Ep 192: Stop Calling It A Discovery Session [LIVE]

Uncut Summer Kickoff

0:00

Hey, hey, hey. This is Sarah Nawa Block and you are listening to Tiny Marketing. This is the Uncut Summer series where you are getting the raw, unfiltered, unedited recordings from our interviews, webinars, and workshops. So sit back, relax, and enjoy the ridiculousness Hello. So she charged $497. The prospect paid it, did the work, and came back just two weeks later to a s- to sign a $30,000 engagement without a single just circling back or any of those, you know, those ghosting, running after those clients' emails in between. Today, I'm gonna show you exactly how she sold them, why it worked, and how you can build the same door into your own practice. Stay until the end. I'm giving you five question template to sketch out yours before we close up. Now, before I get into everything, please head to the comments and say hi wherever you're watching this. I can see it. So say hi, tell me where you're from and what you do. Introduce yourself to the audience so you guys can get to know each other a little bit better. So here's what we're covering today. The three jobs a real gateway offer has to do, and most consultants only actually nail one of those. Why calling yours a discovery session is costing you clients, and a five question template you can fill in before we wrap up. Bring a blank doc. You're going to use it. And if we have time in the end, 'cause I know this isn't scheduled for very long, I'm going to hop into the comments and pull up your gateway offer ideas and help you refine them live. So make sure to stay to the end. That's happening. Okay. Let me check my comments real quick Hello. Okay, so make sure you say hi. I'm not talking to a, a, a camera right now, and I can see you're here. Okay,

The $497 To $30K Story

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so let's get into it. I am Sarah Nawa Block. If you're new to me, I run Tiny Marketing, and I work exclusively with solo consultants and fractional executives who are done with the feast or famine cycle, and they want a pipeline that runs without a sales team. You started your business for a reason. You didn't want to have, one, the, the ceiling of your income cap, but you also didn't wanna have that same, like, traditional responsibility that you had when you were working corporate. That wasn't for you, so you don't want to have to bring in more people. I'm working with solo consultants that want to build booked-out businesses that... like, with just them, without having to bring on a team and scale in that kind of way. We learn different ways to scale around here. The gateway offer, though, is the first mission in every engagement I do with clients because it's where the bottleneck actually lives. When a client comes to me, or even just someone in my DMs, and they're talking about they have a closing problem, like their sales aren't closing, they're getting ghosted on proposals, or the sales cycle is just taking forever, 90% of the time, the problem is there is no gateway offer. Instead, they're trying to sell them into that $30,000 engagement before they've built the rapport needed in order to actually close it. People just don't trust you yet, and that's normal. It's okay. This fixes that. If you wanna go deeper after today, I run a session called the Booked Out Blueprint. It's $750, and it maps your exact path from wherever you are right now to a full pipeline. So you can use that QR code in the corner to apply for that, but that's, that's an option. For now, let's just get into this Okay. Quick question before we dive in. Right now, when someone asks you how they can learn more or work with you, what do you send them? What's the first thing that you send someone when they raise their hand and signal that they are interested in working with you? Drop it in the comments. I'm looking, and this is streaming right now on YouTube and LinkedIn. I can see both of your comments from, from where I am. Um, so are you sending them a link or a scheduling caller thing, like, so they can schedule a call with them? Are you sending a link to a sales page? Are you sending them a proposal, a sales deck? Whatever it is, I'm gonna read out a few of those as we go. But share, what is the first thing that you do when someone signals that they're interested in working with you? Let's go into there. All right, we've got some highs Hey from Cleveland. Hi, Patrice Cheers from Colorado. Um, on L- by the way, on LinkedIn I can't see who is talking, but I can see your comments. Okay, so we have a one-pager is the first thing that they send them. Let's see. Lindsay asks them qualifying questions and d- don't send them something. Um, I'm curious, are you asking them those qualifying questions in the DMs, or are you s- asking them, or are you h- getting them to book a call with you? I'm curious on that one. We have a scheduling link. Okay, awesome. Um, good. So the fir- I'll, I'll tell you what I do at the very end.

The Three Jobs Of A Gateway

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But, um, let's get into the first thing. So there are three jobs that a gateway offer has. The problem that most consultants are dealing with is they think a gateway offer is just a discount on a larger service, or like a broken-off piece of a larger service, or a discovery call with some sort of output at the end, and it's not any of those things. Here's what a gateway actually is. It charges for access. So that's the biggest mistake that I see people make, is they offer it for free. Charge for access. And honestly, I can tell you that I have tested a lot of different things. If you know me, you know I love an experiment And one thing that I did experiment with is different price points for it, and then free. And I can tell you that if you charge within a certain amount, and I'll get into that, um, of your main offer, you're more likely to close. If you charge too little, you are less likely to close. You're bringing in people that are less likely to want to move forward to that upgraded offer. So that is the first thing I want you to do, is charge for access, even if it's small. Um, it kind of self... It helps serious buyers self-select into the process. Two, it needs to deliver real results, something they feel and they remember, and not just a checklist. So this is not a power hour. This is an outcome-based offer that's contained within a two-week period. That's how a gateway offer works. So two, it delivers real results. You're charging for this. Someone needs to be able to take what you give them and apply it on their own if they choose to. That needs to be an option for them. And three, it creates earned trust. They experience how you think before they commit to a five-figure contract, and that's huge. On that point, something that I see a lot of consultants do is they're afraid to ask stakeholders to join in on that interview that's part of a gateway offer. They're like, "Oh, they're too busy," or, "It's too hard to coordinate." But you need to include all of the stakeholders that are, are involved in that buying process. And some of you might be like, "Mm-mm, that's not gonna work," but trust me, I, when I was selling B2B, which I ended only last year, I always sold the gateway offers first, and I always brought in every stakeholder, and that is how you get buy-in from the entire committee of people who need to say yes because they all get to experience what it's like to work with you, and at the same time, their input is included in your output. You're interviewing a team of people, and they get to be heard for the first time in probably forever on the specific topic that you are an expert on. So th- their insights being pulled into what you produce matters a lot. They're gonna see themselves in it, and they're gonna have a lot more buy-in when it's time to upgrade to that 30K, 40K, 50K contract Okay.

Pricing For Access And Seriousness

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Back to the CFO I was talking about at the beginning. So her $497 offer was a 90-minute cash flow diagnostic. She interviewed the team, and, um, she didn't just have the conversation though. A gateway offer is more than just an interview. There's a deliverable at the end. So the prospect walked away with a documented gap analysis, and two weeks later they signed. She didn't have to do a pitch call. She didn't have to do a proposal. You don't have to do proposals with a gateway offer, and she... Because that client had already experienced the way she thinks and got a taste of what she could do, and she also was able to visualize the outcome of working with her in that upgraded offer because it broke down exactly what they're gonna work on and what their goals were, and a roadmap to be able to achieve those goals. That is how you get people to buy in. I'm gonna check the comments real fast. Hi, guys. Um, so we have... Hi, Nick. We get, um... I ask them the questions before I send the calendar link. Yeah, smart. Qualify them before you actually have to commit to a time on a calendar. Hi, Nick. Okay, I'm gonna keep going. I just wanted to say hi real quick and check in with you. Um, next. Why discovery session kills the sale. Do not ever call this a discovery session, please. There's a naming problem. Discovery session sounds free, and it sounds internal. It sounds like it's for you, and it sounds like something any consultant would offer with their, with their bigger offer. So it doesn't signal a product or an outcome. It signals a pitch. So don't ever use the phrase discovery in your gateway offer positioning The name has to show that there's an outcome at the end of it. This is a paid product that you're offering, and they need to be able to take it, walk away, and do it on their own if they choose to. But I'm telling you right here and now, 90% of the time they won't because they get too busy, they don't have the time, and you already understand their organization. You are the one who mapped out the strategy to get the result that they wanted. Why would they work with anyone but you? They're gonna go with you if they don't have the resources in-house. So it needs to be able to be completed on their own if they want. There needs to be an outcome at the end. Um, so think like cash flow diagnostic is going to beat finance discovery session, something like that It also, your name also needs to signal a deliverable.

Earned Trust With Stakeholders

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So they should be able to get a picture of what they're going to get in the end. What is the outcome that they are going to get at the end? And you want to use your client's language instead of industry jargon when you're positioning your gateway offer. If a smart non-expert can't under- like, read your title of your gateway offer and understand what they get at the end, you need to rename it. It needs to be super clear to someone who has no understanding of your expertise. Use their language. And one little trick that I use to be able to do that is, um, I take the transcripts from my sales calls, and I drop it into my AI tool, and I say, "What language did they use to describe their problems?" And that gives me a whole lot of keywords that can help me with the naming of my gateway offers. I do the same thing for my clients within Booked Out in Six. Because you're getting one-on-one access to me, you DM me, and I'm figuring it out for you. I'm like, "Okay, let's figure this out. Get your transcripts. Send them over." Okay. So let's give some examples of what this can look like. A branding consultant. You would want to sell, um, a brand clarity audit, something like $497. It reveals the visual, the messaging gaps before a full rebrand. There's an example of one. A financial advisor might have a retirement gap analysis that maps out where they are now versus where they need to be. A tech consultant might have a systems friction review, where they identify the three biggest operational bottlenecks within your tech system. So I am curious What is... Does anybody here who's in the room right now have a gateway offer already? Drop it in the chat because I'm going to pull it up in a little bit. So I would love to hear what your current gateway offer is and, um, what the positioning is on it. So how do you describe it to your client and the people that are raising their hand and saying, "I wanna work with you"? Drop it in there. I'm gonna get into it in a second. Okay. Now let's talk about the five question template All right, this is, this is where you want that blank doc that I was talking about. We're gonna sketch out your gateway offer if you don't have one or you wanna refine it now, right now in the next five minutes. Okay. Ready? Okay. What's one question that your best clients asked before they hired you? That is probably what your offer is. So what is one question your best clients ask before they hire you? What's the specific deliverable they'd have at the end of working with you within this gateway offer? So you're thinking about the question that they have before they hire you. What deliverable could you honestly produce within a two-week f- time frame

Why “Discovery Session” Loses Clients

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that would help them have a better understanding of how to solve that problem? What... And they need to be able to, like, hold it. It needs to be something they can open. I always document mine. Next. What price signals seriousness without being a barrier? So most consultants land somewhere between, like, $450 and 995. I call it a why not price. That's where you wanna land, a why not price. It's low enough that people will say, "Why not? I might as well try it." But it's high enough that it signals that they can afford your larger offer. So earlier when I said I'll get into my specific advice on this, here it is. I recommend that you charge between 10 and 25% of your main offer price for your gateway offer. It's high enough that it will deter people who wouldn't be interested in moving forward to your upgraded offer. Also, one thing to consider if you are selling B2B is what is the P card limits, the pay card limits of the people who would be most likely building the list of who to hire internally? Um, so like when I was working corporate, I had like a $5,000 limit that I was allowed to say yes to without having to get, you know, the guy above me to say yes. So think about that. What are your ideal clients, the person who brings you in, so more like the influencer of the buyer decision, what limits do they have to say yes to? What is the name? You want to make it outcome first, not activity first. So you don't wanna call it a discovery call or a strategy call. It's the outcome. What are they gonna get at the end? And the last question: What's the natural next step someone would take after buying this? Because you want to make sure to have that at the end. Like, what are your next steps? How do you take this roadmap, this blueprint, this strategy that I built you and bring it to life? So you need to have a moving forward section or a next step section that explains what does it look like for you to execute on that project that you just laid out for them. Okay. I would love for you to put these in the chat right now, and I'm gonna start pulling them up to go through it. Let's see. Oh, this was actually one of my old managers when I was working corporate. Hi, Rick. So keep in mind there's a limit, and many companies require two signatures. Need to sell to more than one person, even with a lower limit. Okay. Um, yeah, sometimes you do. It depends on the company. So if that's the case, and you're... Hi, and you are one of... And you're selling to that kind of company that's a little bit larger, it needs at least two signatures, have a... You're right. You're a prior manager, not an old manager. Um, you will need to have sales enablement content ready to sell it internally. So you might wanna have a slide deck ready that explains what your gateway offer is. Okay, Lindsay, "My low-cost gateway offer is a content narrative diagnostic for B2B marketing leaders. It's a 360 view of all gaps and inconsistencies related to their online present, presence, plus recommendations on next steps." Awesome. Yeah, that is perfect. Hold on. Let me see. Um, can you drop the name of it in here? But I think that the value is there, and there's definitely an outcome in there. Like, these are the gaps, these are the inconsistencies with your online presence,

Clear Outcome Names And Examples

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and this is how you can fix it. So I think this is a really solid one Okay All right, I will go back to my question. It looks like that was the only one that was dropped. Um Okay. So feel free to drop yours in there, and what I'm gonna do after this, after this live is I'm gonna drop those five questions into the description of this video so you can go back and you can, um, pull those questions and start building it out. But that's a solid place to start is go through those five questions so you can start building out an outcome-based gateway offer that's 10 to 25% of the cost of your main offer so that you can build trust and build a foundation for what it would look like to work with you and solve their problem. I told you earlier that I experiment a lot. So I have tried with, like, repeat clients to skip this process before, and the projects always ended up coming out a little bit clunky. I didn't have the same buy-in that I had when I did a gateway offer first because we built out what the foundation of the solution would look like together in that gateway offer. They gave me the sign on, like, "Yes. I approve. I love this idea." And then I was able to deliver the main offer, the upgraded offer, with little to no revisions. So this helps streamline that piece of it, too. Your scope creep will go away. So I didn't even talk about that, but gateway offers will eliminate the ghost of proposals and the scope creep because you have both signed on and agreed to a specific roadmap on how to solve the problem So what we just did, that five-question sketch, that's mission one in the Booked Out framework. It's the first thing that I map with every single client I work with, because nothing else in the pipeline works if this piece is missing. It's the very first thing that I work with everybody on to build. If you want to take what you sketched today with those five questions and actually build it out, the Booked Out Blueprint is the right next step. It's the s- it's $750, and I build a roadmap for you on how to create that gateway offer, but

The Five-Question Gateway Template

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also how to sell it, how to build your sales pipeline, what marketing you need to do later. How do you build activation events that get a lot of people in the door at one time? And how do you scale once you are booked out? That is what we build out. We do it in an hour. It's, it's a roadmap. It's roughly... I don't know. Some of you in here I know have gotten a book- a Booked Out Blueprint before, so you know what they can do sometimes. They're thorough. And the best thing is, a Booked Out Blueprint is credited toward any program that you join within seven days of having it. So the QR code right in the corner, you can apply. That doesn't commit you to actually signing up for the Booked Out Blueprint. It just signals that you are, and if approved, I'll send you the link to sign up for it. And if you're not ready today, that is fine. Save this replay. Finish your five questions. I will add them to the description, so you could just read them too. And share it with a peer who needs it. So I will be back here live streaming in two weeks. Thank you so much for joining me today. And if you haven't... Ooh, okay. I'm being brave. I'm pulling up one more question before I close this out Oh, okay. So I have a couple questions. So I will stay for, like, four more minutes. I have a call in a little bit. Um, okay, so your gateway offer is called Content and Narrative Diagnostic for B2B se- CMOs. Okay. I would lean directly into the outcome of it. Like, it's more of a gap analysis, and it's more around their online presence. So what would fixing that do for them? I think if you tweaked the name, 'cause I see right here that you... It hasn't sold yet, um, but it's basically a version of what I've been doing for years. I think a little tweak in the name could be helpful, and I'm super curious about how you're positioning it. Like, what is your positioning statement? One easy thing that you can do to sell more gateway offers is to have it always passively on, like your sales game is always on passively by adding in a one-liner, like who you work with, the gateway offer, what the outcome is, and how they can connect with you in order to book it. Have that at the bottom of every single LinkedIn post that you have, have that in your bios in the niche communities that you're a part of, have it in your email signature line in Gmail, in your one-to-one emails, have it in a section of your email marketing. Have it everywhere, so passively people are always thinking about it. Okay, let's see here. What if 10 to 25% is more expensive than a why not price? Your 30K example would be 3K. Can you repeat that common price range? Yeah, so I am tip... So when I say 30K contract, I'm thinking it's over a period of time instead of 30K straight up. So I would say 10 to 25% of the first installment would be a good range. I was saying that I usually see people land around 995 on their price, but I have seen up to 3,500.

Passive Selling Placement And Q&A

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So with that, I would say look at, like, the first month of what it would cost to work with you, or the first installment of a project. Do 20... 10 to 25% of that cost if it's a little high. 'Cause, like, my contracts were always around, like, when I was working... When I was selling into B2Bs, between, like, $30,000 and $60,000, but I did 10 and t- 10 to 25% of the first installment of that Okay. Um, if anybody has any other questions, drop them now. Otherwise, thank you again for joining me. You can boop, go right there to the QR code if you want to apply for a Booked Out Blueprint. And other than that, I will see you in two weeks. I will be back here talking about how to sell more to B2B consultants. All right. Thank you, guys If you enjoyed this episode, please, please, please remember to subscribe wherever you listen to podcasts and rate and review. But most importantly, tell your friends. Share this episode with a friend so other people know about Tiny Marketing and our Uncut Summer series. I will see you next week with another great one