Get Paid to Pitch Your Prospects

Have you ever been in the situation where you put all this work up front for a potential client, figured out exactly what they needed, came up with a perfect plan, presented it to them, it could have really solved their problems, and then they didn’t move forward? All that time, energy, and effort tied up in a presentation, and it was all for nothing.

If you’ve found yourself in that position, let me show you how I was able to consistently charge $7,000 for what I called the Deep Dive Discovery, where my clients paid for the work I did upfront before I actually pitched them what they ultimately wanted.

What Is a Deep Dive Discovery?

A discovery is simply when you’re having a conversation with a client and you’re trying to determine what it is they need. I learned something called the CES Interaction Model. With this model, the more interactions you have with somebody, the more opportunity they have to know, like, and trust you.

This is why I like the challenge framework so much. It’s like a five-day experience where you walk people through a particular journey. They see results during those five days, have all these different touch points with you, and get to know, like, and trust you. When you’re trying to sell to somebody, there’s no substitution for someone knowing, liking, and trusting you.

The Introductory Calls

So how do you get somebody to know, like, and trust you in order to pitch them a $7,000 deal? Well, obviously it depends on what you’re doing. If what you actually offer is a $1,000 solution, like spinning up a logo, you’re not going to be able to do a $7,000 discovery for that. My price ranges went anywhere from $50,000 to $150,000 or $200,000.

The way it worked was I’d have a couple of introductory calls. In the first call, usually they contacted me, and I’d get to know who they were and what they were after. Usually they thought it was simple: “I just need an app that does X” or “I just need a website that does Y.” But things are never just that simple.

I was able to ask questions in that first call to help them understand I knew what I was talking about, that I was an expert in this field, and that I’d been thinking about these problems for years while they had just started on this journey. The questions I was asking made them realize, “Oh, this guy knows what he’s talking about.”

When you ask questions, it requires the prospect to actually think. They have to stop and consider what you said, and that triggers something like, “Oh, I didn’t think about that.” Now, the whole point isn’t to ask questions just to appear smart. That’s not the goal here. It’s just a happy byproduct of the process.

The real reasons you’re asking questions are twofold. First, you’re trying to determine if this client is a good fit for you. Second, it’s a way for the client to evaluate you as well. You’re finding out if this is somebody you actually want to work with. Does the idea have validity? If you take this project on, are you going to be able to give them the results they’re after?

Don’t Be Afraid to Talk About Budget Early

Don’t be afraid to talk about budget earlier rather than later. They always want a ballpark, and the whole point of the discovery process is that the project is complex and you can’t give a hard price. If they push back and say, “Yeah, but this is just a simple thing,” you can give them plenty of examples from the past where a client said the same thing, and once you got into it, there were 20 other things they needed that they hadn’t mentioned.

Whenever I tried to shortcut the process and help a prospect by skipping the Deep Dive Discovery, it always cost the client more in the long run. Always. Because you don’t know what you don’t know, and the more time you spend upfront to figure things out, the better off you are.

Setting Up the Follow-Up

In these first free calls, it’s all about asking questions and getting a feel for things. I’ll usually ask for something as a follow-up for the second call. “Let’s meet in two days and hash this out a little more. If you’ll give me this information and that information, we can dig deeper.”

This lets you determine if they’re going to follow through, if they’re going to respect the way you work and what you ask for. If they don’t, it can be a red flag that maybe this isn’t a person you want to work with. Or maybe it is, but you just have to factor in that they may be delayed in responding and build that into the process.

I usually try to keep the introductory calls to two, maybe three. I don’t go beyond that because now I’m providing all this work for free. I don’t mind having conversations with people and providing value. I’ve done that plenty of times without knowing somebody was going to take the next step. But what you don’t want is to spend 40 to 80 hours on some proposal that has pretty much zero chance of turning into a deal. You spend a full work week or two full work weeks working on something, not helping existing clients, not trying to get other clients, and not getting paid. You won’t stay in business very long if you do that.

Pitching the Deep Dive Discovery

The conversation usually comes around when they start asking how much the project is going to cost. You can bring it up before they do if you like, but it usually goes something like: “I can’t tell you exactly how much this is going to be. I can maybe give you a ballpark range, but even then it’s going to be really flimsy, because my process is to do a Deep Dive Discovery.”

“In this Deep Dive Discovery, I ask you lots of questions and get intimately familiar with what you’re trying to do. Through this process, I’ll end up asking questions you never thought of, and we’ll catch things early rather than late. When it comes to custom software development, the longer you wait to change something, the more expensive it is. So the sooner you know about a new feature or a particular way you want something done, the cheaper it is overall.”

That’s the big selling point for getting the client to agree to a paid discovery. You can adjust this for whatever you deliver and the pain points of changing things later in the process.

Pricing the Discovery

I typically priced the Deep Dive Discovery at around 10% of what my normal projects were. My normal projects were around $70,000, give or take. This also served as a way to see if the prospect was serious. If you have a $70,000 project that’s going to take multiple months of your life, you want to make sure the client can actually pay.

The principle is this: determine what problems people have, figure out the value of solving that problem, and then create an offer that’s about 10 times less than that value so it’s a no-brainer for them. They spend $1,000 but get $10,000 in return. That’s a good deal. Figure out what value you can provide, charge 10% of that, and then charge 10% of that for your actual paid discovery.

How the Deep Dive Discovery Works

During the actual Deep Dive Discovery, you’ll typically have multiple calls. I’d meet twice a week for three or four weeks, a couple hours at a time. You may not need to do that depending on what you’re a consultant in, but that was my approach.

For payment, I’d ask for half upfront and half when I delivered the project plan.

I’d also let them know that completing the discovery didn’t guarantee I would take on the project. This planted a seed of scarcity in their mind. They’d think, “Well, I’d like you to do it,” which strengthened the relationship.

At the end, they’d have a full-fledged project plan they could take and shop around to other agencies if they wanted. And I’d already told them upfront, “I’m a Lamborghini dealership, not an Oldsmobile dealership,” so they knew I might charge more than others.

I also provided a statement of work listing out exactly what was included and what was not. In custom software development, there are always ideas like, “Maybe we want to do this in the future, maybe we want to do that.” Over time it can get confusing in the prospect’s mind what’s actually included. So I’d explicitly call out: this is Phase One, this is Phase Two. Phase Two might be paid for later, or we’d tackle it at a later date. For those additional phases, depending on what they involved, I might or might not do a full Deep Dive Discovery again.

The Trust-Building Effect

Here’s what makes this so powerful. All these interaction points build trust on both sides. You get to see how they work: Are they prompt? Do they give you what you ask for? Are they habitually late getting back to you? Are they habitually late to the call in the first place? And they get to see how you work. When you say you’re going to have something for them by the next meeting, you deliver. When you go research something and come back with suggestions, you follow through.

You can’t force trust and you can’t rush trust. Trust takes time. You have to spend time with that person. In the virtual world, doing a challenge is a great way to build that trust. In a B2B world, you’ll typically have video calls, and I always did these on video. If you’re not in the physical room with somebody, having a Zoom or Google Meet is extremely beneficial because they can see your eyes and see that you’re excited about the project. It builds trust quicker.

By the end of the Deep Dive Discovery, the prospect is thinking: “This consultant gets me. He’s asked me questions I didn’t know to ask. I don’t really trust anybody else to go through this process with me. And I’ve already spent a decent amount of time explaining everything. I don’t want to waste that.”

Usually your biggest competition isn’t some other agency. It’s the prospect just doing the status quo, continuing to do what they’ve always done. That’s why it’s important during the Deep Dive Discovery to question why they want this in the first place. What’s the reason? Why do they want to create this app or this site? Understanding their “why” helps you present a compelling case later.

The Bottom Line

You might think it’s a hard sell to get $7,000 after just a couple of introductory meetings, but it’s actually not that hard when you’ve demonstrated real expertise and built genuine rapport.

This one change of actually charging for the discovery work upfront transformed my business tremendously. I highly recommend you incorporate something like this in your consulting practice.

There’s no strategic advantage to being the second cheapest. If you can’t be the cheapest, there’s no advantage to being second cheapest. But there are plenty of advantages to being the most expensive. If you’re the cheapest, nobody’s going to believe you’re the best. And if you’re the best, nobody’s going to expect you to be the cheapest.

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