too much because realistically the project might not be bringing them too much but they're like a medium to large size company but say they have like 15 employees they've been around for like five to ten years they got 15 employees they're most likely bringing in 1.5 million a year and this project you know we can start getting a gauge of how much they're looking at and now we know like what we should be looking at in the price range also one thing to consider is when given a cost and see like one of the biggest goals in these calls is to find out what costs to give a client how to price them by doing this we're finding out their budget and how big they are and of course the bigger the client the bigger the budget and the bigger expectations that they have the more we got to charge because you got to understand the client thinks that this project they think that they want a boost of like 10% on a 20 million dollar annual you know a revenue that they're bringing in and they want to be 10% and they're looking at like a two million dollar increase that's a lot on the line right there that's a lot more even though the site might be the same size site as a smaller company there's more that's going to be involved because now you got more responsibility there's probably going to be a lot more communication that's going to be needed so you need to price higher there's a lot more on the line the next one is learning about their brand I want to know who they are what do they stand for what are their values and what matters most of them how will they describe themselves how do they want their project the the project to communicate to their customers what makes them different from their competition I want to know who they are I want to know if this is somebody I want to work with that I'm in line with also I want to know in their project how are we going to present them how how are we uh what kind of message do we need to get across how do we need to position them and to put them when it comes to the design we need to know how to communicate them so I want to know who they are I want to look for all the adjectives I want to look for every description that they give to me the next thing is I want to know about their customers I want to I want them to describe their biggest customers to me who are their top three I want to know why they buy from them why would their customers choose someone else what type of customers whether like would they like to get more of what is getting in the way what are their customers challenges what can they do to improve their relationship between them and their customers uh I'm trying to like get an understanding of who we're going to market to who this project is going to be directed to but I'm also trying to find out their problem I'm trying to find out what challenges and problems that they're having what needs to be solved and then I go into their marketing I just want to know where they're at with their marketing as well what are their sales channels uh where are their sales coming from what is their marketing plan are they using google ads or they're using facebook instagram linkedin SEO uh what are they doing uh I also want to know who is working on their marketing and how much do they have in their budget what are they currently spending per month and per year on the marketing and uh this is for a couple reasons first I want to know uh is it viable hitting their goals what do they need to get done to hit their goals they might not have a marketing plan they might have someone in-house doing it they might need more help in this area you know they might come to me to hire hire us to design and build a website but I'm already looking at what else do they need and how else could we help them out I'm also looking at what is their budget just like the first one of trying to find out about their business and company I want to see how big their budget is if they already have a marketing team whether in-house or external and they're pumping 300 000 bot or 300 000 like a lot of money into ads every month I'm saying 300 000 bot because uh a while back we took on a client and the client was spending 300 000 bot that's 10 000 us dollars and they're spending that per month on google ads and they asked us to build a website and they tried to low ball us to a website trying to get us to spend like $2 000 for the website and I'm like you're spending $10 000 a month on ads what if we're able to like build a website that could you know increase that number right there uh even if it was just by like half the number if we're only just to increase so let's just say we just do it by one by uh we increase the conversion rate by one percent we would double how many people come to you you know how much is that worth you're beginning twice as much out of your ads that you're paying $10 000 for so theoretically like this website would be worth $10 000 a month so how does spending $2 000 how can you justify that that kind of investment you know there's a lot on the line right there and this is how I find out about their budget now I have to tell you when that project came through I still didn't have I still wasn't like uh I didn't still I still didn't have the experience of speaking to clients like this to speaking more about the business side like it's taking practice and it's taking doing a lot of these and every time I do one of them I get better with it and you know on hindsight I look like I could have easily got a lot more money for that website because we did we we boosted their conversion rate by seven percent when we finished it they went from having like five to ten clients in their facility to having 30 to 40 clients within a matter of a couple months we made them so much money and I think I only got like $5 000 for the website and they still you know they still made it hard for me to get that you know but that that was the experience I had to go through and now I understand more about the value of what we could do and we want to find out the value that's why learning about the marketing learning about their business we could find out how much we could really do for them all right and then last the last part we talk about the project and when we talk about the projects we already know about their goals we know about the problems we know about the direction there there are customers who are going to be making this for and we're seeing it from a different perspective and now we could look at the project in a different way we could look at it from an overview and see see what it really is and what the potential board is and how we could really help and then in this part right here we just want to get all the information we can we want to know the exact scope and want to find out exactly like what are the actual requirements and to take a list of all that because we're going to use this now to for our proposal and to give a quote for the project and for that let's go ahead and break it up again and do another Q&A or just like get feedback from others as well because we all got different process I mean I'm sure a lot of our processes are the same here hey hey what's up Alex yeah I have a question I just wanted to ask you how much do you sort of find out about the client before you make the discovery call I mean do you check out maybe the LinkedIn if they've got a website if they've already got one and you know what when I've gone on discovery calls I've tried to definitely if they've got a website take a look and and offer them advice you know little bits of building nuggets and free tips for them during the discovery call at the start I wondered if you had any tips of what you do before so yeah I do LinkedIn I do a thorough background check on them like I try to find out as much information as I can I look at their website I even look for the company on LinkedIn because you could see how many employees and you could also see like who are the directors you can see everyone's position so I go into the call and I'll even write down names of other people in their company and like and it'll shock people sometimes well I'm like well isn't it though so-and-so the director you know if you want to get him on the call too that'd be awesome and like you get a good reaction like they know you've done your homework when you come in it's a nice ice beretta yeah yeah anyone else do anything to prep and to get prepared before going to a call there are so many questions on the chat I think what's that oh the chat oh wow we're gonna get to the chat after if I start going through it we won't finish the slide we only got one more word now to the end of the slide all right you guys okay for me to go ahead and continue all right let me go ahead and share the screen again all right so this is my process that I use right here I want to share it with you I've been using it lately and it's been really helping out a lot what I've been doing is uh so when I'm writing my notes I have like my notebook right here let me see and these are actual let me pull out one of the pages right here so this is like my actual pages you see I have a bunch of notes on one side and then I got these columns broken down and I have like two sides I'm writing notes so on one side is open I'm just writing constantly because I'm trying to listen and on the right side I have these three columns and I've broken up those three columns and in the first column I put my highlight notes the things that stand out that the that the client says like the client will say something that's like that's absolutely necessary for the project they'll say like we have to have this and you know like like for an example they might say um you know we need to have this you know the most important thing about our project is that it's design mobile first and we need this to run in this way so anything the client says is like super important to them I'm putting down in the highlight notes the second column I have your brand and here I write down any word that they say that describes them they use a word like like family oriented or or or or high quality or like any of these objective adjectives that describes them I'm writing it down and this happens throughout the whole call you know we could be like when we're of course when we're talking about the brand and the brand questions I write them in there but sometimes in the other questions and something else they'll say something that that describes them and then I'll write that down as well in the brand so I have just a list of keywords in the brand and then the third one that's where I write my problems not my problems I write the client's problems and this is where all the opportunities come in so every time I hear the client they message they mention some kind of problem a challenge that they're having or anything negative that's what I write inside there so I want to get a list of that and I have to tell you that almost every single time I talk to a client and I ask them what their challenges are they don't tell me all of them and it isn't till like we're in another question it could be some other topic that it'll come out so it goes back to that like psychologist therapist type of asking questions I mean when you just you know like just pictures somebody like in the movies where they're on the couch and they're asking questions they're trying to get to the root of the problem and we got to help them get to it so a lot of these questions is helping the clients get to the root of the problem because most of times they don't know what it is yet or they might know but not understand the extent of it so through the whole thing I am jotting them down and this is how my columns look right here just want to give an example and it's all about listening this whole call is all about listening and throughout the entire meeting I'm constantly listening for the client's problems by listening for the client's problems I'm seeing exactly what we need to solve they could tell me their goals but everyone's goal is to solve problems and by solving the problems we become much more than just a designer and developer all right so now we've asked all the questions we got like about five minutes left for the call we want to respect the time if the client says it got an hour we stop within the hour definitely want to respect the client's time always so when we end it what I like to do is I like to recap with the client and what really helps out are those three columns those three columns really helps out if you wrote them and you could go through them in order and I just started doing this recently and I've been getting really good feedback on it uh one thing you want to do is you want to read your bullet points out loud say okay like just want to recap on uh how the call was I felt we got we made a lot of progress we got a really good understanding this is what I heard right here I heard what we need to accomplish and we must is this right here a b and c and what I heard about you this is what I this is this is what I feel describes your brand the best and we list those out and then I list out I don't tell them their problems instead I look at and we got some things that we got to overcome one thing we got to work on is we got to fix this right here we got to fix this we got to fix this and we could probably do these by looking in this area now I don't give them full solutions right off the bat because this isn't a strategy call this isn't like that right there and I think uh Lauren yeah Lauren posted it in one of the in the uh in the on facebook that when we start getting to that phase we need to start getting paid for it so when you start getting to the point where you're giving solutions and you're actually looking for workarounds that's the point where we got to start getting paid uh because it's our thinking and our creativity and our experience uh that's valuable right there right now what we want to do is just listen and understand and now after the recap uh we want to qualify the client in order to move forward and this is a time uh where we find out the client has the budget for the project and it's time to give them a rough estimate you know if you feel like this project is going to start off at 10 15 000 you know it might tell the client okay let's say I think it'll start off at 10 15 000 and the client is a medium to smaller size client and I feel like they could afford it because they have a big enough business to afford it and I feel like they're going to get a lot out of it I'm going to tell them like something like you know uh uh just to give you a rough a rough idea I think the project like this is going to start off maybe around 15 18 000 I'm going to start all right I'm going to give them a higher number uh because we want to anchor it up higher so I'm going to tell them you know a project like this is going to start off at about 15 20 000 uh are you comfortable with this price range so we want to address this right now we want to know their reaction their response and what they think about this price and what they're comfortable with because I don't want to waste my time going forward I don't want to waste their time but I definitely don't want to waste my time because the next step will be writing a proposal and actually bidding for the job and I want to know what are they willing to invest in their project and I think this whole part right here about talking about how much you're going to invest I think that that's going to need its own call right there because there's a lot more going into this uh as far as talking money with clients right there but this is where we do address it but definitely say you're right here though just a touch on the surface and you give a number a number that you feel is fair for both of you and if they say like whoa that's way too expensive and they're like okay well I mean what were you looking for you know like I mean we could scale some things back but we want to make sure we achieve your goals you know you got this going on right here you got you know your your customers we need to change how they look at you you could start like looking at the problems like you know what do you what is this worth right here you see I mean this comes from practice but by you'll have all the ammunition you need and you could use that to like discuss the project and if they say you know the client says you know uh yeah okay that's about the price range that we're looking at we're okay then you could go ahead and start with the proposal the next phase the client's like you know we're only looking to spend like two or three thousand dollars on this and you know it's a big job then it might not be the right fit and why waste your time you could tell the client you know we don't think you could get this job done you might be able to get a cheap website built I mean you could get one bill that's no problem but we don't think you could solve your problems or achieve your goals with that kind of money and now the call is over and you have just positioned yourself as more than a designer or developer you're now acting like and position yourself more as an expert and you show that you have more value than others and you have everything you need to write a kick-ass proposal and that's it let's go ahead and open it up and I'll go ahead and open up these uh the chat questions too does anybody have a question or want to like add anything to this come on julian do you have a question julian all right julian I saw you ask a question I will be sharing this document shortly so I'll put it out there so you could download this document and use these questions uh one thing though to like keep in mind is some clients will have different questions you know sometimes it'd be some are like questions I ask all clients and they're like in my script that's already pre-made uh some of them might have more specific that I'll add to it when I'm doing my research on them and learning more about the client before we go into the meeting all right so narutsu ask a question uh should we prepare something like a situation overview a niche overview etc before starting a discovery meeting and lauren I see you have feedback on that you have the answer I was trying to help while you were chatting I think at least for me it depends kind of on everybody else's process and finding what feels good for you and what questions you need personally to to do the discovery well what research you need because I don't do very much research beforehand I probably should do more but we just kind of jump on a call and chat through their problems is is about our discovery sessions something that I feel like that I just wanted to share to I have to jump off for another phone call but I wanted to share real fast like Jeff was saying with um strategy you can actually start charging for it and something that we try to do is um kind of try to not cancel but like the the client's coming to you with a problem and they've already self-diagnosed what they think the solution is and the more you can position yourself as an expert of let's check problems first and let's diagnose diagnose together um the more you can charge like Jeff said and also like we've done it a couple times where we've actually dissuaded people from building a website so they were very convinced they wanted a website and said okay let's make sure this is what you need and we charged them for strategy and we did strategy with them um earlier on and it ended up people didn't use their website at all what they needed was social media and they needed um storytelling on youtube instead and so through strategy we were help able to save money and actually solve the problems in a different way um and I know that's hard when we're all working as design and developers but you know if you can help solve people's problems and partner with somebody else or you know make money different ways then it helps the client trust you more and might come back for you later most definitely I gotta jump off yeah I'm just kind of kind of like piggyback off of that um for me it's like I don't like to just build a website to build it and if I'm doing something that I feel like someone doesn't need I feel like I'm taking advantage and that goes against my moral compass and I can't do it I just can't do it uh I started actually changing the way I did everything when I first started off and the client told me like I built a kick-ass client I mean website like the website was dope it was clean it was one of my really good ones and then six months later we talked and I asked her like so how's everything going like how is the website going and she just looked at me with disappointment and she said uh I never got one person contacting me and that right there that that changed that that that you know went from being having like pride and like feeling good about building this website to feeling like I just let somebody down and that changed the way that I approach projects and that's when I got into design that's you know why I started learning more than just how to build a website but how to help clients out and how to look at their goals any questions any feedback or anything before the end of the call um Jeff I am in line with what you and Lauren both stated just now that you need to identify the needs of the customer because I'm on the same page as you that if you know you are just building a website just because someone has an idea in their mind their monkey mind told them that a website can sort the problem for them but if it is not really the thing which they should be looking for then I think rather than making your own box which just for doing the work if you are not able to gauge importance out of that work I feel it's always better to let the client be aware that yes you are aiming this but I don't think so that could sort out of your goals you are looking for and if the client still wants now I want it probably we can go ahead but I think it's always better to be clear and not just look for our because you know sooner or later it can come back to us that you know it was not what I was looking for and then is whenever model things come in that you know I was aware since first day that is not going to help but I just did it just because you wanted so I feel it's always better and I'm going to apply that I have never I have not yet faced the situation so this is not my experience but this is my intuition speaking that I feel it's always better to give them a clear picture of whether this website design can help them meet their needs and goals if it does perfect if not we make them aware and if they still want to continue then we can sure go ahead you know shouldn't have a problem but if we can help them in another way like lauren stated social media or strategy building for their business it's you know if you can help with something other than a website and expand and branch out our services and that does the job as well I mean they get their things and be able to invest our time to you know get the monetary energy back and that's it so I really appreciate this idea from you lauren and I'm grateful to sharing you know I will apply this in coming times and this is why it's so important to position yourself from the very beginning as more of a partner than an order taker because if you're an order taker so you're just going to do whatever they need to do but if you position more as a partner you're actually caring then you know it's like okay you got $10,000 to invest I don't want you to invest in something that's not going to help you out you know if you you might think you need a website but that money might be better spent you know instead of rebuilding your website it might be better spent on putting in your SEO let's build that one up let's build up this you know like it might be more and that's when you're a partner you would tell this to a partner you know you would tell your partner oh don't spend your money there spend it over here because that's going to help you out and if the client isn't willing to listen from the very beginning maybe they don't look at you that way maybe they just want an order taker they might not be the right fit then it sucks having a client that won't listen to you it's not okay yeah your paying the check is coming in but like yes it's not rewarding yes I I feel you that I want to add I will not take a lot of time because I think this call has been extended longer than we planned generally you know but I had this quick experience which is currently ongoing so I got in contact with the client and she is one of my early first couple of clients I was working with you know so at that time in your early days you're not really aware at that time you just want to help people and they help you with money and you give the services but initially this client was and I'm sharing this experience because I turn around the situation by my experience so initially this client was more often ought to take this client wanted you know just do this today or do this tomorrow the client was disappeared herself for 10 days not giving really a damn about you know some tending work but then coming back and saying okay I want this tomorrow so for the first 20 days or a month something I was more of an order taker because I realized she's paying me she can do that but what I gained out of it is when I realized that I am not chasing only money in this I am you know it's not a favor that the client is doing me by paying money I am also offering my time and services and I'm investing time and energy and creativity in it in that return I am getting money when I realize that when anybody who is you know in a situation of taking orders once that person realize that you are not just being paid for the sake of being paid you are being paid because you are channelizing and replacing it with your time energy or creativity and whatever you bring to the table that's when you switch out the situation and now this client of mine is still in contact but now it's it's it's I will not say it's a complete partnership situation but now it's no more an order taking situation because I am free to share my thoughts and you know I am free to share that okay you want the things but you know I also have some things going on and you might have to give me some time and if you really want it right now it's a two-way street it's not just one way because if you are giving me money I'm giving you my creativity channelized so simple so yeah this is I think can help anyone who is in a situation like this yeah that's good it's hard to break out of that it really is I have clients to this day that I can't break out of it you know because most of our clients say they've been with me for years so they're not with the Jeff from this last year that has built an agency and that helps clients solve their problems or with the Jeff that they hire to just build a website you know yeah it's really hard to do that right now though there's a good opportunity to break out of it with the situation that's going on like if anyone hasn't done this yet take the time to call your clients like you know the phone call with them and don't talk about work instead ask them how they're doing how their families are doing and how are they coping with you know what's going on and relate to them you know outside of work it's a good way right now to like you know to to break out of that that thing and one thing to keep in mind too you know like if you were to hire an electrician because your light bulb isn't working you're not going to tell the electrician I want you to change this wire this wire this wire this wire you're not going to tell them that you're going to say fix his light bulb and the electrician is going to know what to do you leave it up to them you know and so why why should we be different but yeah yes I really appreciate that you know we are able to have these calls and share these experiences because if not for these calls maybe I don't know about others but I have been learning a lot since the first call and you know applying these strategies and things which are helping me evolve and now when I speak to my clients in any situation I can tell them that as you said even for your first few clients you might be the Jeff who built their first size but sooner or later they have to realize that everybody is growing and evolving with every moment that was a dream but right now is what is the truth so you have to evolve as well if Jeff is evolving with an agency the customers got to evolve right so that's like this we're all evolving right now we're all growing and this is a constant process and the reason why I really wanted to have this call is because I'm hoping that others here and others watching this video don't have to wait two or three years to start this they don't have to wait that long I want to see other people go faster than me I want to see them jump ahead of me by talking about this now and if you're new to having these kind of meetings or talking to clients this way it's awesome this is great I'm really glad that you're watching this because you can start this right now not going to get it down the first run it takes practice but it's the process of when you start once you start applying this and start looking at it differently it's going to open your world this right here this initial call this positioning and looking at it from a different way it will change everything it's changed everything for me it's made me look at things differently it's made me approach projects differently and it's made me look at myself differently as well so I'm really hoping that others could get this out of it and uh yeah I'm really I'm really grateful to have these calls and and you know you guys are helping me we're all helping each other you know I'm still learning it's funny this morning I'm before we get off I just want to share a quick story so I had a like you know the first title of this video was how to run an effective discovery all right I had to change it to initial discovery interview I had to correct myself because you know I'm working with the business coach right now as well and he checked me he checked me on my discovery process I'm like oh man right before I do a discovery call I have him correct but I'm glad that he corrected me because then I could correct it and I definitely want to you know uh I want to teach I want to be able to get back when I'm learning on it too but I'm also in the process of learning you know and I'm sure a few months from now I'm going to be you know way ahead of where I am right now and so are you guys as long as you're applying this and it doesn't matter if you're web design if you're a web development if you're working in SEO you're working in digital marketing you're working in any of these industries as well that's like parallel to what we're doing right now the same things can be applied the same like all of it this just you just got to turn it around a little bit make a little bit of tweaks a lot of this that I learned from is from brand people and branding from branding experts branding strategists that's who I learned most of this from and I just tweak it and make it fit into my web design business cool guys well I don't want to I want to respect everyone's time don't want to keep everyone on uh real quick before we get off is there any last questions oh yes I want to say thank you Jeff thanks Clement it's always good to see you brother for sure all right guys so check this out I'm working on it I'm working on it I know I'm super busy man but I am getting the page up there with all the downloads for the PDFs that is coming soon I'm going to have last week's call posted up there I had to free up some time I got time freed up so we'll be doing more in the group what can help me out from you guys is why don't you let me know what you would like to learn next what what is in the way of your business right now like what do you feel can help you right now during this time in your business uh post something in the group reach out to me it would be really good for me to hear because I really want to do these you know for for you guys okay thank you all right cool guys well thanks Jeff thanks Alex appreciate it thank you Jeff everybody thank you bye everyone indian grateful for the call again today and look forward to see you all guys soon Mike Clement I can see you on the call yet have a good day brother happy holiday happy holiday yeah it's happy holiday till the last enjoy yeah bye bye thanks Ian it was good to see you again man yeah cheers thank you oh good good just just to let you know it's taking me a week to get together the more maintenance plans I'm still going from last week's call are you are you right now currently putting your plans together yeah yeah I've been doing doing it for about a week or two beforehand uh but yeah I've got a whole page of notes as to what to include what not to include uh yeah so it's almost there I think I should get it finished today I look forward to it man if you get stuck on something ask you know yeah I'll drop you I'll drop you there yeah thank you cool thanks Ian all right cheers cheers thank you all right and the more are you still awake man or did you go back to sleep I am still awake all right so I love about these group uh Zoom calls you can literally just wake up turn it on it's just still late yeah it is amazing cool man cool I love your calls I'm learning a lot from you guys uh and I'm not a developer but I am learning uh as an SEO and will try your suggestions your advice uh to uh with the with different type of clients and thank you thank you so much cool thanks Amar it's good to see you man and yeah you do know what even if you're an SEO you can still apply uh these processes and principles and you can you can still do the same thing just tweak it around a little bit yeah all right guys well I'm going to go ahead and close it out boa and good to see you guys and it's Sean all right cool