Hello.
Speaker:Good morning everyone.
Speaker:Uh, we're just doing a bit of a free amble.
Speaker:As we wait
Speaker:A free amble.
Speaker:Did I say free amble?
Speaker:If I did, that's great.
Speaker:I, I preamble.
Speaker:It's the new thing.
Speaker:Free amble.
Speaker:You've heard first
Speaker:To freely give in a loose and meandering way.
Speaker:Thank you very much for being here.
Speaker:You were talking earlier about, what I thought I heard was clarity all time.
Speaker:Uh, just, just intention and motivation.
Speaker:And there's this thing around this feeling sometimes I think we get
Speaker:where we don't have enough time.
Speaker:Mm-Hmm.
Speaker:Not enough time.
Speaker:Uh, we need more time.
Speaker:And I know that with myself, I've been very much governed by effective
Speaker:and efficient use of my time, because I feel I need to make sure
Speaker:I get everything done, when in fact I will never get everything done.
Speaker:What is everything?
Speaker:Ex, well, exactly what is everything?
Speaker:And unfortunately it is everything.
Speaker:I always try and get everything though because there's a need to make sure that
Speaker:I don't drop the ball on something or I accomplish something or achieve something.
Speaker:So, on one hand, like also with people in our community and people who do
Speaker:Vision 2020, there's this thing about all I need, I need to know how to spend
Speaker:my time, you know, how can I spend my time impactfully purposefully, happily.
Speaker:And that also, yeah, then that sort of comes to the question like,
Speaker:how, how do you know whether it's purposefully impactfully or happily?
Speaker:What does it do?
Speaker:We need to ask ourselves.
Speaker:How does it make you feel?
Speaker:That's the question.
Speaker:How does it make you feel?
Speaker:But then is it about how it makes you feel now or how it
Speaker:will make you feel in the future?
Speaker:Oh, now, because maybe you'll be dead.
Speaker:You may be dead, but then, you know, I know to a certain degree,
Speaker:having a nice spliff right now would make me feel amazing.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:And make me really sh feel shit later.
Speaker:And so.
Speaker:Yes.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:So there is some wisdom, some wisdom needed in the decision making.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:I don't do that anymore.
Speaker:And similarly, if I go out on the bend on a bender on a, on school night.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:Um.
Speaker:I know it'll feel amazing, uh, Wednesday evening when I'm in the pub.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:Uh, and really rubbish Thursday morning when I have to get the kids to school.
Speaker:Right.
Speaker:Okay.
Speaker:This is true.
Speaker:This is true.
Speaker:So it does need some wisdom.
Speaker:It's not just purely a, uh, what is it?
Speaker:It's the, something like the hedonic.
Speaker:Oh yeah.
Speaker:It's hedonistic.
Speaker:Sort of like pull.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:Right.
Speaker:What gives me pleasure right now and I'll do it.
Speaker:Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker:I was listening to thing the other day and was saying that, um, the, the
Speaker:kind of chemical difference between the feeling of contentedness and the
Speaker:chase, I think it was around Happiness, but I may have got that wrong.
Speaker:So the thing around Happiness is a bit more sort of dopamine associated.
Speaker:So, we kind of, we have the kind of, we have the sort of chase in that.
Speaker:But the thing around contentedness is that it's more about serotonin.
Speaker:So is a kind of, is a, is a sort of lower grade, but easier
Speaker:moving chemical reaction.
Speaker:And so, uh, in terms of, it's kind of, sort of, um, the, the kind of, the value
Speaker:we get from it, the chase, obviously we like dopamine things 'cause we feel
Speaker:that as a sort of short, sharp shock.
Speaker:Um, but, uh, but of course there's a cost to that sort of the chase and the cost
Speaker:of the kind of rise and fall, whereas the serotonin, and clearly I'm speaking
Speaker:way out of my fucking lane with all of this, that, that this is what happens
Speaker:when you read one little bit of a book and then you, you turn it into some sort of
Speaker:isn't that all of social media?
Speaker:Um, there's a big good serotonin because it's a kind of lower burn, sort of
Speaker:constant thing, actually is much kind of, uh, better for you and in the long
Speaker:run, actually, a kind of much more sort of, um, kind of sounder place to be.
Speaker:Hmm, yeah.
Speaker:I, I, so that whole chemical aspect of it, um, I appreciate,
Speaker:uh, that little spike versus the
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:A more, uh, longer lasting feeling.
Speaker:I relate that in a more philosophical terms in terms of Happiness or in
Speaker:the moment Happiness versus long-term wellbeing and sense of meaning.
Speaker:Mm-hmm.
Speaker:Or contentment.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:As we're saying.
Speaker:Mm-Hmm.
Speaker:Uh, and there is something I was just listening to, uh, a podcast about regret.
Speaker:I wish I'd listened to that.
Speaker:You are sharp up today.
Speaker:I like it.
Speaker:Uh, but yes.
Speaker:What, there's this idea of making choices.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:And so, uh, some are something along the lines of cumulative benefit.
Speaker:Mm-Hmm.
Speaker:so if you said, someone said to you, oh, you could have, uh, a 50 pound
Speaker:note now, or two 50 pound notes.
Speaker:Mm-Hmm.
Speaker:Which would you choose?
Speaker:If I could choose one or two now.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:One 50 pound note.
Speaker:Now I could give you one 50 pound note or two 50 pound notes.
Speaker:I'll choose two.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:Okay.
Speaker:You choose two 50 pound notes.
Speaker:Okay.
Speaker:And you'll never regret.
Speaker:Choosing one, the 50 pound Nhat, will you?
Speaker:Because it's compensated by the two 50 pound notes.
Speaker:There will never be regret there.
Speaker:So you could either, uh, go on, uh, of a pass in the retreat.
Speaker:Mm-Hmm.
Speaker:Silent, which I know you like.
Speaker:Mm-Hmm.
Speaker:That kind of like very, or you could come to Summer Camp and give a talk.
Speaker:Mm-Hmm.
Speaker:So.
Speaker:I'm not gonna ask you to make the choice, but if whichever choice you
Speaker:make, one of them will never fully compensate for the lack of the other.
Speaker:Mm-Hmm.
Speaker:And so there's this, either this, this kind of real strength sense
Speaker:of regret that could come in
Speaker:Mm-Hmm.
Speaker:Uh, or pain because you've missed out on something that you can
Speaker:never replace and it was never be compensated by the decision or
Speaker:choice that you make right now.
Speaker:And so you either live in pain with all of these decisions we have
Speaker:to make and get blocked by them.
Speaker:Mm-Hmm.
Speaker:Or you find a way to understand that this is part of life.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:This is the whole process we go on.
Speaker:That every decision we make will, will potentially lead to a, an
Speaker:in commensurate benefit or a loss that we can never, the choice A
Speaker:will never compensate for choice B.
Speaker:It will just be something that we will have to live.
Speaker:So what, uh, landed with me was.
Speaker:If you had a very strict set of values or views on life, very clear
Speaker:that, you know, I only like giving talks, I hate vipassana, brilliant.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:That's great.
Speaker:You'll never regret that choice.
Speaker:However, some of us love life.
Speaker:Mm-Hmm.
Speaker:Fully.
Speaker:And one of the beautiful things of life is that we get joy
Speaker:from so many different things.
Speaker:So the fact that we get joy from so many different things, and I'm, I'm guilty of
Speaker:that as well, is like, I've always asked, I could have been a doctor, I could have
Speaker:been a teacher, I could have been this, I could been, you know, all of these things
Speaker:I would've believe I would've loved doing.
Speaker:Because of that, because of, there's this joy that life can give us from
Speaker:all sorts of directions, we will always as a result, feel that loss
Speaker:because every decision we make will cut off that potential source of joy.
Speaker:Mm-Hmm.
Speaker:So, on one hand you could feel like, oh, I wish I only liked one thing,
Speaker:which means I could easily make loads of decisions in my life would be simple.
Speaker:Or relish in the fact that I love many things, which means that every
Speaker:decision I make, I'm gonna have to accept I'm gonna lose something.
Speaker:Mm-Hmm.
Speaker:But then that's great 'cause I love everything.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:I'm sort of thinking about this whole, as you were talking, the whole thing around
Speaker:regrets, and my initial thought was, I'm not really sure that I do have regrets.
Speaker:And then I was thinking, well, is that true?
Speaker:Uh, clearly there must be things that I, I sort of do.
Speaker:And it's not that I just want one thing.
Speaker:I think maybe it's just that my brain isn't very good at sort of, maybe
Speaker:consciously, maybe this is a good thing, not sort of consciously holding
Speaker:on to those sort of, uh, the, the kind of the decision that was going on.
Speaker:So once I have kind of moved on, my brain just can't hold on to what
Speaker:was happening before, therefore, I don't hold onto the code.
Speaker:It could have been this or it could have been that.
Speaker:So the story that um, I was heard this morning was the story of a friend giving
Speaker:another friend a lift to the airport.
Speaker:And so he says, oh, I'll give you a lift.
Speaker:Um, you know, I'll make sure you get to the airport on time.
Speaker:And he falls, he sleeps in.
Speaker:Mm-Hmm.
Speaker:And he says, oh, what an idiot.
Speaker:So, you know, like, really bad friend, you know, get that sense of regret for
Speaker:being just not there for his other friend.
Speaker:Then they re then they find out that that plane crashed in the
Speaker:middle of the sea and everyone died.
Speaker:Mm-Hmm.
Speaker:Suddenly actually there's no regret.
Speaker:It's like, wow.
Speaker:It's like, actually it was a good thing that I slept in, even though
Speaker:I went against my values and my, uh, need to be a good friend.
Speaker:The story, well, the, the kind of, the moral of the story there is like from our
Speaker:position now in the part or in the future, we can potentially say the thing decisions
Speaker:we made in the past that we may think we were regretful because they caused pain
Speaker:at the time has actually got us here.
Speaker:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker:Which I think is where you are coming to instinctively.
Speaker:It is like, well, why would I regret anything?
Speaker:'cause everything I did got me to this point.
Speaker:And I wanted to say.
Speaker:Unless you don't talk about money before you send a proposal.
Speaker:Yeah, and one thing that I've said to you before that is maybe the thing is just
Speaker:do I feel like I lived in a way which was kind of, sort of true to what I'm kind of
Speaker:most inspired by, I'm most interested in?
Speaker:And I think my life does feel like I'm always trying to do that.
Speaker:I'll say I always do it well, but I do feel like I'm trying to do that,
Speaker:which comes back to this, the decision of, what is going on when, when I
Speaker:make a decision or when one makes a decision, am I making the decision, you
Speaker:know, with the kind of best sort of, uh, intent with, you know, as coached
Speaker:to my kind of values as possible?
Speaker:Maybe this kind of is slightly different to what you're talking about.
Speaker:Maybe this is not, not useful.
Speaker:No.
Speaker:Well, I would say, and I we'll put a pin in this, we can, we can
Speaker:have another, uh, sort of complete tangent on the next episode.
Speaker:But I would rela what I was hearing there around, um, the decision
Speaker:making process and what, what, what would lead me to another way
Speaker:is actually do we have free will?
Speaker:Oh God, we're not going there.
Speaker:Shit.
Speaker:Do we do, will we actually in control of all of these decisions
Speaker:that we think we think can control?
Speaker:And so if you, if you do have free will, then yes, there's regret.
Speaker:If you don't, my regret really isn't necessary because we weren't able
Speaker:to make choices in the first place.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:Though we can choose to talk about money before we sent a proposal.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:Woo.
Speaker:Uh, let's bring it back.
Speaker:Okay.
Speaker:Thank you everyone, uh, for persisting.
Speaker:If you're still alive, you won't regret it.
Speaker:Um.
Speaker:So one of the, the, the conversations that I had earlier this week and and
Speaker:have had, had for many, with many people, and I've experienced it myself,
Speaker:is this whole challenge of writing a proposal, uh, and thinking that
Speaker:the proposal was the sales document.
Speaker:But before we go into that, let's start off with Ben.
Speaker:Because you, you have lots of ideas around this sort, the idea proposal writing.
Speaker:Mm-Hmm.
Speaker:Where, where would you like to kick off with what, what's really
Speaker:alive in you when we think about this idea of proposals of pricing?
Speaker:Yeah, so I know when we did the last cohort of the course, there was
Speaker:actually a whole, uh, you know, not dissimilar to what we just spent in
Speaker:the first half of the podcasting.
Speaker:I had a, a sort of massive tangent, talk around this and proposals,
Speaker:you know, what type of proposals to write, what they should be.
Speaker:Should they be one page, should they be 30 pages?
Speaker:Should they include testimonials?
Speaker:Should they include blah, blah, blah, blah.
Speaker:All of this sort of, lots and lots of conversation.
Speaker:And everybody, all the many different voices of the many different people, uh,
Speaker:all had different ideas around, um, what was kind of right and, and what was wrong.
Speaker:And I guess my kind of main, main feeling is that we tend to use proposals, um,
Speaker:as a sort of, so we, we, we oftentimes imagine that the proposal is this sort of
Speaker:very, uh, what's the right sort of phrase?
Speaker:This kind of real heavy lifting tool that, um, that it is going
Speaker:to do the work of, you know, sort of chivying your prospective
Speaker:client or customer over the line.
Speaker:You know, it's gonna, it's basically gonna sort of take them from a
Speaker:place where they're thinking about working with you to working with you.
Speaker:Um, and then it is going to do all of that.
Speaker:But of course, that is actually a big, big journey, really.
Speaker:Uh, and so I think we, we really invest a lot.
Speaker:We think about them, you know, I've done this too.
Speaker:You know, you go back over, you change loads wording in them.
Speaker:You kind of, you, you kind of really imagine it is going to do
Speaker:a huge amount of lifting for you.
Speaker:Um, and the thing that I've sort of found both in the practice of having two
Speaker:companies that write many, many proposals and also having received many proposals,
Speaker:is of course, you know, the, they don't actually do any of those things.
Speaker:And, you know, if you receive a pro proposal, many people will know this
Speaker:too, oftentimes what you might do is depending on where you're, you might whizz
Speaker:down, just go straight to the money bit.
Speaker:Um, and you may have ignored all of the bits beforehand.
Speaker:Um, so I think, yeah, the starting premise for this conversation is probably
Speaker:that we sort of invest a huge amount in proposal writing, and I would argue we,
Speaker:we don't, you know, we expect the proposal to do more than it is ever going to do.
Speaker:Um, I would also say that sometimes we, um, well I would've been
Speaker:guilty about this, around this is I hide behind proposals to
Speaker:avoid difficult conversations.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:It's been very much a, um.
Speaker:We'd have initial calls with the client, we'd, you know, essentially they'd
Speaker:present us the solution that they want.
Speaker:And then it was a case of us working out how to build it.
Speaker:So it was like, okay, then how do we cost up the solution that they want?
Speaker:Mm-Hmm.
Speaker:Uh, and then it is a hit and hope because in the end it is like they
Speaker:know what they want, they just wanna pay as little for it as possible.
Speaker:Mm-Hmm.
Speaker:And I've gotta work out what is that bottom, you know, we
Speaker:had to work out what is that?
Speaker:Uh, the, the bottom level of that for us and them so that we get paid something
Speaker:that we can actually pay the bills with and they get, they pay something.
Speaker:They choose us because we are cheaper than everyone else.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:For example.
Speaker:That's particularly the early, early stage of our business.
Speaker:Um, what I've learned from you and what I've also just recently learned from
Speaker:John Osborne, um, is how we can combine conversations, particularly if you are
Speaker:a coach or a consultant or someone who knows how to speak to people and listen,
Speaker:combine that skill with then making a proposal that they just can't refuse.
Speaker:Mm-Hmm.
Speaker:Not because that's an compelling proposal, it's because they've
Speaker:agreed everything already upfront.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:Before they've even read the thing they've already said yes.
Speaker:Mm-Hmm.
Speaker:That's the premise of this is that what, before you send the proposal,
Speaker:before you send anything, and this is what I heard you say, is like
Speaker:all the proposal is just confirming exactly what they, you talked about.
Speaker:Mm-Hmm.
Speaker:Even down to the money.
Speaker:Mm-Hmm.
Speaker:And so this is for me, if you are in a space of like, oh, oh,
Speaker:what's the price I should tell?
Speaker:You know, what's my day rate or what's the average day rate?
Speaker:What's the day rate of the people that they've already bought?
Speaker:What's, you know, all of these things in your head about rates and time,
Speaker:so that you can like, yeah, it's gonna take me 20 hours, but how can
Speaker:I make sure that I get paid 10 grand?
Speaker:It's like, I don't know.
Speaker:I dunno, 10 grand's too much and blah, blah, blah.
Speaker:Anyway, all of that doubt, uncertainty, lack of confidence.
Speaker:And even, like you say, negotiating myself down because I'm scared that
Speaker:they're gonna reject me, how do we avoid all of that so that when we
Speaker:write it down we know it's a surefire
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:I mean, we have to have done.
Speaker:Yeah, I think, yeah.
Speaker:The, the key thing in that I think is, as you say, the
Speaker:proposal is a summing up document.
Speaker:It's not a sales document.
Speaker:It's never gonna persuade anybody of anything.
Speaker:And you know, critically in the context of this conversation, if it is the first
Speaker:time that they have seen or heard or you've had any, any sort of interaction
Speaker:around money, um, it's also probably gonna be quite surprising for them.
Speaker:Uh, and so the what, you know, the, the kind of, the sorry truth if
Speaker:you like, that sort of comes out.
Speaker:This is the need to have spoken about all of those things in John Osworth,
Speaker:the need to have done, to invest it in the conversation, to invest it in the
Speaker:relationship so far that you are really totally clear what the compelling,
Speaker:impossible to say no to, no offer is.
Speaker:And you can only do that if you've had a conversation you, but you can only do
Speaker:that if you've had many conversations, if you understand what their motivations
Speaker:are, if you really understand the thing that they are hoping and trying to change
Speaker:as a consequence of working with you.
Speaker:The more that you understand those things, the more the document can be a
Speaker:summing up because you've spoken about all of that, you've spoken about the
Speaker:change they want, you've spoken about how you suggest that together you,
Speaker:how you will work together to help them enjoy that change that they want.
Speaker:All of those things will have been discussed.
Speaker:You've spoken to them about what they are kind of willing or able to invest and or
Speaker:different ways that they may be able to.
Speaker:Pay you to get to the level that you both kind of want, which is a
Speaker:level that they want to pay in your words, a level that they want to pay,
Speaker:but the level that you, you need to earn and find that kind of ground.
Speaker:Because there's different ways, of course they can get to that.
Speaker:You may ideally feel that the worth, the work is worth up here.
Speaker:They may initially kind of, they may agree with you but
Speaker:not have the means to pay that.
Speaker:But again, you need to have a conversation because it might be that there are
Speaker:different ways for them to pay, that they could pay, you know, pay with
Speaker:payment terms, they could pay over a period of time, whatever it might be.
Speaker:There's lots of different ways.
Speaker:But the point is, all of these things need to be discussed.
Speaker:These decisions can't be made on the back of a proposal.
Speaker:Uh, a client's never gonna read it and go, okay, yes, I'll do X, Y, Z.
Speaker:All of these things need to be discussed.
Speaker:All of this needs to be invested in beforehand.
Speaker:And you know, so it avoids doing the thing, like you said at the
Speaker:beginning, which is right, is run to avoid anything where we, we
Speaker:use a proposal to hide behind.
Speaker:I don't want to talk about the money, so I'm just gonna drop a number into
Speaker:the document and hope beyond hope that it ends up being the right thing.
Speaker:But of course that isn't really going to serve us particularly well.
Speaker:A much better outcome if a little bit of a harder journey is to step into the kind of
Speaker:awkward, slightly messy ground of talking about the money in the same way you talk
Speaker:to them about all of the, the aspects, the things that they're trying to change.
Speaker:Uh, so in, in the spirit of a seven point plan or a silver bullet for any
Speaker:of you in the process of writing a proposal, hopefully not too late in that
Speaker:process where you're just writing it right now, but just about to engage with
Speaker:the client the way I look at it now.
Speaker:Is have this conversation.
Speaker:And when you have this conversation, and if you're in the community, we've
Speaker:broken it down in a, in a pod, in an article on, on Mighty Networks.
Speaker:Um, first stage like John says is what is, so what is the situation right now?
Speaker:Actually, I'm gonna rewind a bit, but what were all, what happened to me
Speaker:when I was an agency, like someone came, said, can you make this happen?
Speaker:Can you do this?
Speaker:Can you build this?
Speaker:And it's like very prescriptive.
Speaker:I'm, I wanna buy this off of you.
Speaker:Or there's a, uh, they've shared a, a requirement.
Speaker:But then not to assume that that's the only thing they want or that
Speaker:is actually the thing they want.
Speaker:So you go into the conversation, what is, what's the situation right now?
Speaker:You know, what's the context?
Speaker:All the things, the, the challenges they face.
Speaker:Uh, what could be, I think is the next one.
Speaker:It's like, um, where did they want to get to?
Speaker:What is it they wish for?
Speaker:What is it the, things that they want to, and the problems they wanna solve,
Speaker:maybe, or the, the customers they want to get to, or whatever it is.
Speaker:It's like there, there's a, they've defined in their heads what it is,
Speaker:um, the, the state, not the thing necessarily to forget what the actual,
Speaker:whether it's a CRM system or website, uh, 12 month coaching program, whatever.
Speaker:It's, it, forget that's a, what does it get them to, which I think
Speaker:we talked about in the program.
Speaker:And this is where the five stages maybe get mixed up.
Speaker:I, I would say there is like, as a someone of experience, whether you are a coach
Speaker:or consultant, facilitator, an expert in your field, it's like being able to
Speaker:say what, what John called, what wows.
Speaker:It's like, actually, if you did this, or if you looked at it in this way,
Speaker:maybe we could do something else.
Speaker:Maybe you could achieve this.
Speaker:And the wow bit is like for them, the penny to drop.
Speaker:Oh my God.
Speaker:Of course.
Speaker:That's amazing.
Speaker:That's exactly what I want.
Speaker:I, I didn't know that.
Speaker:And Laurence and I had many of those conversations with clients like, oh
Speaker:God, yeah, no, we did don't need that.
Speaker:We need this.
Speaker:And then it was, I think the la the, the other thing was how will we or
Speaker:will we, it's like, okay, based on how I work, based on how you work,
Speaker:timings, et cetera, et cetera, uh, how, how could this practically look?
Speaker:Mm-Hmm.
Speaker:Then if they let, if that all sounds good, then it's the, okay, which is
Speaker:Ben, what Ben talks about is the money.
Speaker:It's like, right, what does this term mean?
Speaker:How do you get to start talking about numbers?
Speaker:Not necessarily bartering or, um, haggling in terms of how much they're
Speaker:willing to spend, but how much would it be worth them to achieve this thing?
Speaker:How much would it be cost them not to do this thing?
Speaker:You know, how much are they spending on other projects?
Speaker:How much are they earning per year?
Speaker:Like, you know, and Ben will can elaborate more on those things.
Speaker:So then you have all of this information where hopefully they're just nodding
Speaker:and agreeing and yessing and all of that stuff, and it's like you're
Speaker:just making notes for your proposal.
Speaker:Mm-Hmm.
Speaker:One of things I'd say, which comes up, as you say, actually, even if somebody who is
Speaker:listening to this is actually just about to write the proposal, I would say pause.
Speaker:Hold on.
Speaker:Actually, just to get back on the con.
Speaker:Have a conversation, even if it's one conversation with your prospect, just to
Speaker:go back to and say, Look, I'm just about to write this proposal now, but I wanted
Speaker:to just double check a couple of things and to spend half an hour exploring even
Speaker:in a kind of headline sense, those topics that John laid out that you shared there.
Speaker:You will get so much from that, that actually the, the kind of propo the
Speaker:proposal will then resonate more.
Speaker:The proposal, you know, then it's not doing the selling.
Speaker:'Cause if the other thing is that, you know, we sort talk about,
Speaker:spoke earlier, this idea that a proposal is a summing up document.
Speaker:There's really two other things that a proposal should do.
Speaker:It should be, when the prospect, when your prospect reads it,
Speaker:they should see themselves in it.
Speaker:They should see the words that they use played back to them.
Speaker:They should see the ideas that they have played back to them.
Speaker:They should see the thing that they want to change, play back to them.
Speaker:They should see themselves in it.
Speaker:And so if you've not yet explored those things, just straight away having a
Speaker:half hour conversation to run through that sequence that John shared that you
Speaker:were talking about there will give you some of that source material so that
Speaker:when they do come to see it, they will basically see those kind of key things.
Speaker:So yes, it is a sort of summing up.
Speaker:Yes, it is a chance for them to see themselves in the proposal.
Speaker:There is a third thing, which is, which is a thing around reassurance,
Speaker:but we can come to that, we can come to that, uh, separately.
Speaker:And, and, and I think so just, you know, even if you are writing a proposal, taking
Speaker:half an hour to have those conversations will make it much more likely that,
Speaker:um, something positive comes from it.
Speaker:And then also, like you're saying, yes, it importa to have
Speaker:conversations around money.
Speaker:So there are some specific things you can ask that you
Speaker:have sort of spoken about there.
Speaker:But A straight away asking whether somebody has a budget for something.
Speaker:And of course we know.
Speaker:That most of the time, you know, 99.9 times out of a hundred clients say, I
Speaker:don't know, uh, tell me what it costs.
Speaker:Even in that situation, actually saying to them, Okay, well in a situation
Speaker:like this, 'cause what you're trying to do is you're looking for indicators,
Speaker:you, you're looking for indicators.
Speaker:You are looking for signals to understand what may be
Speaker:appropriate for them to invest.
Speaker:And you know, with some information, and I'm sure you will, you know, you writing
Speaker:the proposal will have some idea about it.
Speaker:What you wanna do, you ask them, one of the questions asked, like we say, Isabel.
Speaker:What is your budget?
Speaker:What is it that you want to spend?
Speaker:And even if they say, I don't know, then you can go back to them.
Speaker:Well, look, in this situation, clients like this typically invest
Speaker:somewhere between this and this.
Speaker:And you want a kind of X and Y range there, which maybe makes you the proposal,
Speaker:right, to feel a little bit uncomfortable.
Speaker:Because I think always we need to push ourselves a little bit more on this.
Speaker:Oftentimes, particularly for people in this community, and right,
Speaker:oftentimes what we will do is that we will kind of value ourselves down.
Speaker:So what we want to do is go back to them with this idea of a range.
Speaker:Because what we're trying to explore is, you know, where did
Speaker:they sit, where did they fall?
Speaker:And these are kind of good, useful sort of tests when you go back to them
Speaker:with this, well, clients typically invest between this and this.
Speaker:You know, if they fall off their chair, then you know the range that you've gone
Speaker:back to 'em with is probably too high.
Speaker:If they're really sitting there and they kind of.
Speaker:You know, they're, they're kind of relatively unfazed.
Speaker:You'll know that the kind of top end of your range is a
Speaker:very acceptable thing for them.
Speaker:Again, you are always looking for signals.
Speaker:You are always looking for indicators.
Speaker:And there are other things like you also kind of, uh, flagged
Speaker:there that you can ask, which also kind of reveal this a little bit.
Speaker:You know, how much have you invested in similar things in the past?
Speaker:Or the, you know, that really useful question, you know, what is
Speaker:the cost of not doing this work?
Speaker:Uh, and that will point to some emotional things, some kind of,
Speaker:uh, you know, some, a whole range of markers will come from that.
Speaker:But it is also a way into the money.
Speaker:Because, you know, we do what we do have to have a conversation around the money.
Speaker:And that you were kind of making reference.
Speaker:So if we're having this conversation and they're nodding in agreement
Speaker:all of the time, then we know that we, we were on the right track.
Speaker:Why I, Mike, kind of add to that is actually what we really want a little bit
Speaker:is we do want to have flushed out some of the things that they don't agree with.
Speaker:Because then we do know that we're getting to a place which is genuinely
Speaker:kind of aligned with where they are.
Speaker:'Cause of course it's easy for us just to appear like we are not in agreement.
Speaker:Uh, but actually what we want is we want some response.
Speaker:We want, we want to kind of understand, we wanna dig, dig
Speaker:below the surface a little bit.
Speaker:Um, and so that that does require conversation.
Speaker:It requires conversation along the lines that John was sharing.
Speaker:It requires us to do some of this hard work of bringing money to the fore.
Speaker:You know, as we sort of talk about next week, how to have these
Speaker:grownup conversations around money.
Speaker:But the more that we do that, then there's nothing in the proposal, then
Speaker:there's no need, when they receive a proposal just to race down to the money
Speaker:bit at the bottom, which if you've not spoken about it, will, will more,
Speaker:will will happen almost all the time.
Speaker:Because that's the thing that they're also trying to make that ambiguity
Speaker:and that uncertainty go away.
Speaker:So they'll just race to that bit.
Speaker:If you've spoken about all of that stuff in the context of all of the
Speaker:things that they want to change and all the things which are important to
Speaker:them, there are no surprises in there.
Speaker:And also you can then establish upfront because you may find that actually
Speaker:there is no way the client is ever, the prospect is ever going to be able to pay.
Speaker:What you need them to pay.
Speaker:And wouldn't it be better if you knew that before you'd invested
Speaker:the time in writing a proposal?
Speaker:That's why you've got to talk about all of these things in advance
Speaker:for your benefit and for theirs.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:That actually, that really hits home, that whole like agonizing for hours and
Speaker:maybe days and a proposal or went in a backpack, could have just said, sorry,
Speaker:we're not gonna work together because this isn't gonna, this isn't gonna work.
Speaker:Yeah, we can't do it.
Speaker:They can't do it.
Speaker:And yeah.
Speaker:And I feel like if you are in a numbers game and you want to, like Frances
Speaker:was saying, where she receives pro proposals where nothing pertains to
Speaker:her, that feels like a kind of like just cold proposal writing, just
Speaker:inspiring stuff off at random people.
Speaker:It's like, it's that, it feels like that kind of, um, boiler room approach
Speaker:of just like, just crawling around.
Speaker:It's, I got one the other day that said, I looked at your proposal on LinkedIn.
Speaker:No, looked to your profile on LinkedIn and uh, thought that you would be
Speaker:relevant because I have outsourced developer roles for companies in Ireland.
Speaker:I was like, the fuck you talking about?
Speaker:How, is there anything on my proposal on LinkedIn that would give you
Speaker:any idea that I knew anything about writing something for the computer?
Speaker:But anyway.
Speaker:Yeah, it's that kind of, it's the, just the cold emptiness of that.
Speaker:It wastes our time.
Speaker:It wastes their time.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:It just spreads more unhappiness in the world.
Speaker:So if you want more happy people, have more happy conversations about money,
Speaker:which we'll be talking about next week.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:And then you will happily price and you will get happy projects and
Speaker:the world will be a better place.
Speaker:And you'll happily not waste your time on proposals, which are not worth the energy.
Speaker:Exactly.
Speaker:So until next time, thank you very much, Ben.
Speaker:We will, we will, we will tackle, uh, free will.
Speaker:Yes.
Speaker:let's do a dedicated one on that.
Speaker:And, and see how that, uh, connects to, uh, talking about conversations around
Speaker:money, because, you know., Whatever comes out of our mouths around the
Speaker:money, we have no choice of that, so we might as well have a conversation.
Speaker:We can't have, be held responsible for it, we have no free will.
Speaker:It's not my fault.
Speaker:It's not my fault.
Speaker:Thank you very much.
Speaker:Thank you everyone for listening in and, and sticking with the, the
Speaker:Occasional tangents
Speaker:No, the, the broad smorgasbord of concepts and content that we bring to you, not
Speaker:just, it's not just about the money.
Speaker:It's all about the stuff around it.
Speaker:Until next time, thank you.
Speaker:Bye-Bye.
Speaker:Laters.