Monthly Partnership Packages (How to offer them). EP #314 - Den Lennie

Hey guys, it's Den here. And today I'm going to be talking about the idea of trying to nurture a client into the idea of a monthly partner package or you know, for want of a better description, some kind of retainer that can help you build a monthly relationship with the client and be paid regularly for work that you're doing. Well, one of my clients had been.

Approached by a client to discuss this.

And what we do on this call is we actually work through some of the parameters that we think are important so that you can maintain a good reign on the project and make sure your pricing correctly. So this is a really good opportunity for you to get an insight into how we operate inside the vba.

Last week I had a meeting with a, with an existing client who.

I.

Did a project for them and we filmed like four hours of interviews for different, different execs and everything. It was for a 50th anniversary video that I put together. So we really just used a small fraction of the footage. And they've come back to me saying, hey, we want to repurpose other topics and create other videos out of it. They're also. So that was one part of it. They're also putting together a learning platform, probably like school, but they're a financial firm so they're putting together stuff there. And then they had some other thing and basically they came to me and said, would you be open to a, like a monthly, not necessarily a retainer, but you know, like a, one of their, one of their vendors, their creative firm does points or something or. So it would be.

Repeat business. It wouldn't all be done at once. So I wouldn't be billing it all at once. It would kind of be month after month after month. Do you guys.

A know kind of what I'm talking about or have anything in place?

This was something that when I got.

Liana to build all these documents out. And so this is a very simple client retainer tracker that's in the contracts and agreements of the main training library. And essentially what she's done here is.

That's annoying.

Sheets.

It's probably a little bit like what you were saying, Caleb. Where you've got. Here's an example. There's the sheet instead. Very simple, but here's the sheet. So you've got a 10 hour package a month. It's invoiced and paid and this is the amount and you get 10 hours.

And then what you do is you then track the hours. So let's say you charged $200 an hour for shooting, editing.

Pre production, post production. I don't know anything else. You edit, editing of some description. You'd have to work out a figure. It would have to be something that would be easy to go. Well, I did two hours on this day of editing, and it's like two hours, and that's ten hours a month. So you just track the hours used, track the hours build, and there's remaining four. So that. That's one thing to kind of maybe use as a framework if you decide to go down that route. I think. I think you could.

To Kayla's point, if you did a sort of certain number of billable hours a month or units. Units of work, you'd have to just be very clear on what that looks like. And to Kayla's point, if they just didn't do anything for three months, then wanted to do all in one month, then there would have to be a notice period. It's not like on a Tuesday they can go, we didn't do any work the last three months. We want to do a $10,000 shoot tomorrow. I think if you can manage that.

Part.

It would work okay, because then really what you're doing. And this is an amazing opportunity, by the way. But, you know, this is. This was the party you filmed for free. Now come back.

No, this.

This was.

This is an existing. An existing client filmed a ton of interview footage for them, but now they just want to turn it to more stuff. And that was kind of the plan all along.

I would say that the idea of just like, you know, we'll bill you for what we do every month doesn't benefit them in any way. It's like, well, they're asking for some kind of agreement. So they've got some kind of sense of. We've got this resource that we can use every month. And you can put a rule in that says, look, you know, the hours have to be used each month, or we think ours can be carried over for one month at a time, but if they're not used by the second month, they're. They're forfeited. Right. It's like airline frequent flyer points. You don't get to hang on to them forever. It's like they're going to expire. So I think if you use that model of.

In putting yourself in their shoes and goes, how can I make it easy for them? It's like they've got this block of 12 hours a month, which is X number of hours a year. Have you sliced and dice. You literally have to Have a conversation and go look what's going to work better for you because we can make it work for either. And if they want a big block of hours that can be used at a moment's notice, then jack the price up. So it's worth your while. But you have to, I think, you know, really just to have a conversation with about, you know, the question I would ask is what's important to you for this to work really well for you?

Yeah.

And what do you believe? Where do you see this being of an advantage to you? Because I want to make sure this works for you. And I think if you always center the conversation around making sure you're asking them, what do they want, what do they need? What's going to make this really work well for them? You'll get everything you need out of that because they'll tell you everything they need and then you're diagnosing and you can go, well, okay, I think there's a couple of ways we can do this. Why don't I go away and have a think about it and come back to you with a proposal? Great. Okay, let's pick another meeting and write. So I've had a look at this and based on the fact that you want this, this, this, this and this, there's two ways I think this could work. Option one, the really expensive way is we're at, you know, we're ad hoc. We can bill all these hours up front and you can have us at any time within, you know, 72 hours notice, or a more palatable one you think they'll go for, which says, we bill you for this many hours in a package form over a 12 month contract and it's this many hours a month. These are the terms in which we work. These are the extras outside of the scope. But this will give you the ability to say, hey, we need this quick video updating for social. Like let's say you're testing a new headline on a piece of social. We can run that into the system, pump that out for you in 24 hours, sometimes faster. And then you've got that ability to really have us as kind of a virtual desk on your, in your office where people just drop stuff on us. We can get it done and we'll track that every month and let you know what's happening. We can scale up the hours if you feel it's not enough, or we can drop back the hours if you feel it's too much. But I suggest we start with like 12 hours a month or 15 or whatever number you're comfortable with. And I think the more you can ask them what they want and what they need, then the more likely you are to be have them tell you exactly what they want. And when people tell you exactly what they want, then you go away and think about how you can best serve them. And you present them with, you know, a la carte or, you know, the set menu. It's like, which one do you prefer? Or shall we. Should we make up something? Should we create a special menu for you? They're going to just feel like you're really attentive.

That's.

That's how I would probably approach it. You can. You never really go wrong.

Where people make a mistake is making assumptions and trying to second guess what someone's thinking. If you actually just ask them and say, look, can we jump on a quick call? I just want to clarify something. I'm really keen to understand exactly what you're after. You know, what, what specifically? The more specific you can ask a question like, what specific things are you looking to achieve with this? If this was to work, well, how would it look to you?

And then you're not taking any assumptions. Specificity is the secret ingredients to great sales conversations. Where people go wrong is they're in a rush to get to the number or they're in a rush to close the deal, or they're nervous, they want to get off the call, or they've got another call off the back of it and they're not the distracted. Like, the more present you can be with someone and the more specific you can ask a question and then if you're not clear, just say, just tell me more about that and forgive me. Because, yeah, I often say forgive me. I'm not, like, I'm not the smartest guy in the room. I just want to really make sure I understand this. Like, can you connect what I'm hearing? Is this, have I understood that correctly or is there something else? And you just develop a skill set of firing deeper questions and pausing to allow the information to land and taking notes and just saying so, you know, and the thing to remember in a sales conversation is solutions have no value. Solutions have no value. In a sales conversation. When you're diagnosing.

You think about going.

To the doctor, surgery, and you've got like a pain in your stomach. The doc, you're thinking it's fucking stomach cancer, right? Because we're men and of a certain age, every time you feel a pain, you're going to die. But the doctor's going well, it could be stomach cancer, but it could just be wind. And he doesn't have enough information to diagnose. So he'll ask deeper, deeper and deeper and deeper questions. And if he's not sure, he might send you for tests or he might get you to do a few things. So we have to be diagnostics when we're discussing client projects and actually not think about the money and not think about the outcome. Just think about how can I make this person fall in love with me to the point where they go, this is absolutely the person we want to work with because I trust them. And then when that trust is built, the money becomes a secondary thing because they've already invested in the decision that you're the right person to help them solve their problem.

Yeah.

And then worry about the rest of it once the deal is done. You know, once, once you've got deals signed, money solves pretty much all problems. So the key is just to focus on being present and really. And really hearing what they're saying. And if you need to clarify, clarify. And the more you slow that process down, it's where the magic happens. Right. You have these, you go from like a sales conversation with other sides going, how long is this going to take? And I get off the phone to, well, this person's actually really hearing me and I feel safe enough to actually tell them what I'm really thinking now. And that will take, in my experience, 20 minutes to warm up a conversation at the point where someone's actually going to tell you really what they're there for and what they really want to achieve. And I find that a really enjoyable part of the process because you're connecting with humans and understanding and hearing them. And we all want to be seen, heard and understood, especially in a business environment. And you're great at that. You're super skills, you know.

So if you found these interesting and useful, there's a couple of things you can do next. One is you can join our free community, the scale your video business community, or go and watch our free training. Both are linked below. And let's work together to build your video business.

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