 how is everyone doing a little more enthusiasm there we go all right we are back in the auditorium and up next we have Nathan Ingram please welcome to the stage all right how's it gone this so far this morning everybody had a great word camp so far all right so how many of you are working with clients currently hey guess what you're in the right talk how many of you are freelancers solopreneurs small type agency awesome okay you guys are my crowd so here's the thing this is why this talk is so very important I'm a passionate advocate for freelancers and business owners because I believe that freedom comes when you own your own business control your time control your life control your own priorities but here's what I've discovered over the years of doing that myself and in coaching people who are in that same situation many freelancers many agency owners WordPress businesses are one more bad client away from throwing in the towel have you ever been there I have and it's a shame because virtually all client problems can be mitigated or eliminated by systems and processes and that's what we're going to talk about today my name is Nathan Ingram I'm from Birmingham Alabama the if the accent hasn't given me away already I am the host at iThemes training where we do free webinars all year long two or three free ones a week online at training.ithemes.com it's like being at word camp all year I'm a business coach for WordPress freelancers and I myself have been a freelance or small agency owner since 1995 a long long time I'm also going to be the host of the WP business podcast which is launching next month which I'm pretty excited about so I'm an expert at least by the definition of Dr. Niels Bohr who said an expert is a person who is found out by his own painful experience all the mistakes that one can make in a very narrow field so by that definition I am definitely an expert and my goal in this talk is hopefully to save you the pain of having to remake the mistakes that I've made so if you can pick up a few things in this talk that will make your client life better and avoid some of the pain that I personally had to go through then hopefully that'll be a success today so here's the way the talk is going to break down we've got 40 minutes and I've got a lot to cover so we're going to talk first of all about friendly monsters and the concept of clients as friendly monsters then we're going to talk about four fences that you need to build by appropriate systems and processes in your business to keep those monsters fenced in and then we're going to wrap up with that should actually say for I had to drop one because of time today but four monsters that you need to know and how to contain them using the strategies that we're going to talk about now for those of you who like to furiously scribble don't worry about it just go to Nathan ingram dot com slash WCPHX the hashtag for this event you can download all the slides there's other stuff there and also I just literally last week got the book for this presentation so it's out there on Amazon as a printed book and a Kindle if you are so interested but at that link you can download the whole slide deck so you know if you if you're scribbling don't worry about it just download the slides you got it if you want to tweet at me I am at Nathan ingram hashtag WCPHX that'll be at the bottom of every slide okay ready to go all right so clients are friendly monsters the problem is and maybe you've experienced this in your working with clients every client has the potential for transformation have you ever had that experience where you know you had that first initial meeting with the client maybe it's in your office if you have such a thing that you bring clients to maybe it's at a coffee shop maybe you go to the client's place of business you have that first conversation you're like yes this is a great client it's going to be wonderful and you get into the project they hire you you get about two weeks in and all of a sudden this whole other person appears right it's like where did this person come from well every client has the potential for transformation that's why we have this nice you know smiling monster but if you'll notice very carefully even friendly monsters have teeth so we need to build fences in our business to protect us from these friendly monsters these fences are good systems and processes because if you don't fence in the monsters listen you're gonna waste time you're gonna waste money and most of all you're gonna waste emotional capital dealing with the stresses that those monsters bring into your life does that make sense all right so here's the question for you do you have a consistent business system in the way you do your work do you have a way that you work every project every client every time that's what I'm talking about because having that sort of consistency can really help you deal with the monsters now the four fences I want to describe to you today are first of all clarity we're gonna go through each of these and spend some more time on them but clarity then commitments third communication and last of all documentation so those are our four fences and they can look different ways depending on how you do your work but these four fences have to be in place and you may have additional fences but these four are critical if you leave off one of these fences guess what the monster is gonna do you're gonna wander out through that hole okay so clarity commitments communication documentation that's where we're heading in the first part today by the way I'm gonna pause briefly between the first part here when we're talking about the fences and we'll take two or three questions right there and then we'll have as much time as we have left for q&a this is usually an hour long talk and we have 40 minutes I'm gonna try to compress all right so clarity clarity is important the first thing I want you to understand is that agreement does not equal clarity agreement does not equal clarity in my experience the most common reason that client relationships suffer is a lack of clarity and don't confuse agreement with clarity you can have agreement without clarity the client can be sitting there shaking her head up and down and have no idea what it is that you're saying to them this is particularly important in a technical field because you and I have a tendency if you're like me anyway to all of a sudden get into some technical jargon and that intimidates people and sometimes they'll shake their head yes up and down like this so as to indicate an affirmative response and they have no idea what you're talking about because they don't want to seem dumb and they don't want to ask the question so we have to work on getting to true clarity when we're dealing with the client we can muddy the water with technical jargon and sometimes I'm not sure if you've ever experienced this but sometimes clients don't tell you everything right now here's the question I want to ask you about that when clients don't tell you everything about a project whose fault is that I hear some mine I hear some theirs I'd say it's at least 50 50 okay it's at least half and half because you and I as professional web developers people working with clients whatever it is you do in client services we need to develop the skills of asking great questions that is one of the most important soft skills that you can create that you can develop if you're going to be working with clients drill down drill down drill down drill down ask why why why keep getting to the root of the issue until you find absolute clarity that one skill can set you apart from everybody else who's building websites for clients or doing whatever it is you do for clients getting to the root of the matter on all everything about the project so you achieve clarity and here's the thing about it once you really get to clarity with a client on a subject it's you realize it you get there you find it so keep asking the questions agreement does not equal clarity second thing I'd like to mention is assumptions create confusion when there's a lack of clarity it's oftentimes because you're making assumptions or the client is making assumptions what is the client assuming that you're going to do as part of the project what are you assuming that the client will do as part of the the project and what you have to do is take a really hard look into your own process how do i build websites how do i do whatever it is i do for clients what does that process look like and where in that process are the assumptions made either by me that the client understands something or by the client that i'm going to do something where are the assumptions in your process so we have to be specific be specific to create clarity the key to clarity is specificity and for this your intake process is absolutely critical it could start with a great intake form which is a consistent list of questions that you ask for every client every project every time now how many of you have that you have got a list of questions literally written down somewhere okay it's that's actually more than most people in a room this size yeah so a consistent list of questions for years here's what i did we just started having a conversation and i prided myself on this organic flow of discussion and what would i do i'd walk out and i'd think ah i forgot to ask about something right and it was oftentimes one of the most important questions i should have asked and it's because i didn't write it down now why didn't i write it down because i thought i was smart enough to keep everything in my brain and i've learned over time that i'm not smart enough to keep everything in my brain so you make a freaking checklist that's what you do pilots when they take off in a plane guess what they do i don't care if they've been flying 30 years the pilot of the air aircraft is going to go down a checklist and do everything one of just like that's what you do if you want great consistency so it's got to start with that sort of thing the form can be on your website it can be something in a you know just a word document or every note or whatever you want to use but just make sure you ask the same questions every time by the way i have a whole another presentation about this you can find it on wordpress tv called uh mastering the client consultation if you want to look on wordpress tv it's there from a couple of different word camps don't rely on your own memory so one of the most important places this shows up is in the scope of work if you think about the most common place that a client project falls off the the rails when it comes to assumptions what would you say where is a project always stalled in your experience ah there it is right there ding ding ding how many of you get stalled on content oh the client thought i was going to do it i thought the client was going to do it nobody quite knows what's going on and we have a lack of clarity right so those are the sorts of things that have to be included in your scope of work you want to be crystal clear on who's doing what okay your contract then also has to be clear on how your processes work and what happens in certain scenarios like when the client disappears for three months and you can't get a reply what happens in i mean nobody else has that problem do they anybody yeah so what happens in that are you just waiting forever on the client or do you have something in writing that deals with that what happens if the client doesn't pay what happens if the project goes off the rails in the middle and you have to separate ways what is a good divorce and a project look like what are all the things what do they mean are you baking in accessibility to all of your websites are you providing an ssl certificate all the little nitty gritty details you got to be clear about otherwise you may find the client is assuming something and they may think that you're gonna and it's a whole big mess be specific so that we know what we can expect from each other you with me all right second fence is the fence of commitments this is this is really important how many of you discovered that every single healthy relationship in life is built on a healthy commitment in some way between the people involved i learned that in my marriage i'll be married 25 years very soon when that's this year yeah 25 years this year in june in june yeah this is recorded right june 11th i'll be married 20 like my wife's ever gonna watch this yeah so and i've learned that a long time ago it you have to have great commitment levels that continues to be defined but if you ever thought about the client relationship in terms of commitment for years here's the mistake that i made for years the commitment the client had to make to me was to sign the check and i was so happy to get paid for what i love to do i would just make everything else happen and i would put on the superhero cape and just make it happen right i learned really quick that doesn't scale at all you can do that if you're working with a client or two you can't do that if you're working with 30 or 40 or 100 you can't do it it's not possible unless you never want to sleep or never be able to speak to someone that you really like ever again all relationships built on healthy commitments the client needs to understand the commitments they're going to be asked to make as part of this project that you're involved in so what you need to do is design a process that includes opportunities for the client to commit at key points now i usually like to spend more time on this part in particular but i'm just going to give you the nine phases of commitment in my process this may not work for you but it's an overview of the way i do things and i like to have visuals so this is the board game of a web design project anybody else have family game night when they're growing up we did that my kids won't do it but i don't know so this is the game of life as it were for a website project and we're going to start out over here with first contact when a client contacts me for the first time uh generally speaking one of the first few things i talk about with them is a is a minimum price to work with us the minimum that we charge for a website no matter how small is $4,500 that is the in the door price and depending on what you need it's going to go up from there they've got to commit to that introductory price before i'll spend any more time with them how many of you have spent hours on the phone or in meetings with clients and you give them a proposal and they come back and they say well i thought it was going to be like $300 yeah i've wasted hours of my life with clients that way so the one of the first things out of my mouth now is it's a minimum price and before we go any further before i invest any more time with them they've got to commit to at least that scenario does that make sense that's how commitments flesh out like this then we move into an initial consultation i don't even sit down a cross the table at starbucks from somebody until they've agreed to that minimum price otherwise you're going to waste a ton of time so you move to this initial consultation this is where you know you're asking questions about what the project is going to look like and what it's going to include and you know all their goals are trying to reach and you know that you gotta have a great list of questions for that we've talked about that but at the end of that meeting i do something else it has to do with pricing and that's it i give them a ballpark price usually within about a thousand dollar range and it sounds something like this based on the discussion that we've had about your website this sounds like about a five to six thousand dollar project if i bring back a proposal to you tomorrow that's within that range are you ready to start i'm not going to spend two hours writing a proposal for a client until they commit to that price range why would i do that why would you do how many of you have wasted hours writing for yeah me too wasted hours writing proposals for clients and you're way off the target and this is what we do it's beautiful we'll sit there and we'll fiddle on price we'll go okay should it be thirty five hundred dollars no no no thirty seven hundred dollars no no no thirty seven seventy five you've done that haven't you probably we all tend to do the same things but yeah why spend that time why go through that grief until the client is at least bought into a ballpark price that's a whole discussion of its own all right then the client signed your documents they give you the check to start hopefully you're getting at least half up front then we move into the proposal and contract they sign your documents you've got a great contract that talks about all the phases of and what they're what they're expected to do what they can expect from you they sign it they give you the deposit that's a huge commitment on their part right huge commitment then we move in and i ask them to do another piece of commitment and that is the content this is something i learned several years ago from a friend of mine who said this no code before content i've changed it around i call it content first content first content first that means this after we get the signed document we'll give the client a content guide that will help them think through the content of their website or maybe as part of the project we've brought in a copywriter we're going to help architect what the content looks like it's a simple project they can usually do it themselves and we give them a workbook to work through those things we don't move another inch not an inch for those in europe not a centimeter until we get 100 percent of all the assets that are needed to build that website that's content photography video because otherwise here's what happens and you've probably done this you one day they send you the text for the about us page and so you build that and oh three weeks later you get the pictures of the ceo they finally had time to get and then all the next week it's the pictures of the staff and you're still waiting on that product the number three product and you can't ever get that description from that does that sound familiar and you've three months long now right and it takes you forever you got to go in say something you got to get out and go in and get out and go in and get out how quickly could you build a website if you sat down with 100 percent of the assets you could get it done in a week probably right there was a simple website so why not do that it's your process it's your business make it that the way you do things i'm so stupid it took me 20 years to figure that out content first okay so then we move in once we get all the design the content we move into the design phase the client has made huge commitments they've given us all the content that we need we move in design phase where we actually build the design of the site looking at all the content they have and we i still do a flat graphic design because i think it's easier for clients to visualize that way and they we don't we stop right there we don't do any development until they approve the design because what i don't want is hey let's change all the colors three days before we launch right by the way never try to design before you have content if you're hitting a wall on design most design problems are content problems if you have the content you can figure out how to design it to make it look right and present don't get the cart before the horse okay so we give them the design they sign off on the design then we go into the cave and do development and that takes however long it takes that's our big commitment back to them there's nothing they need to do at that point until the next phase which is review and testing where they get to look at the actual working website and because a whole bunch of list of stuff they want to change and whatever and we're testing it out on different platforms and browsers and mobile devices and all of that once they sign off on the finished product we move into launch where they give us the last big commitment which is the final check and we like that uh so do you see through this process it's back and forth it's commitments it's back and forth it's not we pay you you go do it unless you're charging a lot of money it's back and forth healthy relationships based on healthy commitments then we move into a maintenance phase where they're paying us every month to manage the website and keep it healthy so in in uh your contract when you're talking about the commitments you need to clearly define the expectations and consequences what can you expect of us what can we expect of you and what happens if one of us doesn't deliver that's got to be part of your contract and here's the thing you can this gets into more of the clarity piece and how it works in with these commitments you can't just expect that the client is going to read the contract and they'll sign the contract a lot of times without reading it which is foolish but guess what you have a signature but no clarity that's great in a court of law it's terrible when you're trying to work with a client on a website which means as you're going through the process you need to remind the client of the commitments they make in what you're going to do in back and forth you have to keep the communication going that's actually the next point but here's what i've learned you can tell some clients thing something a hundred times but some clients don't stay told have you met that client before yeah so you have to keep on with the communication that's our next fence communication is critical the third fence to keep those friendly monsters contained some of my favorite quote about communication from George Bernard Shaw who said the biggest single problem in communication is the illusion that it has occurred and that's so true if you're married you know that but anyway my wife's not going to watch this but here's what i've learned over the years and that is few things can improve the client's experience more than clear regular communication this in my experience is hard for those of us who tend to be people who build websites for clients because we like the code not the people in general and you may identify with that remark but clear regular communication is one of those things it's another one of those soft skills and even if you're not a people person naturally most people tend to be skill oriented or people oriented you're a doer or you're a people person rarely do the can the same person do both and that's okay just whatever you are own it and if you're not a people person then develop some processes that at least check the boxes on communication and approach it like a task and not like people does that make sense if you do that it's going to set you apart it's like asking good questions it's another one of those things so here's what i've learned without regular communication clients will make assumptions and usually they assume the worst here's one of the places where it comes out a lot of times how many of you've been in the middle of a project and you hit some snag and it's taking you forever to figure that out some technical hurdle or there's something you're worth right and the last thing you want is for the client to call you and ask how it's going because then you have to admit that you don't know everything which is a fallacy by the way who knows everything that's another talk how many of us when we hit a snag like that we go down in the hole we go hide in the cave and we go radio silent with the client that is such a mistake it's such a mistake because what happens is you get two weeks up and you finally figured out now you're two weeks behind the launch date's probably going to be delayed it's a terrible situation so here's one of those processes now if you're a people person you can usually make the call and all you can schmooze and it's all okay and the clients love you anyway it's all it's going to work out and be fine if you're not here's a process you can follow it's what i call the friday email strategy friday afternoon before i finish the week i send an email to every client of every active project that we're working on it's generally three sentences it takes just a couple of minutes for each client but it's some of the best minutes a week that i spend it's the friday email and it basically focuses on past present future past mr mrs client this is what we did on your project this week that's the past present this is where we stand in relationship to the completion of the project future that's what we're going to be working on next week and if you have any questions please let me know now how easy is that and how great is it for the client to get that regular communication it's wonderful now this is the place also to communicate if you've got a problem dear mr mrs client this week we experienced an issue getting the stupid api to connect to ups to get live shipping rates we anticipate didn't that thing figured out for next week and we don't anticipate this impacting the launch date of your project if you have any questions please let us know don't over communicate don't over share but it's good to let the client know what's going on communication is critical all right last fence then we'll stop for a minute and take some questions documentation documentation if you aren't documenting your communication with the client you are relying on your own memory or at worse the clients get used to communicating with the client in writing even if you do one-on-one meetings by the way that's what i usually do one of the reasons i charge a premium for the web development projects that i take on is that i meet with the clients face-to-face the clients that i work with value that sort of relationship but after every single one-on-one meeting or video call or or phone call i send a follow-up email documenting what we just talked about and it goes in the client's records why because written communication is referenceable and if you ever have a disagreement with a client you point back to that email on tuesday afternoon at 2 36 p.m and say this is where we talked about this and this is where we agreed if a decision is made verbally in a call or in a meeting email the client to summarize the decision don't even ask for a response but you're sending the email to just validate this is what we talked about this is what i understood and if i'm wrong please correct me documentation is critical and not only that but you need to implement some sort of a system that's going to easily capture all your project communication there's tons of tools out there base camp teamwork evernote asana some crm trello don't just use email because you'll never be able to find it when you need it have some sort of a system where you're going to track all this project client communication last thing i'll share is this the best system to do this is the one that you will consistently use there's a million options don't geek out on this just pick one and stick with it will you because that's what i do too i've like 50th and i never make a decision or worse this is a story that i hear about some of us who would self identify as a geek uh we will spend six months researching the perfect solution or worse building our own solution and never use it right don't do that pick one use it stick with it just use it consistently it's never going to be perfect but if it's there it's there does that make sense okay so clients are friendly monsters four fences clarity commitments communication documentation one more little point before we get to the maybe two or three questions about this part and that is this don't tear down your own fences and you might think why would i ever do that let me tell you i've been coaching word press freelancers for almost five years now i have hundreds of conversations every year with people working with clients it's one of the my favorite things that i do i spoke last year at 19 word camps i'll do probably more this year talking to freelancers and i'm here because i want to help you do better in business here's what i've learned we will spend the time to build these fences clarity commitments communication documentation we invest the time in the effort and then here's what's going to happen you let a client some situation arises where the client wants to break through one of the fences that you've built and because you're a nice person in the back of your mind you start making excuses for the client oh it's not that bad oh i'll just do it this once oh it's not that big of a deal and you let the client out of the system that you've built and this is what happens because it happens to me maybe it happens to you this is what at least happens to me for the first five minutes i'll feel great about it and i'll pat myself on the back what great customer service i've just provided we are we are you know we're being flexible to meet the client's needs and there's a technical term for that it's called bs because this is what happens about five minutes after you start feeling good about it this little piece of resentment starts building with the laughter i think some of you understand what i'm talking about and that resentment starts to grow it's like this fire that lights right and it starts to grow and burn and it gets bigger and by the end of the day for me at least i still work from home i'm walking up the steps and i'm just in a mood and i snap at my wife and i mean to my kids and i yell at the dog man the dog got a response not my kids you know that's funny look our tendency is this is especially important if you're a nice person you can hold the client to his or her commitments and still be a nice person don't let the client weasel out of the commitments that they've made because then you start getting resentful that leads to frustration that leads to anger and this is the insanity of all of this we are willing to let a stranger get out of the commitments that they already made to us in our business and instead be mean to all the people who are closest to us in our life that is insanity so don't do that don't tear down your own fences once you build them does that make sense okay let's take two or three questions right here where are we on time right now okay no questions i have 10 minutes left okay all right by the way uh after lunch lunch is out this way get your lunch meet me outside the doors if you're a freelancer work with clients let's talk clients okay i'm here all weekend i'm here for you all right five monsters you should know and how to contain them it's actually only four we may only get to two we'll see how we go here but the first is this it is the invisible man and you know you meet the invisible man when you express interest and they express interest and then they disappear all of a sudden that sound like something you like you get the meat and all of a sudden they can't find them they're gone poof they've disappeared they they schedule meetings and then reschedule meetings they take a long time to respond when at first they were right right on it so what i've learned about this particular client these are usually business owners or busy professionals they're well in tension they want a website but they're just busy and today when the first time they talk to you the website is a priority because none of their other 10 priorities are competing with it on that day but then when you try to get back to them one of their other 10 top priorities has taken its place and you'll never get them now the website at that moment for them is not the top priority the problem with these folks is they tend to disappear and reappear during a project with unreasonable demands this is when i say the invisible man turns into the stealth bomber and they just appear poof you've had this project for three months why isn't it finished boom boom boom drop bombs all over your world right i needed done this week right now right now right now this person can be a very difficult client to work with right this is where you focus on clarity you got to make sure the client understands your processes and you need to create a process for disappearing clients in my contract it says look if you go selling us for 30 days your project is suspended and before we do anything else on it we need 100 of all the assets and the rest of the project payment in full before we pick up your project and do anything else with it if you go 60 days past that your project is abandoned and that's it you've lost your deposit why because i've had too much time wasted by invisible men and women this is gender neutral clients right there's no face there all right by the way this is where the friday email comes in we still haven't heard from you if this goes another week your project is considered suspended according to the terms of the contract okay also yeah clear wording in your contract to describe those things um got to keep moving here oh this is something i've learned very important you got to communicate when a project is stalled with an invisible man because the longer a project takes the more likely it is to go off the rails they're going to forget what they talked about and now their priorities have changed so you got to keep the commitment going okay nope then the second client monster is the question mark the question mark has no idea what he or she wants or they want everything they ask endless questions they have no goals or budget how many of you spent two or three hours in the first meeting with a question mark and you know exactly what i'm talking about and they just ask questions questions questions hundreds questions more questions they love their ideas their stream of consciousness and these clients are classic time wasters this is the one where you focus on commitment because if you're trying to be nice to a question mark they will let you waste your life on them you will get nothing else done this week because you're answering emails that are five paragraphs long that they're asking questions and questions and questions you got to focus on commitment quick this is where the intake form is important where you're asking specific questions in a client interview and get to price early my minimum price is blank you're talking about a project it sounds like blank because i've learned that the quickest way to silence a question mark is with a dollar sign did you get that the quickest way to silence a question mark is with a dollar sign and if they insist on asking all those questions that's when you move to a discovery phase where you help them answer all those questions and you get paid for it here's a good rule of thumb questions that you'll answer for those folks the what questions are free how questions cost money how questions are intellectual property that's a good rule of thumb okay i got five minutes boundary buster this is the one maybe you've met this one they send a three a.m. email with a 7 30 a.m. follow-up why haven't you gotten this done yet they always have to meet after hours or on weekends they work on holidays they expect you to so when you meet one of these kinds of clients they are these ones really get under my skin focus on communication you got to focus on this is when i work this is how i work normal business hours not weekends not holidays man i got so many things to say about this and i can't do it this is the one don't don't ever violate your boundaries with this one or they will take advantage of it they are an excellent candidate for what i call the pita surcharge you know what that is pain and the asterisk and if you're going to work with them it's going to be worth it it's going to cost more okay last one and we're uh we'll maybe have one minute for question again gender neutral i've met plenty of drama kings out there but i had the picture for this one so this is a drama queen this is uh one of the people that uh one of my coaching clients called her diva client she worked with yoga studios god bless her and okay i'm not saying i'm just saying i hear a lot about these so this is the one who worked with a previous developer who did everything wrong have you ever met that one everything's an emergency the favorite word is now it's got to be done now now now now and the other developer just couldn't get things right now look i've been around long enough to realize that in our field there's a bunch of knuckle head web developers if you ever inherited a project from somebody and you go what what why what would possess any rational human to do things this way right okay so we got that exists however as soon as a client starts complaining about the previous web developer it's full stop and i'm going to ask ask ask because it could very well be the client's the problem not another developer and if i don't weed that out early then this per this client is going to be sitting across from some other porsche muck six months from now complaining about me all right so we got to weed these drama queens out and kings so here's what you do you focus on documentation hold into the commitments that they make because it's documented system trumps drama drama goes away when you hold into the black and white of the things they've committed to it's documented right there so you got to keep careful careful records when you deal with that client all right clients are friendly monsters sorry that was really fast this book by the way has narrative on all of the there's like it's the first half of the book is these friendly monsters and it's like here's a web developer who encounters one of these and now they're talking to their business coach about it it's pretty fun but clients are friendly monsters it's clarity commitment communication documentation today if i had to ask you how strong are your fences in your business how strong are your fences today how much better would your life be if you had a good fencing strategy in place because good fences make great clients my name is Nathan Ingram you can find me at nathan ingram dot com slash wc phx there you'll find the slides other resources etc and listen i'm here for you this weekend i'm dead serious about that let's have lunch after let's talk about anything business related i came to phoenix from birmingham for you to have those conversations so i think we're out of time aren't we three minutes one question who's got it first canned up wins right there in the front is the mic on for the questions burning valuable seconds now listen i'll stay if but lunch is there it's going to still be there but if you want to talk i'll be right here the best place to learn more about this talk where would it be okay best place to learn more about this talk so this is part of a course that's on my website at nathan ingram dot com it's a process course it helps you build all those things sample contract sample proposal everything the book is on amazon kindle and printable or just come talk to me y'all that's why i'm here so in your in your process i usually do the proposal so i can show the value before i give the price so how are you showing the value immediately when you sell tell your price before you do the proposal or anything like that okay so that's a great question all right so if you're didn't proposals don't sell you do take all you you want to make your world a lot easier take all the sales crap out of your proposal proposal should contain a scope and a price because if you hand a client a 10 page proposal what are they going to do page 10 they're oh there's the price why spend all that time right proposals don't sell you do so i do the selling and value in person and i work exclusively by referral anyway so there they understand my value coming in so for you that might work i'm just saying it's better if you're working by referral and they're asking to work with you rather than you having to prove your value to them but if you need to prove value do that verbally don't do it in your proposal or have some sales collateral that you can leave with them but in that first presentation what i'm trying to do is avoid spending two hours three hours creating a proposal that's long and fitted to their nail until they're at least bought into a ballpark price i've wasted hours of my life yeah well okay one more question right over here keep you from walking thank you guys and i'm sorry for talking so fast i just wanted to get it all in no thank you um so what you may have resources for this but transitioning to this system with current clients or do we consider current clients kind of like moot and then this goes for the new okay my current clients are terrible how do we get into better clients that's a great question so how do you transition you can so what you have to be careful of is they haven't committed to anything but you can start changing your habits and just say this is the way i'm working and subtly passively train your existing clients toward this but with the very next new client you start the system yeah it's a great question there's probably a longer answer to that we can get into you later thank you guys very much thank you everybody lunch is being served outside we are currently not allowed to bring lunch into the convention center so we do have to eat outside um i'll be standing right outside those doors if you get your lunch and want to talk and then after lunch we will be back in here i lose my assistance