Alex Berman here from Experiment27 and
this is the 4 step process for always
getting a budget. One of the most
frustrating things that you're going to
run into when you start pitching clients
or, you've probably already realized this,
is how do you make sure people have the
right budget. The most frustrating
experience is when you go for days and
days and days, maybe you have multiple
calls with somebody, draft a proposal and
you never hear from them after. Or you
hear from them like two months later and
they say hey we went with another firm
you guys were just too expensive for us. Or
a little less worse than that you
send them the proposal and they give you a
call. This happened to me before, they give you
a call they're like: 'Hey, you know we
really can't make it work for this price.'
That's the best-case scenario
here, but the disconnect is clients don't
know how much it cost
so you're shocking them when they see
the price and that's why they're having
this reaction. So in this video I'm going
to cover how to get their budgets and
how to qualify before you spend all the
time writing a proposal. Coming up!
The first thing, step number 1 is always
mention the price on the first call.
Mobile app developers don't like doing
this. You guys say that your apps are all
custom so you can't really figure out a
price which is totally not true.
I'll tell you right now. An Uber clone
you could sell for $450,000.
An e-commerce site is probably
about $250k to $350k if you want to go
all-in or for a smaller site maybe $50k.
If you want to do a
fully custom Instagram style mobile app
that's a little cheaper maybe $80k to
$90k. How did I come up with
those prices?
Well, I made them up. I've been selling
mobile apps for years. I've been
selling mobile apps for years and I kind
of know what things cost. You know even
better than I do what your agency
charges for apps. You and your
salespeople can throw out prices on the phone.
That's my main recommendation. If
you're on the phone and you say to
somebody that wants to build an Uber
clone that it costs $150,000 you'll get an
immediate reaction
from them. They'll either change their tone
and be like: 'Oh, you know, is there
anything else you can do? That
seems extremely high.' Or they'll say: 'Okay,
that sounds good. Draft a budget.'
Once that price is on the table they will,
they will either accept it or not. And
that actually brings us to the second
point. So once you say the budget, you
pause. Wait for them to say anything.
Sometimes they will, sometimes they won't.
First person to speak in a negotiation
loses - is somebody's rule. And then
you'll ask: 'Does that work?' The way that
works in practice is: 'All right! Yeah, so
I've seen Uber clones, we actually
just built a project just like this
for a different industry. You guys want
to be Uber for dog walkers, we just built
Uber for haircutters. This is a project,
there's a lot of components in it.
You've got an API, you've got a website -
front end for it, then you've got mobile
apps for both iOS and Android. So all in,
and UX and UI designs, obviously research to
make sure that this thing works. So
what I've seen this go for is about a
$150k - $200k.
Does that work for you?' And they will
either say: 'Yeah, that's about what
I was thinking.' Or they'll say: 'No, that
doesn't work.' And then you can pitch
other options. An HTML5 app or even
passing it on to one of your partners
because you're building partnerships.
Right? Passing it on to one of your
partners that will do the app for a lot
cheaper than you can.
So that's the second part. The third step
in the process is never send a proposal
without discussing the price first.
You never want your customer to see the
price in an email before you've
discussed it over the phone. And what
that means is, normally the way I get
through that is I'll tell everybody our
pricing on the first call.
That's the easiest way I found to do it.
Other agencies, they'll set a
proposal meeting before they ever
discuss the the cost and then during the
actual meeting itself, right before the
meeting they'll send an email like maybe
5 to 10 minutes before and then they
can look at the price then, when they're
already committed to meeting with you.
The reason you don't want to show the
price over an email is for
sticker shock. So basically, if you're
charging a 150 thousand for an
app. If a customer sees that and they
can't immediately say : 'Oh, that's too
expensive' or they can't ask any questions
about it which they won't be able to if
it's over email
they'll freak out and in my experience
you'll lose the meeting.
It's close to a 100% of
the time if you send a price without
ever saying it verbally first. So that's that.
And then the final step is during that
first call set a specific time for a
follow-up meeting. If they're serious
about buying from you
they've thought about their
decision-making process and they'll meet
with you again in the future.
So the way I like to transition
into this is. Ok, let's say it's on a call.
-So how 450,000 sound? -Hey, it sounds great.
-Ok, cool. What are the next steps? What do
you think we need to do? And then they'll
send, they'll say something like: 'Well, I
need to talk to my co-founder.' or ideally
if you're talking to SMBs or startups
they'll say: ''Well, we're talking to a couple
vendors this week, but we really need to
move on this. I need to get a
decision by end of week." Then you can say
something like: 'Okay, awesome. What time do
you want to meet on Thursday or Friday
to talk about this?' And they'll
either push back on this and say: 'Hey, we
don't need to meet, let's do the back and
forth over email. Send me the proposal
first.' And in the proposal
email you can send them a link
to your Calendly or they'll say: 'Yeah.
that sounds great.' And you'll be
surprised when you start doing this
how many of your customers are willing
to meet in the same week, usually
sometimes even the next day. One guy I was
just talking to a couple weeks ago said:
'Yeah, send me a proposal. Let's do this.'
And I sent him the normal bullet points
that we have with the buy link and he's
like send it as soon as possible because
I want to get it done. And I was like
okay cool do you want to meet tomorrow
then and then run through it? He said yeah it
sounds great. So you'll speed up your
sales cycle a lot doing it this way so
that's the four-step process for always
getting a budget. #1 mention the price
on the first call always. #2 Ask: Does that
work?
#3 never send a proposal without
discussing the price first and #4 set a
specific time
for follow-up meeting on that first call.
And that's it!
Let me know in the comments if you've
done something similar or if you have
any more questions when it comes to
budgets or qualifying clients. Would love
to know. Or post in the private facebook
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All right, talk to you later!