Welcome to Module 2 of week 2 and in this module we're going to cover the old way versus the new way of turning prospects into paying clients for you. 

So the old way for me was whenever I had a prospect reach out to me directly, or if it was through a referral of some sort,
I would have an initial conversation via email and in general the process would be me asking them a little bit more about their business and their current website. 

After I took a look at their website and their kind of current aesthetic problems, and if I felt confident I could make it look better,

I’d then schedule initial call with them to get more details of what they think they're needing, and for me to figure out kind of the scope of work.  So I’d get on a call and it would be pretty straightforward where

I would ask them basic questions about their business, their current pain points with their website, et cetera. 
From there I would have immediately go into asking questions about each page, the goals of the page, and the functionality because need to know what are we actually building out. 

And more often than not, when we got to the call, they would want some sort of rough estimation during the call.

And obviously this was not ideal for a number of reasons, but mostly because they were immediately focused on the cost, not the value I was providing or the potential return on investment that a new website would give them. 

So then after the phone call I’d put together a pretty straightforward proposal of: 
this is your current pain points with your site 
here on the pages 
and the functionality we will build out for you 

it was purely an exchange of money for time and

I wasn't really creating any trust with the project.

Hell I wasn't even figuring out what they actually needed.

And what I mean by that is what their customers actually needed. I set myself up to only be able to compete on price and would often have clients asked me for discounts for no other reason than “just asked for them.”

And when I’d raise my price without doing anything different, because I would hear podcasts or watch different YouTube videos of people just saying “yeah, just raise your rates”,  I was told that I was much higher than other proposals and I'd lose the project.
To put it bluntly,  I was lost.

But I knew there was a way I knew there was a better way of doing things. And there was a way to do things better to get the results that I was after.  So that's when I started to go on just a Manhunt to figure out what I can change in myself and in my business.

So now when I get the same request for proposals or referrals from a client or partner agency, the first thing I do is what I like to call a customer Avatar Discovery session before the prospect spends a penny with me or even asks me for a formal proposal, I invest in 90 minutes to 2 hours with them, with complete strangers! 
And this allows me to learn exactly who their ideal customer is, what they look like, their fears and frustrations, key purchase drivers, and a lot more that will be covering in the next module.

But I was investing in them first before anything else and you're probably wondering  - you spent two hours of your time with a stranger that you didn't even know much about or even if they have the budget for your services?
 
Yep!  I go first. I try to provide as much value as possible for free even if they decide not to work with me. 

After these sessions though, I’ve found that I have trust with these prospects,  that I can take them from their current situation to their desired outcome, and the only investment I ask of them is for a bit of their time. 

And they come out of it with a powerful document that they will use for the lifetime of their business. No matter what happens with the prospect they will remember who took them through that and open up their eyes to their own business and customers. 

And the great thing is, this is just as much for me as it is for them.  
I need to learn what their sales process is like. 
I need to know what their customers look like.  What are they struggling with? What are their frustrations? And this handles all of that within two hours. 

So after the customer Avatar Discovery session that is what I put together a robust strategy document that is a proposal and explains exactly how we're going to take them from their current situation to their desired outcome. 
And from there, once I get the proposal I draft up the necessary paperwork, send the invoice for the first half of the project, and get to work. 

This process works and has completely transformed my agency and my client's businesses.  
This is what will separate you from what everyone else is doing because you're making an investment with your potential clients before they've invested a penny with you. 

So with that said let's jump into all the details about this process in the next module.