Kori Ashton helps you save time when sending proposals. Try sending out a pre-proposal email to see where the client is comfortable in their budget and time range.
Full Transcript
Hey y’all, my name is Kori Ashton, and welcome to another WordPress Wednesday. I don’t know about you, but I cannot stand putting together proposals, and truthfully, RFP is a four-letter word to me. So I’ve kind of crafted a better process when it comes to reaching out to clients, and kind of moving the deal along, and solidifying and onboarding new clients. I wanna share that process today with you.
Let’s look at a pre-proposal example. Early on in my company, I was spending so much time, two to three hours, even with a template, really tryin’ to craft a conversation around a potential client, and what I believed their needs were. Even after having an initial phone call with them, I would take extensive notes, and think to myself, okay, I think I know exactly what they need and I spend a lot of time really putting together this large proposal, only to submit it to them, and them go, gwah, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, those prices are completely out of my range, I can’t go anywhere near that budget.
So what I’ve started to do now is get on the phone with them, drop a few comments of budget ranges, give them some examples of previous sites I’ve done, let them know kind of what that range was, so saying this example was $2,500, this example was $8,500, you know, I just see, kinda measure their response, right? But what you might also wanna do is put that in writing to them, and let them kinda see that range, and digest that range in black and white, in writing.
So this is the example I wanna show you. This is where you’ll be able to see kind of an initial email that I put out to them, and what it sounds like. So,
Hello Jake, thanks for taking time with me on the phone today, I can certainly see why you’re reaching out for a new rebuild. Your current website loads very slowly, and seems quite dated. The good news is, we can fix that right up.
So this very first bit of sentence is to again say thank you for engaging with me, but also to reiterate their points of pain. Remind him why he’s looking for a new solution. And, in doing that, that kind of reestablishes his hurt, and then you’ll show him the price tag it’s gonna take to fix it, a little bit of psychology there.
Your insights were very helpful. After reviewing the example websites you’ve given, and learning more about your direction, I’d like to suggest the following marketing strategy.
Now, I want you to notice my language here. I’m saying marketing strategy, I’m no longer just talking about just a website solution, because I don’t want a one night stand with this customer. I really, truly want to have a long-term engagement, because everybody knows in this industry, you have to have re-occurring revenue in order to keep your lights on, in order to be scalable, in order to grow, right?
So you wanna be talking to them about a holistic strategy, not just a website build, and I’m giving it in phases, so I’m giving it in phase one, market and keyword research, $400 to $600, build a new website, $6,500 to $10,000. Phase two is gonna be ongoing support, that $99 a month, this is where you get into the monthly re-occurring revenue, or MRR, monthly digital marketing inside of Facebook for $300, not including your ad spend, so whatever it costs to boost posts, whatever it costs to run campaigns would be above and beyond that. This $300 is just for you to create the ads and manage the ads, kinda cool, huh?
What you’re doing though is you’re kind of establishing the opportunity for this client to opt out, and say to you, oh, no, no, no, I don’t wanna spend that money, or you’re giving them an opportunity to see an upsell moment of them going oh gosh, I didn’t realize you could do that for that inexpensive, I’m on board. And then we remind him just a little bit of why we’re phasing this out, and why we’re suggesting digital marketing.
Remember that your website is really just the foundation. You’ll wanna push the site to rank high on Google. You’ll also wanna be actively pursuing customers in social networks. This would be an entry-level budget. We can always look to increase our scope as we see the growing results.
So here’s what I want you to do here in this language, you’re suggesting to him that there’s going to be a successful push after the fact.
Once the website is launched, you’re gonna see these great results, you’ll probably wanna increase the budget, and our relationship will only get better. You are starting to build that conversation of trust, and then we say this.
If this is within your budget needs, please reply back and I’ll work up an official proposal for you to share with your full team. I’ll be able to break down the cost even more for a detailed view of tasks and timeline.
Notice that I did not say, but if this isn’t in your budget we can always lower the cost, right? We’re not gonna give him that mindset. We’re not gonna even put that thought out there. We just want him to reply back and let us know where he’s landing. And then we say, I look forward to improving your online marketing, so we’re coming back to the fact that he needs some improvement.
We’re reiterating this first point of pain up here that it needs to have improvement, we wanna be that solution, and then what you’re also saying to him is, I can give you something more official looking, but basically, I don’t wanna spend my time if this is nowhere in your budget, make sense?
I guarantee you, the frustration that you’ve had in putting together these RFPs and trying to reach out to people and engage with people certainly just is a total waste of time. Doing little steps like this, little touchpoints allows you to do two things. One, not waste your time, but two respond back a lot more quickly than your competitors will to that potential customer because you can type up a quick email example like this in just a matter of minutes. You can even have this kind of sitting somewhere where you copy and paste it out to the customer, be certain that it’s specific to their needs, but then send that out with just a matter of minutes of being on a phone call with them and it makes it look like you’re extremely, extremely responsive.
Hopefully, Jake would’ve replied back with, gosh, Kori, I think this would work. I’d love to see these in further detail. Then I would go take my time, work into my proposal, get it all out with letterhead and everything really written out with some of the legal conversation, and get that sent to him.
I hope this helps y’all, if you have further advice, feedback into your process and how you’re improving things, please put them in the comments below and share with the community. I’ll see you next WordPress Wednesday, be sure to subscribe. ‘Bye, y’all.
