S03 Episode 2: Why Roadmapping is a Priority with Matty McLain
31m
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Double Your Freelancing Podcast
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When your business is small, you need to carve out a niche and engage clients. Know what you can do for them, and put into words what you can deliver. You need to determine whether you want to work with others or not. How do you roadmap your business?
My guest today is Matty McLain, who works for small companies and startups to help them tighten their sales process and get clients. What keeps business owners up at night and bothers them? Matty looks inside the businesses and determines how to make them better.
Today’s topics include:
- Craft proposals based on what clients say and address their pain
points - Purpose of roadmapping to understand and overcome objections
- Hesitations that clients will hire you; frustrations over wasted
research and time - Create email list following that generates leads and be active in the
community - Pitch roadmapping via a call; create roadmapping summary of sales and
marketing plan - Funnel: Lead comes in; consultation; qualify client for roadmapping;
pitch roadmapping; deliverable report; and sell bigger project - Silent Killer of Small Business: Giving too many proposals that you
don’t win - Conversion rates go up when you offer someone a taste of something
bigger - First dollar is the hardest to make; companies initially go with
lower-priced options - Time with company leaders to vet them and determine if you want to
work with them - Trust that you own abilities can impact a business
- Things to be aware of and consider when thinking about selling paid
roadmapping - Find a way to charge for value
- Proposal: Here’s where you’re at, here’s where you want to be; given
my experience and our discussions, the best way to get from here to
there is… - Customer Service Era: People’s expectations are higher; you have to
deliver an experience - Lessons Learned: Have a process, and sell roadmapping as the first
step
Resources and links:
- Matty McLain
- Million Dollar Consulting by Alan Weiss
- Sandler Training
- Dan Pink
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S03 Episode 5: Building Trust Through Roadmapping with Lionel Martin
When you shop for anything, check with the business owners and ask, “How’s business going?” They will be happy to share their thoughts. Roadmapping involves interviewing and understanding a client to identify their needs and craft a solution for them. Take care of and protect your clients to develop successful and reliable results.
My guest today is Lionel Martin, a software and DevOps engineer who helps technology startups improve how they build using the Cloud. As a freelancer, he experienced the income and project roller coaster, which was very stressful. Lately, he has been doing high-value consulting. Lionel shares tips he has implemented that may benefit your company. Tactics he uses that are game changers to make a good impression on clients and get them to pay him more include being more descriptive rather than prescriptive and not having a portfolio.
Today’s topics include:
- Organizing your business and personal life: Schedule, time, and
bandwidth - Making mindset changes by setting up hands-on consulting and
roadmapping to be able to implement strategic or tactical changes - 4 Phases of Engagement: Diagnosis (identify problems), Prescription
(recommended solution), Implementation, and Reapplication - Expressing empathy during diagnosis and prescription to understand
why client is willing to spend money on you; walk in their shoes
before going directly to your comfort zone - Having hesitations and being confident enough to talk with any client
in any industry and deliver value - Having curiosity, willingness to help, and asking questions - talk
business with people - Getting qualified leads and clients involves content marketing and
focusing on strategic conversations for productizing (3 months for
productizing to packaging) - Building trust and positively changing your relationship with clients
through roadmapping; others deliver biased advice geared toward their
services Waterfall vs. Agile Development: Where do you need to get
to, where are you now, why is now bad, why is there better, and how
can you help them get there? Assess risks - Hear It Before They See It: Investing time to talk to client,
offering proposal, and getting them to buy an option
Resources and links:
- Lionel Martin
- Lionel Martin Email
S03 Episode 4: Onboarding and Roadmapping Tailored Around Video with Ian Servin
Learn how to take awesome conversations and translate them into increased scope of works to grow your business with heightened capabilities around marketing. Think about the impact, not just the deliverable. Paint a complete picture of marketing.
My guest today is Ian Servin of Animus Studios, which is a production company that makes videos. Animus has a higher-level, holistic approach of using videos to provide a solution to clients. It focuses on content creation and plans that involve sharing that content and measuring results.
Today’s topics include:
- Be willing to pay more to reach your end goals with videos for your
business - Disconnect between sales and production regarding goals and purpose
of videos; make the product on the backend aligned with the
expectation on the frontend - Add intentionality, process, and formalization to deliver in a
package that feels like a real product and offering - Animus reaches out to new customers or customers contact them with
a video need; Animus guides new customers through big picture
marketing and setting expectations - Onboarding and roadmapping is tailored around video and includes
initial question asking and information gathering; never deliver a
proposal that is a surprise - Animus financially qualifies a client and works with them on a small
scale to funnel them into the onboarding package; doesn’t want to
waste its or a client’s time and money - Discover how to make better content strategically; take ideas to
helps customer develop a creative story and think outside of the box
to make sales - Generate sales and leads through email generation, boots on the
ground work at events, and building a content marketing campaign
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- Animus Studios
- Videostrategy.org
S03 Episode 3: How Meteoric Growth Impacts Sales with Drew Sanocki
Advisors lead by developing a trusted relationship with prospects. This takes out a lot of traditional pitching for business and transitions to paid connections. You become more of a consultant than just a hired gun.
Drew Sanocki and Michael Epstein are partners at Growthengines.io, which has grown from being brand new to generating $1 million in revenue in less than a year through retainer work. How has it gone from nothing to where it is at now in such a short period? What impact does that have on the way that it sells?
Today’s topics include:
- Agony and pain that comes before success and figuring out a model
- Insights: Moving from 1-OP projects to ongoing retainers, and going
to higher-end retainers - To go up market practically and mindset-wise what needs to change is
the 80/20 rule: 20% of clients were driving 80% of the revenue;
building an agency that targets the 20% - Structuring things differently to attract and convert the bigger
fish; generating valuable content and marketing, and focusing
offering on the highest value adding aspects - Typical Lifecycle: Hear about Growth Engines, sparks interest,
follows a call to action/lead magnet, and tag leads for initial
engagement and email sequence - Selling Process: Once prospect is qualified, they are funneled
through various offerings, such as courses and roadmap growth audit - Sometimes a sales call is not even necessary; convince them without
it - Focusing on standardization, process improvement, and fulfillment
- Communication Process for Qualified Prospects: Emails for engagement,
but not a lot of selling that has to happen - Follow-up efforts with those who choose not to opt-in
- Pulling data to generate reports and drive presentation deck to
deliver to client; making deliverable more productized and systemized
Resources and links:
- Growth Engines
- Growth Audit
- Nerd Marketing
- Drip
- Jonathan Stark
- AutoCrat for Google Sheets
- Mastering Drip Email Marketing Automation
S03 Episode 2: Why Roadmapping is a Priority with Matty McLain
When your business is small, you need to carve out a niche and engage clients. Know what you can do for them, and put into words what you can deliver. You need to determine whether you want to work with others or not. How do you roadmap your business?
My guest today is Matty McLain, who works for small companies and startups to help them tighten their sales process and get clients. What keeps business owners up at night and bothers them? Matty looks inside the businesses and determines how to make them better.
Today’s topics include:
- Craft proposals based on what clients say and address their pain
points - Purpose of roadmapping to understand and overcome objections
- Hesitations that clients will hire you; frustrations over wasted
research and time - Create email list following that generates leads and be active in the
community - Pitch roadmapping via a call; create roadmapping summary of sales and
marketing plan - Funnel: Lead comes in; consultation; qualify client for roadmapping;
pitch roadmapping; deliverable report; and sell bigger project - Silent Killer of Small Business: Giving too many proposals that you
don’t win - Conversion rates go up when you offer someone a taste of something
bigger - First dollar is the hardest to make; companies initially go with
lower-priced options - Time with company leaders to vet them and determine if you want to
work with them - Trust that you own abilities can impact a business
- Things to be aware of and consider when thinking about selling paid
roadmapping - Find a way to charge for value
- Proposal: Here’s where you’re at, here’s where you want to be; given
my experience and our discussions, the best way to get from here to
there is… - Customer Service Era: People’s expectations are higher; you have to
deliver an experience - Lessons Learned: Have a process, and sell roadmapping as the first
step
Resources and links:
- Matty McLain
- Million Dollar Consulting by Alan Weiss
- Sandler Training
- Dan Pink