#001: How to Price Your Writing Projects - A Practical System

Welcome to the High Income Business Writing Podcast, helping you propel your writing business to a whole new level. And now, here's your host, Ed Gandia. Hey everyone, thanks for joining me for the very first episode of the High Income Business Writing Podcast. I am your host, Ed Gamdia and this is the podcast for for business writers and copywriters who want to learn how to take their writing businesses to the six figure level or the part time equivalent to that. And I'm super excited to launch this podcast. I really hope you find the information that I'm going to be giving you here valuable. In fact, my goal for this podcast is to give you the best insights, ideas, tips, strategies that you'll find anywhere. I know there's a ton of free information out there, but I would love to become the one resource you go to every week to learn how to boost the income you earn from your business writing practice. My goal is to publish a show every week, but at a minimum you'll get a new show from me every other week. Now there are a couple of ways you can get notified every time I publish a show. 1. One way is to get on the show notification list and you can subscribe to those notifications by going to www.b2b launcher.com and entering your email address in the subscription box you see there. Another way to get notifications of new shows is to subscribe to the show on itunes. And you can do that by going to itunes and going to the podcast area. You'll see that in the menu there on the top and then doing a search for High Income Business writing. An easier way to do this if you have an iPhone or an Android phone is to go to the App Store and download the podcast app, which is absolutely free. It's super easy to use. It's a huge time saver. Basically once you have loaded the app, just search for the High Income Business Writing, do a search for that, and then click on the subscribe button once that option pulls up. That's my favorite way to enjoy podcasts. I subscribe to several of them and every time I get in the car and have to drive 10 minutes or more, I simply select one of the podcasts I've subscribed to and make the most out of my windshield time. I also listen to podcasts while working out at the gym or basically anywhere where I have to wait. So doctor's office, any kind of waiting room, just found podcasts to be an amazing way to make the best out of that idle time. Now to make the Material that I'm going to be covering more referenceable. I'm going to be publishing show notes for every session that I do. And you'll find those show notes@b2b launcher.com just look for the episode that you're interested in. Click on that and you'll see the key points of the show there along with any links or resources that I mentioned in that show. It's just a great way to reference the material later once you get back in the office or if you ever have to go back and look something up. Alright, so with that, let's get to today's topic, which is on pricing. So this topic came about because a few weeks ago I put out a survey to you guys, just asking what are your biggest challenges? What are topics that you'd love to learn more about that you need more help with? And I left it as an open ended question. I didn't give you any choices. And pricing was one of the top three challenges that you guys mentioned as being one of the biggest things he'd like to learn more about. I can understand why. I actually wasn't too surprised. Pricing is one of those areas where there are many potential mistakes that you could make. For instance, you could set a price that's so high that no one can really afford you, or few people can afford you. You could also go the other way and set a price so low that clients are wondering if you're an amateur. Another challenge is not being able to quote a ballpark figure quickly and with confidence when you're asked on the phone. These are just some of the challenges. There's many more. But one of the challenges with pricing from an educational standpoint is this is a very big topic. You can't cover it all in one session. I'm going to give you as much information as I can here in today's show, but just know that this is something we're going to be coming back to. So this is a topic that we'll revisit several times and give you more detail on. I'm going to bring guests in over the next few months and again we'll keep coming back to this because it's very important and it's a very broad topic. Now today what I'm going to do is I'm going to give you some solid strategies and tactics and you know, a lot of this is kind of a big picture thing to kind of give you a roadmap of how to approach pricing. So if I can at least give you the roadmap today and some very tactical things you could do. Then again, what we'll do is we'll revisit some of these specific areas in more detail over the next few weeks and few months. All right, so there are three things that I want to talk about. First. The first one is this whole issue of hourly versus project pricing. And let me just come right out and say that I really do believe that in most cases that the best way to go is to price your work by the project. There are some exceptions, which I'll talk about, but in most cases, that is the best way to go for you and for the client. And there are many reasons for that. When you price by the hour, you make less money. The faster, the better, the more efficient you get, and that's not right for you. When you price by the project, though, you make more money the faster and better you get. So you want to create a situation where, especially if you're working with repeat clients, that you're getting better and you're keeping those prices the same, which makes your internal hourly rate, so to speak, go up the longer you work with them. And that's an ideal situation. That's a key strategy for boosting your income as a business writer. Another reason is that clients prefer a project price, for the most part, to a lot of them, hourly pricing just feels wrong. I know that may sound counterintuitive. It may go against what you've experienced out there of what your perception is, but really, in most cases, it's just seen as an open checkbook. And the only times when it's not is when there is some controls associated with it. So at least the client knows, look, it's not going to go above a certain number. But just to quote on an hourly basis, it's a very dangerous and risky proposition for both of you, but definitely for the client. Really, when you look at it, at the end of the day, you have to quote a fixed price anyway, right? I mean, if you quote an hourly rate because the client asks you what your hourly rate is and you say $85 an hour, what's the next question they're going to ask you? Okay, well, how long do you think this will take to get done? Really? No matter what, you're going to end up quoting a. A fixed price anyway. Even if you give them a range, it's still going to be a fixed price, not an hourly. Clients also want a price they can stick in their budgets. They need something to work with, and it's very difficult to do that if you're quoting an hourly rate. Also, clients are much more likely to agree to a fixed project price even when the underlying hourly rate that price is based on is high. This is a really funny thing about pricing. I can't really explain it. There's a lot of psychology behind it. But it's weird. You can quote $2,000 for the project and it'll go through no problem. But if you told the client, look, I'm probably going to net about $150 an hour for that, you would get a lot of resistance if they don't hang up on you. So it's a very strange thing. I don't try to really explain it. I just accept it, and I know that it's true. Also along those lines, hourly prices have a much higher chance of getting put under a microscope than do fixed prices. I mean, especially when you're dealing or working in the corporate market and you tell the client, well, it's $150 an hour. That's my hourly rate. Corporate people, actually most clients just can't comprehend that. They're used to paying $150, $200 an hour to, let's say, their accountant, but to a writer, they don't see the same value when you net it out to an hourly unit. So you really get into a situation where they're going to raise a lot of red flags. There will be a lot of questions asked, and you really don't want to go there. So don't create a situation where you're going to be and your pricing is going to be analyzed again under a microscope. The second thing that I should mention before we get to the meat of this is a question that comes up quite a bit when I mention this whole hourly versus project pricing, which is how can you possibly quote a fixed project fee when you don't yet know the full scope of the project? And that's a fair question. But I can tell you that this is a lot less stressful when you break it down into two steps. And the first step is to give the prospect a ballpark figure over the phone. And the second step is if that ballpark figure, that range is within their budget, then you basically need to wrap up that conversation, hang up the phone, and work up a detailed quote, and get back to them with that quote. So when you break it up this way, it really takes a lot of the stress and the guesswork out of this process. The stress really comes in when you think you have to quote an exact figure, a final figure right there on the Spot on the phone while you're talking to the client. Now, to do this right, in order for this particular method that I'm going to be talking about today, you need to create what's called a master fee schedule. And a master fee schedule sounds fancy, but it's nothing fancy. It's really a menu of all the services you can provide and just an approximate project fee range for each of those services. Now, this is an internal document. In most cases, this is something you don't necessarily want to share. It's just something that you'll use internally when quoting work. When giving ballpark figures to prospects on the phone, it might sound kind of a weird way of doing things, but when you think about it, there are a lot of professionals and tradespeople out there who use the same approach. And we're actually used to seeing it in other areas in other businesses. For example, if you were to ask a plumber, let's say, you call him up so the plumber is not in your kitchen, you're calling him up, and you ask them, how much will it cost to replace your kitchen sink? What will he tell you? In most cases, he'll tell you it depends, right? He'll probably quote you a ballpark. He'll say, well, look, it depends, but it's usually somewhere between three and six hundred dollars. Plus, of course, the cost of the sink. You know, it depends on the sinks are all over the place. But to replace a sink, you're looking at 300 to $600 in labor. The final price will be based on a number of factors, right? I mean, he knows that it falls somewhere within that range. He rarely has something that's so easy that it's less than 300 and something that's so challenging that it's over 6. So he can feel comfortable quoting you that figure range over the phone without seeing your kitchen. So it's the same thing here. What you want is a situation where you're not spending a lot of time. You can quickly tell based on what the prospect wants and based on a series of questions you're going to ask him or her, and we're going to be talking about those questions, what this project will end up costing. That way, you can very quickly determine if this is a possibility or if you're wasting your time or the prospect's wasting his or her time. Now, what you want to do is you want to have a schedule that's ready, a master fee schedule, and that you can quickly pull out from your filing cabinet and quote a range Again, right there on the spot. As I mentioned, there are several benefits, but I want to touch on three key benefits of doing this. The first is you're going to by approaching pricing this way, you can screen up prospects who can't afford anything close to what you charge. Number two, you're going to save time by not putting together a detailed quote every time that you get asked for a price. And number three, it's going to keep you consistent, it's going to keep your pricing consistent. It's not going to be guesswork. And then you're going to be able to take much of the emotion out of the whole pricing process because it's no longer, oh my gosh, I don't know, did I quote too high that I quote too low? Well, you know what you quoted within the range. And you know, when you think about it objectively, that that range is a safe bet. Just like the plumber knows that that 3 to $600 in labor, it's a very safe bet without even seeing your kitchen. And then finally, number three, before we get to the actual process, is this whole issue of how can you determine going rates that professional freelance business writers charge for the services? Because you're going to need those going rates in order to put together your master fee schedule. So how do you find this rate information? Well, there are several sources and this is something that takes a little bit of time to put together. It's very rare for you to have a master fee schedule that you can borrow from someone and just start using it right away. This is something you should really assemble on your own. Ask friends, colleagues. That would be the first place I would go to. I would also recommend forming a mastermind group of colleagues, other writer colleagues who have similar target markets and just sharing pricing information. Professional associations in your industry, books and publications that might have some rate and fee information. You can also look at other websites of other business writers. Now, I would be careful here to make sure you're looking at sites of writers who are at your level, not someone who's writing at the kind of at the bargain basement level. The other thing is I always try and you know, I have my own master fee schedule, but I'm constantly updating it. One of the ways I'm updating, as I said, is I'm checking in with friends and colleagues, see what they're charging it. But sometimes I'm doing my own testing and pushing my fees up a little bit, especially with new clients, to see how elastic this pricing is, to see how sensitive some of These ranges are and to see what I can kind of get away with, especially if I know after doing the last couple of similar projects that, you know, I really should be charging a little bit more for that type of work. So I'm constantly testing to see if I can go a little bit higher and you know, if I can get it, then that kind of becomes my, my new upper limit. And I just keep, I basically have a file of intelligence that I gather from the field and from colleagues and from other sources. And I keep updating my master fee schedule based on what I have in that file. Now I'm going to give you a head start. I'm going to give you some fee ranges for some very common projects in the business writing arena. And these ranges that I'm going to give you are again, professional level rates for the corporate market. So it really depends on where you're, you're working. But if you're working in the corporate market, these are, these are very good ranges. These are definitely on the higher end. But these are again, professional level rates that I would definitely be shooting for or working in right now. White papers, very common type of project. We're going to be talking more about that in a very, in a podcast that's coming up very soon. 5 to 10 pages in Microsoft Word. It's what they typically range and the range is three to six thousand dollars. It's a very common range for white papers today. Some writers are charging a little bit more. I've talked to Some, they're charging 7,000, 7,500, sometimes 8,000 and up. But three to six thousand dollars is a, a very safe range again in the corporate market for professional level work. Bylined articles or ghost written articles. And most of them tend to be between 500 to 2,000 words or so. $1.50 to $1.75 a word. And I wouldn't necessarily quote by the word here, but you know, if you're talking to a prospect and they're giving you word count, I would use that per word fee to calculate what you're going to quote. Brochure copy, 500 to $750 per page or per panel. Very common range. Case studies or success stories, 1200 to $1800. And these are two page, two to three page, about 800 to 1200 words long or so. It includes doing an interview, a short interview. So there's some work involved here. Website copy, this one's kind of all over the place. It really depends. But 200 to $600 per page is About Right. And this is what I found. And finally, blog posts. Now these aren't your consumer blogs or Internet marketing blogs or anything like that. Again, this is business to business clients. And what I found is 3 to $500 per post for 3 to 500 word post. So basically about a dollar a word or so. Very, very common. So why is that a little bit lower than the ghost written articles? Well, in many cases there's not going to be as much scenes in terms of interviews and research as there would be in a ghost written article. Plus typically you're not going to write one. This tends to be something that you get contracted for and you're writing a post every week or so, sometimes more frequently. So clients expect a little bit of a break there. Again, some writers charge more, some charge less, but that's a very safe range. Those are some ranges to kind of get you started if you really are starting from scratch. And, and if you are a new business writer, there's nothing wrong with quoting a little bit less than this and working your way up to these ranges. There's nothing heroic about trying to start here and if you can't get it and then have your self esteem go down the drain because you can't get the traction you need, it's okay, start a little bit lower, work your way up. It's going to be hard to work your way up in pricing with current clients, but you can definitely do this with new clients. It's a proven method and it's one that's going to get you to where you want to go faster rather than trying to quote a high range and then lose the work. Now again, I want to make sure you guys understand that you should be updating your master fee schedule throughout the year as you gather new information or insights from colleagues or as you start getting a better feel for how much you'd like to charge for some of these projects. For example, with white papers, I started really low when I started writing them a few years ago because the info that I was getting from colleagues is that it was very hard to get $4,000 or more for a white paper. Now this is back in 2004 or so and this is what a couple of colleagues were telling me. So I bought it. But as I started working on them, I realized, wow, this is really a lot of work. And I started taking a chance and bringing my fees up to I went ahead and brought them up to 4,000 just to see if they were right and I was getting $4,000 for them. So then I brought it up to 4,500 and then 5,000 and now, in fact, recently I was quoting $5,000 for a client of mine who's giving me plenty of white paperwork. And then I referred that client to a friend of mine because I couldn't take on their next white paper. And she said, well, actually I'm charging more in the neighborhood of $6,000. So I was charging five, she charges six plus. So I said, you know what, I need to move my fees up. So they're now up to $6,000 and above. All right, so let's move on to an actual process for pricing and quoting a project. And my process is very simple. It's basically four steps. Step number one, you qualify the prospect. Step number two, you quote a ballpark figure on the phone. Step number three, you assemble a persuasive quotation. And finally step number four, you follow up on your quotation and you hopefully get the job. Let's talk about each of these in more detail. We're going to spend the rest of the show talking about these. Number one, qualifying the prospect. So qualifying is just a fancy word for asking the prospect a few questions just to see if this is a good fit for you and if you're a good fit for them. And what you want to determine by asking these questions is, is this project a good fit for you and is this prospect a good fit for you? This organization? So not just the project, but also the client, would they be a good fit for you? So what do you want to do here? How do, what questions do you ask? Well, basically what you, you're going to have a ton of questions, most of us do. But what you want to do is you want to group all the questions you could possibly have about this client and about this project into two groups. One group is going to be the questions that you ask just to provide the prospect with a quote. And then the other group are going to be the questions that you ask only after you've been awarded the project. So all the project specific stuff about who do you need to interview, their contact information, give me some places where I can go research some of this. Remember this analogy that I used earlier with the plumber? So the plumber is going to have a few questions about your kitchen sink and your kitchen area, and then they're going to quote your range. They don't need to know a lot of other information until they get the work. If you call them and you make the appointment to go ahead and get the job done, then they may Have a few other questions for you. It's the same thing here. I find that writers will often bog down the prospect with way too many questions early on, when many of those questions really should wait until they've been awarded the project. When you work with a fee agreement and you ask the right questions, you can limit the length of this initial conversation to the bare essentials. And that's what you want to do. You don't want to spend a ton of time here up front. Not that you don't want to be personable or anything, but your idea is to get the information you need, put together the quotation, send it out to them, follow up, and hopefully land the work. If you're spending way too much time with everyone that's billable time, or time you could be doing other things with that you're probably wasting. So let's talk about how to organize the questions that you need to ask the prospect in order to put together a quotation. And I bucketized or grouped these questions into five different areas. Number one is source. Number two is need. Number three is timing. Number four is decision making process. And number five is budget. And let's go through these areas in detail. Source is the first area. And all I'm trying to find out here, I only have one question. It's the first question I asked the prospect, which is how they found out about me. It's very simple. I say, thanks for contacting me, Jim, I'm curious, how did you hear about me? Not only is this a great conversation icebreaker, but I found it's also invaluable information over time. If you ask this question, you'll be able to use this kind of intelligence to look for patterns and see where different types of clients are coming from and therefore what type of marketing you should be doing more of and less of. Okay, so get into the habit of right away before you ask any other questions, asking the prospect how they found out about you. The second set of questions are questions related to need, meaning the need that they have. The prospect has questions that I tend to ask here. I only ask one or two because usually one or two questions give me the information that I need. I ask the prospect something along the lines of what are you trying to accomplish? Or what are you looking for? What do you need help with that sort of thing? Okay, I'm just trying. Okay, how did you find out about me? Okay, let's talk about what you need. What are you trying to accomplish? Okay. And these are open ended questions. I want to keep them Open ended. I want the prospect to open up and tell me more about what's, you know, what they need. Now, based on the prospect's answers, you need to ask yourself the following questions. Is the project well defined? Is it something that you can do well or at least you're reasonably capable of doing now? And are the prospect's expectations realistic? I just want you to make a mental note of these things or even jot down some notes and then move on to the next set of questions which are timing. That's the next group. Very straightforward. I'm just trying to find out when are they looking to get started. So my question is typically, okay, when are you looking to get started? Or if it's, let's say a website project, where are you? What is your go live target date or the target publication date or whatever it might be? And here again, I'm making some mental notes. So based on their answers, I'm trying to ask myself, is this a realistic time frame or expectation? Can I fit this into my schedule? So those are timing questions, very important. Notice there's nothing fancy here. Only one or two questions will do it. Next area is decision making authority or decision making process. And this is really more about how the prospect will be making a decision on this project, when they'll be making a decision, and what are the important factors they're going to be weighing. Questions you want to consider are things such as how will you be making a decision on this? Or who else will be involved in making a decision by when will you be making a decision on this project? I'm just trying to get a feel for, okay, great. So you have this problem, this is your timing. So when are you looking to make a decision on who you're going to hire to help you with this? So that's what you're trying to find out. And then I ask, not always, but depending on the kind of the feeling I'm getting from the client. Have you worked with an outside writer before and if so, what was your experience with him or her? This tells me a lot about what they're like to work with. Because if they've never worked with an outside writer before, there could be some challenges that I need to take into consideration. Not always, but there could be. Their expectations may be out of whack, you know, they may, I may have to do a little bit more hand holding, that sort of thing. So, you know, just something to consider. Another question that I've asked from time to time in this area about decision making is are you Considering other firms or freelancers for this project? Not always, but if I'm getting the feeling that they're shopping this around, I just want to go ahead and ask them that. I think the reason for that is pretty obvious, but I'm trying to figure out if, again, if they're shopping me and what their attitudes towards that are like. I had one prospect one time actually tell me, well, yeah, I'm talking to five different freelance writers, and that told me everything I needed to know. I mean, basically, I didn't want to work with them. And to be honest, the way they had answered the other questions was a little bit shaky. I was a little concerned about their answers. So once I asked this, I just had a feeling that he was shopping this around. And he said that. And it was, by the way, the client would have been a good fit in terms of what, what they needed and the topic and the industry. But, you know, they're shopping it around. You know what I'm not going to be. I'm not going to be the lowest one. And if you're talking to five, that's kind of extreme. That tells me that price is, you know, pretty much your, your biggest variable. So I found that this is a set of questions that if there's going to be a big red flag, it's usually going to show up in this area of questioning. The last area of questioning is budget. And what you're really looking for is not necessarily their exact budget. Instead, you're trying to determine affordability. I think that's a key word here, affordability. So in other words, can they afford you? Do they have the financial capacity and willingness to pay your fees? I typically ask this question. There's a couple of ways you could approach it, but my favorite way to ask is what budget are you working with? And that will tell you what you need to know. Typically, when you ask it this way, you're going to get an answer. Now, this line of questioning, and again, that was the last group of questions, leads to the second step in my quoting process, which is to quote a ballpark figure. So once you've gathered all that information, and this shouldn't take very long, unless, of course, the prospect is a chatterbox, it's to turn to your master fee schedule and quote a fee range. Give them a ballpark. Okay, now you have a couple of options here. You can quote the full range from your master fee schedule for that particular type of project. Or in some cases, it's better to quote a fixed fee, especially if it's A very standardized type of project. So if it's the kind of project where you kind of have like one fee for a very specific scope of work, then you feel that that's still okay in the situation. Then quote that. That's fine. You don't have to quote a range if you have a fixed fee for that. Now, if you're quoting a range, the important thing is to stay within the range. I know that sounds like common sense, but sometimes there are several variables or several factors that play into this and you're feeling like maybe you really need to work and resist that temptation. Stick with the range and hopefully your range is wide enough that it gives you some, some wiggle room. And let me give you a couple of examples on how you can position your ballpark figure. These are just some scripts. Okay? You don't have to copy this word for word, but just an idea of how I would approach it. Katie, My fee to write a five to eight page white paper like the one we're discussing is between $3,500 and $4,500, depending on the actual length we go with, depending on the number of interviews required and the amount of research necessary. Once I know a little bit more about your project, I will send you a quote. With a fixed project fee, my fee includes all background reading and research, any interviews with subject matter experts, content and copy, strategy development, title development, creating a detailed outline for your approval, the actual writing of the paper, any meetings or calls related to the project, and up to two rounds of requested revisions. Is this fee range within your budget? Notice how I've done this. I've quoted the fee and it's a range. I've told them what it's included and then I asked them. Okay, so how does that sound? Is this within your budget? Now this is the reason I'm tying this to my last couple of minutes ago is one way you could approach this is instead of asking the what budget are you working with question, you could go straight into this step and quote a ballpark figure in the way that I've just talked it through. And that might be more effective. This tends to be the way that I do it. More often than not, it just works better for me. Okay, so that's one example. The other example would be for that of a project which you have a fixed fee for. So very straightforward, Katie. My standard fee to write a two page case study like what we're discussing here is $1,200. That fee includes interviewing someone from your company, interviewing the client, the actual writing of the case study and up to two rounds of revisions. Is this fee within your budget? Okay, so very straightforward. So why is quoting a ballpark figure so effective? A couple of reasons. One is it can open the door to a price negotiation. And when you do that, you may be able to work out a solution that's acceptable to both you and the client. The second reason is if the prospect is not willing to pay anywhere near your fee range, you will at least have saved yourself a lot of time by bringing it up now. Okay, so that's step number two, quoting a ballpark. Step number three in the process is to assemble a persuasive quotation. So at this point, one or two basic things have happened. A, you or the prospect realize that there's not a fit here. It's either not the right kind of work, not the right kind of prospect, the pricing is not within their budget, that kind of thing. Right. Or B, you've both agreed to proceed with a formal quotation if you decided not to proceed. That's okay. You know the great thing? That's good news. At least you found out about this now before you spend a ton of time with this prospect, before you actually took the time to put together a quotation to follow up. And that's a lot of time you could have waited. That's okay. You know the great thing, that's good news. At least you found out about this now before you spend a ton of time with this prospect, before you actually took the time to put together a quotation to follow up. That's a lot of time you could have wasted. Okay, so it's okay. At least. You know, that's why I love this process, because it quickly determines if this is something someone you should spend more time with. If you decided to proceed, it's time to get off the phone and get to work. And your job now is to put together a quotation. You've given the prospect a ballpark on the phone, but now it's time to calculate the actual fixed fee, the exact figure you're going to be quoting them, and then assemble a persuasive quote based on that. Alright, so how do you calculate your fixed fee? I want you to first look at the notes that you took during your call with the prospect. You probably already have a general feel for the prospect and what they're like, but take a few minutes to read through their answers or the answers to your qualifying questions and then ask yourself the following things. Is this project well defined? Is this something I can do well or I'm reasonably capable of doing. Now, are the prospect's overall expectations realistic? Notice some of these questions. These are the ones I mentioned earlier to kind of like ask yourself as he or she is talking, is this a realistic time frame or deadline? Are there too many parties involved? Could this turn into a headache? You know, a revisions headache? Does this sound like a reasonable person in an organization? Are they marketing savvy enough to understand what I can do and cannot do? Do they sound like they're shopping around? Does it sound like they can afford me? Do they get the value of using someone like me? Did they mention things about me they liked or were impressed by? And can I fit this into my schedule? And don't worry guys, I'm going to put this in the show notes so you'll have these questions there for easy reference. So those are kind of the basic questions I want you to ask yourself, but then I want you to add a few more questions. And you know, this isn't something you have to think through that much, but you're probably already thinking about these things. But the answer to these questions I'm about to give you are naturally going to be much more subjective because they're going to be based on your specific situation and your own intuition. But they're very important because they're going to enable you to temper the answers you gave yourself for the questions I just gave you with something a little bit more subjective that works better for you. So in other words, you may have given this prospect a low score based on the questions I just gave you, but there may be other factors that could bring the overall score up. And here are the questions that you should ask yourself. Okay, so where am I up? And here are the questions that you should ask yourself. Okay, so where am I in my business life cycle? Am I still launching my business? Or have I been at this for a little while already? Or am I a seasoned, established business writer? Does it make sense to pursue this prospect and this opportunity right now based on where I am in my business lifecycle? Am I still launching my business or have I been in business? So that's the first one. Next, is there an added prestige to be gained from working with this client? That's an important one. There might be a real good reason there because of the name that you know what, this is not a perfect situation, but high prestige could make up for it. How do I generally feel about this prospect in this particular project? It's another thing to ask yourself. Alright, even if they were okay with my ballpark Figure, what's the client's apparent ability to pay me on time? So maybe they say, oh, sure, no problem. But everything else tells you, you know what? I don't know if they can really, if they'll pay me or pay me on time. They sound like they really string their contractors or writers and everybody they work with along. I just get this feeling, again, you got to use your gut here. How difficult would it be to secure the business? Are they almost pre sold on hiring me, or does it sound like they'll need much more convincing? And this comes from what they told you about what they liked about you. Right. This is why I said, hey, pay particular attention to what they're saying about you. Because if they sound like they really are hot on you and your skills, your experience, your background, then that sounds like they're pre sold or mostly pre sold. And then finally, how badly do I need to work? You know, I mean, I hate to say it, sometimes that plays into the decision. So that's fair. Make sure to factor it in. Okay, so now that you have answers to these questions, what are you looking for here? Well, other than just a better defined gut feel for whether or not this is something you want to pursue and how aggressively you want to pursue it, the way I see this is you now have a series of pluses and minuses that you can use to move the needle up or down in the fee range that you gave the prospect. So let's say that in your initial conversation, you quoted a ballpark figure of $2,500 to $3,500 for, say, a white paper. Now you have to come up with a final number to quote. So you turn to the questions I just gave you for guidance. And each negative mark pushes the needle up in that price range. Each positive mark brings it down. Say, for instance, for the most part, this looks to be a good prospect with reasonable expectations. Most of the responses are good to very good. There's some potential negatives, and they mostly have to do with the fact that they're still trying to figure out what they want to say about themselves and their value, that sort of thing. And let's say that their CEO will be directly involved in reviewing your white paper draft. You've been told that this CEO is very opinionated. She changes her mind quite frequently about how the company should communicate its value. These are all red flags, not major red flags, but definitely indicators that this project will involve several revisions, some considerable project management. This could turn into a bit of a headache. So based on these factors, I would definitely quote on the higher end of that range. You quoted them, so you quoted 25 to 3500. I would probably quote 3500 or close to it. Let's take a situation though, where the responses were also were mainly positive and the only negative is that they need a first draft from you in about 10 days. That's a bit tight, but let's say that you're confident you can manage it. Other than that, everything else checked out and felt good to you. So in that case, quoting on the lower half of the range may be appropriate. So maybe 2750 or so or maybe somewhere in the middle. I like to quote in $250 intervals. That's just me. Sometimes the hardest part is just making that final decision though, and just letting go of the feeling that you might be under quoting or over quoting. I mean, that could really just kill you. So my advice would be to apply the science that I just gave you here and then temper that with the more subjective elements that we talked about and use the pluses and minuses to guide you and just pick a number based on that. I'm telling you, if you approach it this way, you're going to come up with the best number possible. I'm not saying the number that's going to land the work. I'm just saying the number that takes all these variables into account and it's going to give you the best overall outcome. Once you pick that number, write it down. And if you have to send out your quote now, just do it. And try to let go of any fears about whether or not you did the right thing. You've gone about it again in a very logical, methodical way. You've applied your own instinct to the process and there's just nothing else you can do. You've done well. You need to try and be happy with the way you've approached it. Now, as an option, you can choose to sleep on that number and look at it fresh next morning. And I, I do that quite frequently. Now, this can be dangerous if you know that you make a lot of these decisions emotionally. If that's the case, you run the risk that the next morning you'll cut your number and then end up leaving money on the table, which could be bad. But if you can promise yourself that, okay, you're going to sleep on it, but any final reviews of your quote will be based on a thorough review of those pluses and minuses that we went through, then this could be a sensible last minute gut check. And I'VE often raised my figure the next morning and ended up getting the work anyway at a much higher number than I had originally estimated. All right, so that's the basic process. Now, when it comes to the actual quote, what should you send? I send my prospects and my clients what I refer to as a fee agreement, which is basically a combination of contract and quote. The main part of the contract details all the terms and conditions of working together, and then I include two attachments to that basic part. Attachment A details the scope of work for this project, and attachment B details my fee and how I will bill the client. The biggest reason I don't call it a contract is that that word just scares people. It has a very negative connotation, so I avoid it like the plague. Fee agreement, though, sounds a lot less invasive, and it implies a combination of both a quotation and a set of terms and conditions, which is basically what I'm sending them. All right, so how can you make your fee agreement persuasive? Because we talked about that earlier. There's a few things I would include in that agreement. And the first is include a section called objective. And this section is where you can really shine. There's actually a few things, a few areas where you can really shine. This is the first one. What you want to do in this objective area is just to take what the client told you about when she answered her need questions that you asked her about and just summarize this objective of hers. Here you're essentially telling the client, look, I heard you. I understand perfectly what you're trying to accomplish with this piece, with this document, with this project, and I can deliver that. I get you. I understand. I'll make you look good. I'm your guy or I'm your gal. Okay. This doesn't have to be anything super involved, just two or three sentences, and demonstrate that you understand what the client needs and what they're trying to accomplish with this project. I found that this approach really positions you as a professional. Very few writers include this in their fee agreements, and I know for a fact that it's been a key deciding factor for some of my clients. The second thing I would include is some language that describes why you're the perfect writer for this project. So if you want to take it one step further is just include a quick paragraph again here. It doesn't have to be extremely long. That emphasizes why you're the perfect writer for the job. You may not be able to do this when you're just starting out, but as you progress in your business, you'll be able to tell some clients about your experience in this particular industry or the sector, or about how you've written more than, let's say, eight case studies in this product sector or in that particular industry. Or maybe how you have so many years of experience writing these types of pieces. Whatever it might be, okay, if you have it, flaunt it. You don't have to go overboard here. Again, just a couple of sentences or maybe two or three bullet points. That's enough to make your point. You're just trying to say, look, here's why I'm the right or the perfect ideal writer for this project. And then number three, I would include some language that describes what this work involves, specifically the full scope of work, not just what you'll deliver, not the actual deliverable, of course you're going to talk about that, but everything that it entails. What I found is that this helps the client and whoever else needs to approve this project. Look at your fee from a different perspective. You're not just delivering five pieces of paper, for instance. You're investing a lot of time and energy into this and you're bringing to bear all your experience and know how. So make sure to list the major behind the scenes pieces or components of the project, the things the client may not see. For instance, interviews with subject matter experts. And I actually do this in a bullet format. So interviews with subject matter experts, reading and studying all background materials, further research is necessary. All phone calls related to the project content and copy strategy development. Drafting of outline for client approval, writing the actual white paper in up to two rounds of standard revisions. Okay, so notice how this is taken something from a, you know, it's $5,000 and it's, it's a five page white paper. To someone who's not used to working with writers, that seems like a lot of money. But if I now put this in context and tell them what it involves from my standpoint, then it helps soften that blow, so to speak. All right, the final step in my quotation process is to send your quote and follow up. I try to get quotes out the door either that day or the following day. Many times it's the following day if I get the call back in the afternoon, but I'll tell them, look, when can I send this to you? Can I send this to you tomorrow? Would that be okay? Just make sure they're okay so they know what to expect. Now when you send it, my recommendation would be just to follow up the following day, the day after you send it, follow up with a prospect. I used to say to follow up that day, that same day you send it. But I was finding that it came across as a bit desperate. It's important to follow up. It shows that you're a professional and that you want to work with a client. And I've found that not following up communicates that you're not organized or that you don't care. Because I've been on the receiving end of these and it's been very revealing. So I think it's very important to follow up every time. But I think following up that same day is a little extreme. So wait a day, follow up the next business day. Don't be timid. When you follow up, approach it with an attitude of, hey, are you ready to do this? Are you ready to get started? Rather than one of, hey, what did you think of the price? Was it okay? You know, are you okay with this? Are you still considering me? You know, be confident, Try to sound confident. The exact language I use is something along these lines. It's, hey, Jim, I'm checking in on the fee agreement I sent you yesterday. Do you want to go ahead and get started on this? Well, say I get their voicemail, that's fine. I still leave a message. I'll say something like, hey, Jim, just making sure you receive my fee agreement. Let me know if you have any questions. I look forward to working with you soon, that sort of thing. It's kind of a I'm checking in. Are you ready to get going? It's soft, it's professional, but it's also confident. And that's what you want. You want a mix of all those. And by the way, in terms of follow up too, take into account their timing of their decision. If they said they're not going to make a decision for another couple of weeks, you still want to follow up the next day, but you're just checking in mainly to see if there are any questions and to make sure that they received your fee agreement, then you can back off a little bit. If they had told you they're going to make a decision that same day or within a day or two, then you can be a little bit more aggressive when you follow up. All right, we, at this point, you know, this is assuming that everything works out perfect, you get a hold of the client, blah, blah, blah. But let's face it, many times we come across prospects who are suddenly disappear off the face of the earth. They were in a hurry for a quote, and they were in a hurry to get started on the project, but then once you send it, you can't get a hold of them. Seems like they've just left, they've gone on a trip to the moon. So the question is how often and how much should you follow up after that initial one if you don't get a response back? It really depends on how quickly they said again that they would make a decision. Remember when we talked about that decision making process questions, that was one of the questions about their timing. And there's a good reason for asking those questions. Not only does it help me determine if this is something I can pursue right now, but it comes in handy here when trying to decide how aggressively to follow up. So assuming this prospect said she'd be making a decision in the next couple of weeks, here's an approximate sequence that I would follow. Now, again, you can alter this any way you'd like. This is kind of what I follow. It works for me. Some people consider it kind of aggressive, others don't think it's aggressive enough. I think it's a good balance though. Okay, step number one is again, I email or call, usually call the day after sending the fee agreement. Step number two is I email three business days after that if I've gotten no response, next I call five business days after that, if no response, next I will email five business after that if no response. So notice I'm switching between email, call, email, call. Next I will call five business days after that if I've gotten no response. And that's actually my final attempt. So that's really five follow up attempts over the course of a few weeks. And if you've gotten no response after that one, what I would suggest you do is you just kind of follow up with them. Every month or two something has happened where things have gotten delayed. It's usually something completely outside of your control. I found again, you should adjust this based on what they told you about the decision time frame. You should also change your message from one of just following up on the quote to one where you're now talking about the fact that that you're already planning for the next month and just need to know if and when this project is going to start. So in other words, you're following up for scheduling reasons. I found that that's a good justification that keeps the follow up professional and targeted. But again, I found that after making this number of attempts about four or five over the course of say three to five weeks, you're now entering a danger zone. So rather than being a Helpful reminder, you're risking being seen as a pest is desperate freelancer and that can have a negative effect. So resist the temptation to keep calling, thinking that maybe persistence is what's required here. Yes, persistence can get you somewhere, but only to a certain point. After that it can just backfire. One tip that has worked well for me is to let them know on that last attempt that this is your last attempt. So say it in a calm, professional way, but be clear about the fact that you're not calling or emailing anyone. I found that when you give them a professional ultimatum like that, you finally get a response. And I don't know why that is. I think it's because maybe the prospect has been using you as a low tech tickler system. They know that you're going to follow up every few days. So if you tell them, look, this is, you know, I'm assuming if I don't get hear back from you, I'm assuming that you know, you've moved on or this is no longer a priority. So this is my last attempt then many times you will get a call back at that point. All right, so there's one Again, as I mentioned earlier, there are a few areas that you can get into here with pricing that really involve a longer discussion. One of them is what do you do when the prospect wants to negotiate? And I'd love to hear more from you about what you'd like to learn more about. What should you include your fee agreement and so forth. Those are again big topics. I want to address them but those require really more in depth discussion and I don't want to, you know, I'm watching the clock here. We're closing in on an hour so I promise I will address those topics in a future podcast. And if you have any other questions about pricing, let me know here in the comments area of the show notes and I'll see what I can do about including those in a future podcast. So just know that we'll have more coming on this on this topic. It's an important one. Okay, so that's our episode for this week. I hope you got a lot out of this information. In fact, I wanted to leave you with a couple of reminders. Again, you can grab the show notes to the session by going to b2b launcher.com session one and it's the number one. So session number one. The number one. Also, if you enjoy this material, if you got value from it, I would truly appreciate your helping me spread the word about the podcast. A really easy way to do that is to just go to the show notes for this episode, which are again at or@b2b launcher.com session one and click on any of the social media sharing buttons you see there. I'd really appreciate if you can help me out with that. And you can also help me by going to itunes and and giving the show a five star review there. That really helps to get the show found. It helps it get off the ground on itunes. Whatever you can do. You know, I would truly appreciate your help. That will really encourage me to keep the show going and to keep bringing you meaty, actionable content every week. So that brings us to the end of the show. This has been your host, Ed Gandia. Thanks for joining me and I hope you have an awesome day. The High Income Business Writing Podcast is a production of B2B business launcher. Learn more at B2B launcher dot com.