The internal dialogue that’s killing your fees

Speaker 1 0:02

It's exactly the kind of B2B company that I know I can really help. But I am terrified of putting together a proposal. I'm so worried he's like, what, $15,000 a month. That's insane, you know? Like, I'm just, I'm just scared.

Leah Neaderthal 0:22

Welcome to Smart gets paid with me. Leah Neaderthal, I help women run more profitable consulting businesses, getting more of the clients you want and getting paid way more for your work without sacrificing your time. But I've never been a salesperson. My background is in corporate marketing, and when I started my own consulting business, I learned pretty quickly that it's about 1000 times harder to sell your own stuff than it is to sell someone else's. So I taught myself how to do it. I turned it into a methodology, and now I teach that proven methodology to my clients. So whether your consulting contracts are $10,000 $100,000 or more, if you want more clients you love, more work you love, and they get paid more than you ever thought possible, then you're in the right place. Let's do it together. Thanks for tuning in, and don't forget to rate, review and share. Hey there, Leah here, and thanks for tuning in. I hope wherever you're listening to this, wherever you are right now, I hope you're having a great week, making some good progress in your business and take me some time for you. So picture it. It's February 2014 and viola Davis's phone rings, you know, Viola Davis, right? She's an incredible, like, award winning actor, right? And on that day, she picks up her phone, and on the other end of the line are Shonda Rhimes, like the most powerful woman in television, Peter Nowak, the writer who is creating a new show, and the head of ABC, all right. I mean, no big deal, right? And as she listens on her end, they tell her that she's landed a role, like the lead role in a new legal drama called How to Get Away with Murder. And I mean, she has spent, at this point, like, 30 years working for this I mean, 30 years of Off Broadway and bit parts, and like playing Meryl Streep's scene partners, and like just showing up so brilliantly in all these supporting roles, but she'd never been given a role like this. And now here it was, and all she had to do was say yes, and she'd been thinking about this, you know, as she was like waiting to hear the news, and she had decided that she had to ask the show runners for something very specific if she was going to be able to take this role. And as she's sitting there on the phone, she's like, about to say it, you know, she's about to make this request, when she heard a voice in her head, and she's talked about what that voice sounded like, you know, it said things like, don't mess this up. Don't ask for too much. Don't be difficult. You know you might lose this but Viola, knew she needed to make this ask, so she said it. She told them that she wouldn't do the show unless her character got to take her wig off, because she knew that if she signed on without making this request, that she would end up playing a woman wearing a wig who looked the way people thought a leading woman, and really specifically a leading woman who is black the way people thought that woman was supposed to look, but not a real woman, and definitely not someone like her. So she quieted that voice in her head, and she said it. She told them what she needed, and there was a pause, and then they said, Yes. And if you've ever watched the show How to Get Away with Murder, that scene of the character Anneliese Keating at her mirror, removing her wig, her lashes, her makeup, like that scene, was one of the most memorable scenes of the entire series, and it only happened because Viola Davis didn't listen to that voice that was working against her, or, as we say in our world, when she stopped negotiating against herself. And if you're running a consulting business, you probably know all about negotiating against yourself, it usually shows up at the worst possible moment, like, right when there's a real, live, actual client opportunity on the table, and it sort of looks like this. I mean, maybe this sounds familiar, the client wants to work with you. You know you can do the work. You know the client needs you, and you actually really do want to work with them, like you've gone through these steps, and then you sit down to write a proposal and actually put a number on it, and suddenly you're having this whole internal conversation, right? It sounds like there's no way they could pay that much, or there's no way they will pay that much, or they can't afford that, or who am I to charge this much? And so you take that number that you were going to write down, and you make it a little smaller. Yeah, and maybe a little smaller again. And the wild thing is that in this whole process, the client hasn't said a word. I mean, they haven't pushed back on the price because they haven't even seen it yet, but you've already started negotiating. I mean, you're not negotiating with the client, you started negotiating against yourself. So today you're going to listen in on a coaching call I had with a client of mine who was right in that moment. She had a perfect potential client in front of her. It was exactly the kind of work she does, a client who was ready to move forward, who had allocated budget, and she was stuck, not because of anything the client had said or the client had done, but because of what was happening in her own head and what comes out of this conversation. I hope it's going to be useful if you've ever been in that moment too, where you start to negotiate against yourself. So in this call, you're going to hear how to stop negotiating against yourself. You'll hear why we tend to price our work on the wrong things. We'll talk about how to value your work and get paid what you're worth, and we'll explore the reason why we tend to be our own worst enemies. I want to send a huge thank you to my client for allowing me to share this call with you. So take a listen, and I'll come back at the end and share a lesson you can apply to your business.

Speaker 1 6:15

So you mentioned that you were really looking forward to this call in particular. What do you want to talk about? What is it about this call? So what I am struggling with right now, and for a particular client, I guess, is I am terrified of putting together a proposal. So there's a funded startup that is right in my wheelhouse. It's exactly the kind of B to B company that I know I can really help, but I know that what needs to be done cannot be accomplished by one person. So I know I'd have to hire subs, which raises my price even more. I'm just scared. I'm so worried. He's what, $15,000 a month. That's insane, you know, like, I'm just, I'm just scared, so I just wanted to talk through, like, how can I package myself or package this proposal so that everyone feels good about it? Does that make sense? Yeah, yeah, absolutely. So is it the kind of thing where I remember, you know, with me in early conversation, it's like it was all well and good until they actually wanted to move forward. You know, it was like talking about it in terms of just hypotheticals, was like, great, you know. But then it's like, Oh, shit. Now you're serious, you know. Is there any part of that that I don't know, talk to me whether that is sort of bringing up some of these feelings. Yeah, I mean, I'm having a hard time pinning him down on any specifics. So he's a successful tech startup guy. This is his third tech startup, and he's really good at early stage getting investors. But then once it's an actual company up and running, he gets out, you know, that's not his mom. So he's this real, like, fast talking, vague, you know, like, oh, I, you know, I almost feel like he's, like, a match.com date or something, or, like, that's an old reference tells you how long I've been married, but I feel like he's trying to hook me, but I can't pin him down on any specifics. Okay, that's such an indictment of, like, the dating process, which I know I'm sorry. Oh, real No, no. I mean, I remember, I did it, you know, a long time ago as well. You remember, right? You remember, like, showing up at a place and feeling like you're totally being sold to, you know? And I'm like, Yeah, this isn't necessary. So anyway, so talk to me about you know, you know this guy. You know that he needs your help. You know you're talking it's not like he's cut things off. You know he wants to move forward. Why do you think you're gonna scare him off? I guess I don't know how to put something together that looks professional like. I know that I can do the work he needs. I know I'm better than what he needs, actually, but I am so worried I'm going to put something in front of him and he's going to be like, this is amateur hour or something. Do you know what I mean? Maybe a little imposter syndrome. Yeah. What if I told you that amateur hour would look like going too low, not too high. Yeah, you're right. If you showed up to him and you were like, I am $35 an hour, and I'll do all this stuff that is amateur hour. Yeah, you say it's $15,000 a month. And you know, when should we do our kickoff? That sounds professional. What's sort of coming up for you right now? You know that's exactly I've worked with so many consultants over the years. I've hired so many consultants. That was exactly my response when someone undervalued themselves, I'd be like, I don't think we need her. I don't think we need this guy. So you're absolutely right. You're telling me what I know right now. Well, that's my job, right? So, but it's really interesting. You know, it's so interesting to hear you say that I hired a lot of consultants, and so you've been in this role. So how would you look at this from the role of, you know, when you were the one doing the hiring, talk to me how you would about how you would think through this if somebody came to you? Well, for me, first of all, it was always like a gut level. Do I like this person, you know, do I feel like they have integrity? And is there like, a connection there? Because you always want, or at least, I always wanted to work with people I liked and had some kind of rapport with, and then they would just give me a couple options. They would be like, Okay, well, we could do, you know, $8,370 a month. And this is what you'd get. You'd get a team, a dedicated team of two people, and this much time, and we'll meet with you every month to do benchmarks and figure out our goals for the next month, like that kind of thing. Well, I want to back up, because I think there are a couple sort of decision points in between there that you might have skipped over. So the first one says, Is there a connection, slash, you know, do I like them? Do we have a good record? Can I envision working with this person, right? Another one I think, has to be, do I believe that they can do the work they say they can, right? Do I believe that they can achieve the results, right? And then, you sort of, you know, keep talking, and then they present some options. But let's just put yourself back in the position of the person who hires. You know, if you've been talking to somebody and you know, they can do the work you like them, you've been talking for, I don't know, couple months, are you like dying to evaluate other options? Yeah, no, he knows I'm a perfect option. He knows I'm perfect Exactly. Yeah. Well, not only that, you know, there's that aspect to it, but also, you know, there's this idea of investment bias. Yeah, it's the reason why people sit in front of slot machines for hours, you know, but it's also the reason why, you know, you go on so many interviews for a job, and even though the job you know, as you go on it may not feel like the best job, but you've already invested so much in it. You've invested a lot of time. You've invested a lot of time in this guy, but also he's invested a lot of time in you. There's commitment bias there. So do you recommend inking a deal before we talk about the scope of work? Or like do you like to know? Or do you recommend that I know what the goals are and what the work will entail before we present proposals? So the way that I approach proposals is really based on the value of your work to the company. And you know, it's not about like how many deliverables or how many hours. And you can have a loose scope, you know, here's what will be included. But when you structure a proposal based on value, and then you price it based on value. What that does is, first, it, you know, really aligns what your work to the ultimate value that they want, right? It's not about like, I'm gonna write a bunch of blog posts, right? It's like, I'm gonna get you seen as an expert among your audience, right? Those are to see the difference there. So the other thing it does is allows you to charge more because, you know, you're not paying for three blog posts or whatever a month you're paying for bringing about this ultimate value in your business. And the third thing that it does is that it divorces you from the deliverables and actually allows you to be more flexible in achieving the client's goals. So if you say we're gonna start with these things, I'm gonna do these things, but everything is focused on the end value to the business. So if we discover that we need to sort of stop doing something and do something else instead, we have flexibility for that. Does that make sense? Yeah. So I would say to you, this guy might not know or be you may not be able to pin him down on you know how many you have something right? Or you know what he wants you to do, but what has he told you in terms of what he truly wants from this work? He wants marketing expertise. He wants the worry off of his plate so that he can focus on the technology and the user experience. So he is just looking for someone to build the marketing team find verticals and markets to sell this product into. Like right now they're focused. Focusing on B to B sales people, but it could also be a great tool for healthcare workers and investor relations and things like that. So it actually has a million applications, so many that he doesn't understand what to focus on. So if that works, right, if your marketing works. What will it do for the business? Bring in brand awareness, more leads, more qualified leads to put in front of sales. Will ostensibly the materials created to achieve those things. Will give the sales team tools to use. We could present the company as thought leaders.

Speaker 1 15:44

And so, what do you feel like he could articulate as like? The most thing he's like, You know what? Tammy, you know, we just need. We just need. Like, what is that thing? Ultimately, he wants more customers. He wants users. Okay, great. And you sell them through the sales team. Yeah, okay, so I'm just gonna sort of spitball this, but you know, what you're talking about is the value you provide, just at a super high level, is like essentially building the, you know, the marketing operation that will bring qualified leads to the sales team, right? I mean, that'd be, not be the actual words, but that's just generally sort of what we're talking about here. So if you said to him, I'll be your sort of part time CMO, or I'll be your marketing consultant on the one side, versus I'm going to build this marketing operation that, you know consistently brings qualified leads to the sales team, which seems more valuable, yeah, the second one obviously totally right, if you could. And you know, you can build a marketing operation that brings, you know, qualified B to B leads to the sales team and get some more customers. Do you think that's worth $15,000 a month? Yeah, I do good, because the first sale is really to yourself. That's why we start with value, and that's why we don't start with like, deliverables or hours, or anything like that, right? And then you can take it to him, and going back to creating this proposal, if you use the proposal template that is in module six, you'll see that we really do start with the value. And then, of course, you you talk about a little, you know, the scope, but the scope isn't necessarily like the things that he's told you he wants. The way we're approaching this is, you know, you are the expert at solving your prospects problems, so the scope is what you know to be necessary to achieve this goal. This is so helpful,

Leah Neaderthal 18:03

more advice about getting out of your head and not negotiating against yourself right after this.

Speaker 1 18:09

So what's coming up for you right now? I guess I've been too inside my head about this. What does that look like? I don't know. I've just been talking myself into and out of things without ever talking to him about it. Or, do you know what I mean? Like, you're just helping me really directly define this, which I appreciate. Yeah, so the scope is what I know to be necessary. Like, I've just been thinking about, like, how do I scope this out when I know, you know, the first month it'll be totally different from, you know, it'll be establishing and building foundation, and the second month we'll be executing on it, you know. And I'm like, how do you put all of that in a proposal? I didn't look ahead to see that there was a proposal template in module six, so that makes me happy. Yeah. Well, even though we're not there yet. The reason why the content isn't locked down is because a lot of people do end up jumping ahead to that module to just sort of binge watch it so they can make a proposal, you know? And I think that the mindset shift, well, there are two that it's necessary to start doing this work and charging as much is. The first is you're the expert at solving your prospects problems. You know, I mentioned that briefly, but we're going from the position of sort of order takers and doers, you know, you tell me what you want done, and I will do it. And here's the price for that, right, versus coming in as a as an expert and somebody who can lead the client and is confident in the ways that they can achieve the client's goals, right? That's the first mindset shift. The second is being able to have these conversations with your clients, because otherwise you're sitting there doing what I call negotiating against yourself. Mm. Know it should cost this. No, there's no way he'll pay that. Well, I'll just sort of knock it down to here. Well, how can I possibly ask for this? That's like a transcript of my internal dialog. I know that dialog so well. I know that dialog so well, because I used to do it, yeah, you know, and so not negotiating against yourself, and really putting yourself in the position of, I know how to solve these problems, and here's what it takes. And when I do these things, it creates this value, and that value has a price. Can I ask you something completely tactical, or actually, maybe it's not when you or when your clients present proposals. Just how do you do it? Do you have a meeting where you talk about it and then send the proposal over? That's probably the way to do it right. Just kind of talk it over and then send the proposal via email after Yeah, but it's a little different than how you might be thinking about it. Okay, so how it normally, you know, happens in the consulting world or freelancing world is you have a conversation about scope, and then everybody goes away and you put together a proposal, and you sort of come up with the price, and then you sort of lob it over the fence right, and sit there essentially with fingers crossed, hoping that they say yes. The way I like to do it in my methodology takes away a lot of that sort of finger crossing and holding your breath, because writing a great proposal actually starts in a sales conversation, the discovery conversations, where you can ask questions about the value that they really want out of this work, and, you know, some other probing questions to really uncover that. But another thing you do in the discovery call is you talk price and doing a lot of uncovering, you can quickly sort of think through, all right, what might be necessary to do this work. And then you can say, all right, well, based on that, this type of work would start at x, right? Is that what you were expecting, not expecting, whatever. What that does? It means that, first of all, if they're like, oh my god, that is way too expensive, then they're not your client. They never were your client, even before this call, right? If you're not in the same ballpark on price, but if you're in the ballpark and they say, yes, great, then you move forward. You can create a proposal. And if they say, that's not what I was expecting, then that gives you great data. You can have a conversation. Okay? Well, tell me about what you had in mind, right? So that when you create a proposal, you know, the proposal is a summary of what's already been agreed on, and then you can send it via email. You can send it via document signing tool that sort of also depends on how your clients work. You know, if you are working with, you know, a small or medium sized business, and the person that you're working with also has the authority to sign the proposal and pay it or, you know, route it to finance or whatever. That's one thing. If you're working with a really complex organization and the person that you're talking to, or even the conversation that you have next to discuss their proposal, they still wouldn't be able to sign it, you know, and like, DocuSign or whatever. Then you wouldn't approach it like that, right? You would sort of work within the infrastructure inside the client, right? But, you know, once you have this proposal that everybody's sort of already agreed on, then you send it over, you can have a conversation to discuss it. You know, it actually all falls out of the infrastructure inside. You know, how these proposals get approved inside the client, right? Is it something they can say yes to immediately? Is it something that you need to have a conversation about? Is it something that you need to march you need to marshal other people you know and help them sort of navigate their own process? Does that make sense? So have I answered that question that Leah sort of went off on a tangent? No, you absolutely did. All right. So how are you feeling right now? Better, calmer, yeah. So I think my next step is to set up another meeting with him and just talk through, ask the probing questions, uncover or reiterate what I already know, and then toss a number out. I've been taking good notes, so I think I'm going to do that. I'm going to practice a couple times. Okay, my first sale, like, I'm nervous.

Leah Neaderthal 24:22

I'm just you can do it. There's a lot working in your favor. He already knows you're good. Yeah, he already knows you can do the work. He has commitment bias. You know that there's tremendous upside of this work, and you can attach it to the thing that he actually really wants, right, the underlying value that he needs,

Speaker 1 24:42

you know, and you're the expert, yeah, and when I sign him, and I know, I know, I'll be working with him in some capacity, I'm excited about the foundation it builds for a consulting business. I'm excited about that this is going to be awesome. Mm. And you know how to lead the client, right? That's what we learned last week. So think through. All right, what if on this call, he says, Yeah, let's do it. Think through what your next step is. How can you make it easy for him? Yep, all right. Leah, what else do you do besides coaching for sales and LinkedIn. Do you do? Like, just straight up executive coaching, like one on one coaching, yeah, yeah. I take on a couple of one on one coaching clients at a time. Is that something that you think you might benefit from, maybe in the future? I'm always on a self improvement process, yeah,

Leah Neaderthal 25:41

personal development is my hobby. Yeah.

Speaker 1 25:46

Well, as you're going through sign, do you have this call with me? You have another call with me, and then if you want more of that, we can schedule a power hour or, you know, there are things I don't really market, but we can just do, like a an hour long call with some additional sort of access after that, so there are options if you want more.

Leah Neaderthal 26:06

Yeah. All right, awesome. Thank you. I really appreciate this. Yeah, of course, you're going to do great, and be sure to tell us how it goes. I will. Thanks. Leah, have a great day. You too. All right, bye, bye. All right, so let's talk about it. And of course, if you know a woman running a consulting business who would benefit from hearing this episode, I hope you'll share it with her. So there are a lot of threads we can sort of pull on here, but I want to share one lesson from this episode that you can apply to your business right now. And I want to start with something that came up in this conversation that I think is actually really worth naming, when it comes to working with companies as our clients, a lot of us, and maybe this is you, a lot of us, have been on the other side of the table. You've been the one hiring consultants, or part of a team hiring consultants. So you've been in those meetings, and you've seen the proposals like you've been on the client side, and when you start running your own consulting business, there's this assumption almost like, Well, yeah, I know how this works, like, I've been the one to hire consultants, but when you get to the other side, on the consulting side, you realize it's a completely different ball game, because when you were the one doing the hiring, you never saw what it actually took To get hired. All you saw on the client side was that the proposal, you know, landed on your desk and you evaluated whether it was the right fit. So you thought you knew what selling consulting work looked like, but you only ever saw it from one angle. You didn't see the head trash that can come up on the other side as somebody tries to get the work sold in. And that's what makes this so hard, and that's what makes what my client was doing in this conversation so understandable, because she's smart, she's experienced. She's been in rooms like this her whole career, and she had this incredible amount of head trash, and she was still negotiating against herself. So the lesson I want you to take from this is stop negotiating against yourself, like put the number down, write it down, and then stop. Because when you have that internal dialog with yourself, when you negotiate against yourself, you literally take money out of your pocket before the client even gets a chance to respond. And in the academy, we always say it's the client's job to negotiate against you. It's not your job to negotiate against yourself. And I think we have to sort of acknowledge that this is actually so much bigger than just pricing. We negotiate against ourselves all the time in all sorts of ways. You know, you have a great idea for a LinkedIn post, and you get halfway through writing it, and that voice in your head says, Why would anyone want to hear about this? And you think to yourself, well, I don't want to annoy them, or you think you should reach out to someone, and then that voice in your head says, why would they even want to hear from me? All of that, it's all the same thing, like we're so well practiced at anticipating rejection that we reject ourselves first. And it can feel like maybe self protection, but it's actually self sabotage. So I want to leave you with two questions to sit with this week. The first one is, where are you negotiating against yourself right now? Is it in a price you've already talked yourself out of? Is it in a proposal you haven't sent or a post you haven't published? And the second question is that worst case scenario you have in your head about what's going to happen when you do the thing, what if it didn't happen like that? What if it actually went fine? Because here's the thing, your clients, your audience, they might surprise you, and they usually do all right. So I'd love to hear what landed for you in this episode. If you have a second, take your biggest aha and post about it on LinkedIn and tag me. I'd love to know what resonated with you and give you a signal boost. All right. So thanks so much for listening, and I'll see you next time.

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