Stephen Houraghan here at BrandMasterAcademy.com and in this video you're going to learn how to
sell brand strategy to your prospects in a way that will make them feel grateful that
they met you now when I first started to provide brand strategy services to my clients one of the
first questions that I asked myself was how am I going to sell this to my clients I was already
struggling with some clients squeezing me on price for logo designs brochure designs and
you know telling me they could go and get it done cheaper online so I now had the trouble
of providing them with a service that was a lot more expensive than what I was providing before so
I had to learn quickly how to sell that to my clients how was I going to do this
how is it going to get them to pay up to five times more for this new service that I was
providing when I was struggling to get them to pay for the services that I was previously providing
so a lot of questions came up during this initial phase when I started to sell brand strategy and
some of those questions included how do I know if my client is interested in brand strategy
how do I know if they have a budget for it how do I introduce brand strategy into the conversation
how do I show the value of brand strategy how do I convince them that I'm a branding specialist
why would they listen to my advice in the first place how do I convince them without being salesy
and how do I convert them into a high paying client so I needed a way to answer these questions
and I didn't have anyone to call on to ask so what I did was I put myself outside my comfort
zone and I just tried I tried different tactics different techniques with my clients and the more
I did the more I learned and with that knowledge I began to build my own process and my own framework
and Ihat's what I want to teach you in this video step number one position yourself as a specialist
now your client is not an expert your prospect is not an expert and it's not their fault either
they haven't been raised on what branding is they haven't been classically trained on what branding
is and it's your job to fill in the missing pieces if they come to you looking for logo designs and
brochure designs it's up to you to tell them that they need more than that it's up to you
to educate them on what it is they need now if you continue to answer the call to how much is a logo
or how much is a website and you continue to take jobs like that well then you're not positioning
yourself as a branding specialist you're not position yourself as an expert within branding
you're positioning yourself as a generalist designer now in order to break the mold there
you need to change your messaging change the messaging on your website change the messaging in
the conversations that you have with your clients and over time start turning down some of those
how much for a logo jobs how much for a website job start turning them down it's not easy in the
beginning but the more you do the more you turn down those jobs the more time you'll have on your
hands to reposition yourself as a specialist step number two ask business related questions
now it's not uncommon for entrepreneurs and business owners when they start to talk branding
to jump straight into visuals they'll tell you the style of the logo that they like the color
that they want to use types of brands that they like and want to replicate or want to copy but
the more you talk about the visuals of the brand the less you're going to talk about strategy so
you need to take control of that conversation and you need to ask business related questions and
keep the conversation higher end the more you're talking about business related questions the more
it's in their mind that you're here to help their business not just to provide them
with visuals so keep the conversations high level about their business and examples of
questions that you could ask here include so tell me a little bit about your business
what's your experience within the industry do you deal directly with customers and do you have any
partners step number three evoke aspirations and ambitions now the business related questions will
put you on the right path to discuss strategy with them but you're not ready yet you want to
continue to build that rapport and a great way to do that is to get them talking about the future
uh and the possible success of their brand their aspirations and ambitions because this
opens them up this really makes them consider the emotional investment that they have in the success
of their brand and it will make them think about the future it'll make them think about what life
looks like from a professional point of view from a personal point of view so ask those
emotion evoking questions and those ambition invoking questions and get them really thinking
about the future of the brand and that will help you to build that rapport if you're able to show
some encouragement in this phase as well and show some understanding that will really help to
build that rapport and help them to to see that you're really interested in the success of the
brand you're really interested in what they feel about the success of the brand and as i said that
will help to build that relationship step number four mirror and rephrase now we're doubling down
on the empathy here and what we're trying to do in this phase is we're trying to repeat
exactly what they've said to us using some of the exact words that they've used but also rephrasing
other parts of what they've said because if they hear what they've said to you back to them and
they hear from a different perspective as well it will confirm to them that you were listening
and that you understand exactly what they're thinking and that again doubles down on that
empathy it builds that rapport and they're gonna warm to you and they're gonna warm to the advice
that you're about to offer them step number five ask the epiphany question now if you tell somebody
what they need then you're likely to get a bit of a pushback but if you encourage somebody or
ask somebody specific questions that will let them have their own epiphany as to what they need well
then you don't need to sell them anything if they've had their own epiphany then in their
own mind they've made their own decision as to what they need so you want to ask a very specific
question that's going to help them to have their own epiphany about what they need and one of the
best questions one of the most effective questions i've found for helping your audience helping your
prospect have that epiphany is do you know exactly who your target market is and the position that
you want to take in the market if you ask that question they're not likely going to have a very
clear answer for you but they will be very much open to what you have to say about it step number
six show them the brand strategy pathway now if you try to speak with your prospect early on in
the conversation and they called you looking for a logo and you dived right into what brand strategy
is then you will probably get some pushback they wouldn't likely be open to the conversation they'd
probably tell you that they don't need what you're selling and if you can't do what they're looking
for they'll go and get it done elsewhere but you've done a lot of groundwork to this point
and the conversation is completely different now you've built that rapport you've asked those
business questions you've shown them that you're more than just a designer you have a high level of
expertise you have a high level of understanding you've shown that empathy you've shown that
encouragement and you've built that report so now they're open to hearing what you've had to say
you've earned that trust you've earned the right to have that conversation so from here it's all
about education it's all about educating them on exactly what brand strategy is and if you do this
well enough then they're going to understand the value of brand strategy and they're going to have
another epiphany and that epiphany this time is going to be what i thought i needed for
my brand is not enough i need something more i need brand strategy and i need the services of
this specialist i hope you enjoyed this video and if you are selling strategy to clients and you're
struggling then use this framework and don't just use it once do it again and again and again
because you will get better it will become more natural and trust me this works guys it it just
works if you do this with your prospects and you build that rapport and you teach them about what
brand strategy is well then they're going to be a lot more open to your message and you're not going
to have to sell them anything they're going to have their own epiphany if you want to learn more
about how to build brand strategy for your clients well then head on over to BrandMasterAcademy.com
and then click start here at the top of the page but if you like this video please give
it a thumbs up hit that subscribe button and the notification bell it'll let you know when I've
got new videos coming out until next time happy branding and I will see you in the next video