From Closing Deals to Delivering Results (The Right Way)

Welcome to episode 104 of Black Belt Startup with Feras. Thank you for tuning in. What is new in the world of entrepreneurship? Most consultants think their job is to get clients, and they're right. I say this all the time: job number one for founders is sales. No one is going to sell for you or on your behalf. You have to build that sales muscle because no sales, no revenue; no revenue, no consulting business. So sales is very important. I have several playlists on sales on my YouTube channel. You can check it out, learn it from the ground up like I did when I was laid off from startup. I had no idea how to sell, so I had to learn from the ground up. I have it all documented with frameworks, worksheets, templates. But we're not talking about sales today because your business is built or broken by what happens after the deal is signed. And for those of you who are new to the channel, my name is Feras. Welcome. I've delivered over 600 consulting projects over the last 20-plus years, built 7 businesses mostly in consulting, and scaled one of the businesses to 8 figures that I later sold— I later sold to global media giant Dentsu. And I can tell you from all these projects all 600+ of them, I can tell you this. The biggest problems don't show up in the middle of delivery when you're delivering the project, when you're servicing the client. Problems show up when you transition from sales to delivery. And that is what I'm focusing on today, not the full delivery system. I have a video on that, The Ultimate Guide to Service Delivery for Consultants. But today I want to focus on— I want to zoom in on this transition from sales to consulting, from sales to delivery, because they're different hats. And even if it's just you, even if you're just one consultant, you yourself, and that's it, there still has to be a mindset shift from when you are in a sales mode to when you are in a delivery mode. So today we will focus on Starting the projects right, avoiding these early mistakes in sales, and also when you start, when you kick off the project, and then how to set yourself up to win. And I have some templates for you you can use right away, and I would be more than happy to answer all the questions that you share with me today here live. For those of you who are listening or watching live, you can leave me a comment on whichever platform you're on. And if you have something that is a bit personal, maybe you haven't announced to the world that you are starting your new business and you're taking the time to learn about how to deliver as a consultant, how to service your clients, and you don't want to share this publicly, you can email me at info@startupwithferas.com. Feras spelled like my first name, F-E-R-A-S. So info@startupaffairs.com. I answer all the questions I get, and I want to make sure that you are getting started right. You're starting a business on solid grounds. That's my mission today. I've built all these businesses. I've sold an 8-figure business. I'm on a mission to help the next generation of founders, young or old, do it right and do it with less gray hair with less issues and do it faster. And I'm here to support you. So if you have any questions, you're running into challenges, you have issues with selling, with marketing, with hiring, with vetting the idea, with just that mindset of getting started and moving forward— if you have issues in any of these areas, anything to do with entrepreneurship, let me know. I'm here to help you. And if you're having Some wins, big wins, small wins. Let me know. I love to hear from you. I love to hear from the community, and all the questions I get from you all, I turn into content to help the rest of us learn from our wins and from the mistakes of of of those of us who are just still struggling. So if you're struggling, I'm here to help you out. Let me know. Let's step on the mat, and before we. Go into, um, the delivery and servicing the clients. Let me show you this, this graphic that the team worked on. And here I have, I have this actually, I have this comment. I have a pinned comment on, I'd love to hear from you, uh, what's been the hardest part of, um, let me go back to the banner, make sure it shows on the screen right here. Uh, what is the hard— what's been the hardest part For you, after landing a client, I know it's difficult, it's challenging to sell, but let's say after you've made your first sale, what is the hardest part in terms of servicing that client? Is it onboarding the client? Is it the scope of, of, of the delivery, managing the scope? Is it communication? Is it actually delivering what you committed and wrapping up the project? Is it getting more projects from this client, I'd love to hear from you. So let me know what you're struggling with in the, in the pinned comment here that I have for you. Now back to what I want to show you. Let me go back here. So if you look here, you see this— where's the graphic? All right, here. Keep this in slideshow. Yeah, so basically Right here, you should be able to see it. Nope, this one right here. Yep. So you see this cycle on the left-hand side, discovery. For those of you who are listening, I'll walk you through it as well. So in the sales process, and I have a full video, 21-minute video on the sales funnel and the sales process, so you can check that out if you're new to sales as well. So there's the discovery, you're understanding the needs of the client, You're educating them, you're understanding their budget, their timeline, all that good stuff. You put that in a proposal, you negotiate, and then you have a signed contract as you see on the screen. All right, so that's a signed contract. Love it. All right, remember, still remember, still taste the sweetness of that first deal I closed. A small restaurant here in Santa Clara, $1,400 for a 4-page website that took me 3 months to deliver. We'll talk about that later. So now we have a signed contract. So what I want to speak— what I will be spending time on today is what happens after the signed contract, what should happen after a signed contract. So you'll see this sales to delivery handoff. As I said, even if it's just you, one consultant, solo founder, I want you to put on the sales hat, in that same meeting, right? And then hand off the project to you with the project management, with the delivery hat. And I'll go over a template to guide you through that process. This is really critical. Then onboarding the client. People, clients don't read your minds. They don't, they don't understand what's going to happen next. We'll talk about onboarding and then setting up an external kickoff, kickoff with the client. And then from that point on, there's the whole project management cycle, which I'll— I cover fully in the Ultimate Guide to Servicing and to Delivery for Consultants. And then scaling and growing the business with potentially retaining those clients, selling them more to those clients, getting referrals, and all the processes and tech and AI you need to scale that business. Okay, so today we're focusing on the heart of this diagram from a signed contract and few things you want to do before you sign the contract all the way to starting executing, starting to deliver the service. All right, so with that, the first, the first point I want to talk about is why delivery breaks early. See, a lot of consultants think, you know, I'll figure it out, let me sell now. I want you to sell. I don't want you to be, to, to be waiting for perfection before you sell. I get that, but you don't have to figure it out, figure out delivery or all of it once, uh, you don't, you don't have to wait for a signed contract to figure out the delivery process. And the issue here is that when you are in a sales mode, you know, you want to close the deal, right? So you start to say yes to a lot of things. You might have a certain set of expectations, a certain scope in mind, and I'll walk you through an example in a second. So you might have a specific scope or, or amount of work you want to put into this project, and the client could be on a different wavelength altogether. So the scope could be vague, the expectations are unclear, and then there's a huge misalignment between you and the client in terms of time, in terms of, again, number of milestones, in terms of what, what to expect when, what is it that the client should be doing to help you succeed in your project. So all of those are gaps that happen in the sales process that will impact your delivery. You could be meticulous about delivery, you could be very process-oriented, and you have all the worksheets and templates and all the, the whole workflow for delivering a service. You might be a master at that, but if there are huge gaps in, in the sales process right before you got that contract signed, it will impact your delivery severely. And then the results— you start falling behind, especially if you have multiple clients. You start becoming more reactive instead of proactive and that's not going to help you. And I'll walk you through some examples. I remember when we were initially, when we started the very first business, we were selling websites for small businesses. And then later as we were adding on more services, we figured people have websites now, they want online marketing. That was the buzzword at the time. That was 2003, 2004, 2005. So we started to sell search engine optimization services and SEM, search engine marketing services, paid ads basically. And I ended up becoming Google certified on all this stuff on Google Ads, but initially I didn't know what I was doing. So we had a SaaS client, someone who was selling software as a service on their website, and I did a quick check of their website, and in my mind, they have this one product, okay? It's $2,000 to set up and then $500 to manage your paid campaign based on a specific budget. That they had for, for the clicks. So we go in, we meet the client, bring in my— I had by that time we had a colleague, she was specialized in paid marketing, and we understood what the client wanted. And then as we were going through this discovery or detailed discovery, then I learned that they had 2 other products. So I And they want us to run ads for those, for those 2 other products. So in total, I thought there was one product to promote and set up 2, 3 campaigns and we're done. The client had 3 clients and they want the same setup. And these, these were— the client had 3 products and each product was for a different market, for a different type of customer. So the entire setting up of the campaigns and creating, creating of ads and keywords all of that tripled. The amount of work for us tripled. So the poor specialist, our paid marketing specialist, she was out of bandwidth. She had other things to do. So we ended up, you know, I said yes, you know, in that kickoff meeting. I didn't, you know, I don't want to say no to the client. They were just happy that they signed. We were happy we got them as a client. So we ended up absorbing 3 times the work that we planned for. Obviously that ate up into our margin. Actually, there was no margin. We lost our shirt on this, on this client. And over time, after a couple months, the client just wasn't happy with the level of service and they left us. Horrible. I mean, I should have— I was still learning sales hours, I was still learning delivery. We should have bent over backward for this client. We should have— I should have left everything and worked with my marketing, paid marketing specialist to help her deliver this, this news to this new scope. But what happened, it's behind us. I learned from that. So, so here's, here's an example. That was an example of a vague scope or not documenting exactly what should happen, what will be taking place when it comes to delivery. that came back and bit us. So from your perspective, if you are struggling with delivery today, go back and check your contract. Was there some misunderstanding between you and the client about what is to be delivered, about the timeline? You're thinking you'll deliver in a month, they want it in a week. About potentially how, if you're doing something creative, maybe design, or you write content, How many iterations, how many different cycles of feedback is included, all of that, if you take care of it during sales, you will not suffer during delivery. And the good thing is I have a guide for you on taking care of all these issues during the sales process. So if you go to my channel and let me walk you through this for just a quick second. If you go to, um, where was it? Right here. I thought I had it right here. Yeah, if you go to, uh, @StartupWithFeras on YouTube and you go to the video section, or actually if you go to the homepage, there is the ultimate guide. You should be able to see it right here. You scroll down, this ultimate guide, not live, under videos, the ultimate guide to writing winning proposals. It's not just about writing the proposal. It is about— it's this video right here, uh, why most— we changed the title on the video, we're A/B testing— why most consultants lose deals at the proposal stage. It's an hour and 4-minute video on everything you need to do with templates, with examples in the sales process as you're negotiating, before you send the proposal, and then what to do after the proposal to win that proposal. And in there I talk a lot about scoping, properly scoping what's included, what's not included, how to get all that information from the client, put it in writing, and then get the client to sign off on it so that you can— you and the client have clarity on this project, and then you'll deliver with confidence. So if you're struggling with defining the scope of the work or the timeline or the milestones, or even if you have different levels of service— standard, gold, premium— if everything is— maybe if that's confusing the client, they're not sure what they're getting, you're not sure what you're delivering, check out this video on the proposal system that works. Again, it is based on over 2,000 proposals that I've sent or managed with my team over the years. So check that out to help you solve this pre-sales issue, okay? Because pre-sales issues will show up their ugly faces during delivery, and then, then they could cause a whole lot of problems for you. So that is, that is, um, the, the pre-sales. Now in terms of going back to— let me go back here. Yeah. There you go. Now in terms of this gap between sales and delivery, as I said earlier, so as a consultant, if you have team members, this is even more prominent, but let's say it's just yourself. The problems start and these expectations in the details, the things that you've included in the contract, but also things that you captured from your interaction with the clients, especially in B2B sales. There might've been 6 or 7 calls and meetings. Some of them might've been in person. There might've been several back and forth emails to clarify the scope, to clarify who's doing what. So all that information should be in the proposal, as I said, but at times some casual discussions, some phone calls, some emails, Some of the scope doesn't make it to the contract, so that's important to note. And then also how the client likes to be serviced. And this is the gap. See, in sales, you're educating the client about yourself and your skills. You are building trust. You know, you're optimistic, you're excited about selling. The client is also optimistic. They want to— selected you as this amazing consultant and you're trying to win. They want to make sure they have your attention and they'll benefit from your expertise. So that's all in sales. That's the mindset in sales for you and the client. The psychology of the buyer changes once they sign the contract. And also for you, you can't still operate in that same mindset. In delivery, you need structure because the client expects it. You need clarity on what's going to happen next. The client expects this, and you need control of, of what is— what the client could be throwing at you. And this happens all the time. You, you dealt with John throughout the whole pre-sales process till you've signed the contract. Now John asks Jim to be the point of interaction. the main point of contact for you for this client, and Jim doesn't have a whole idea about what you and John discussed in the sales process. So you need to also manage the expectation of the new stakeholders that typically show up after the contract is signed. So there's a gap between that sales mindset and the delivery mindset. And my solution for that gap is that you make it part of your process. You make this internal handoff from sales to delivery, you make that part of every project that you have. It's really important. And I have an example. I'll walk you through a template that you can leverage. People say, Feras, it's just me. What is this? This is silly. Who do I hand off to? I want you to set up a meeting, put it on your calendar, sales to delivery handoff. Trust me, it works. So I used to do it. Well, I had a business co-founder, so it was a bit different. But initially, I'd have to— we ran into a lot of issues because I wasn't sharing all the details with my co-founder, although he was sitting next to me, and we still have, you know, I thought I sold this, he ends up having to deliver that. All kind of issues between my co-founder and the client and between me and my co-founder because he's unhappy because I wasn't clear on what I sold. So I came up with this handoff process. This is 20-plus years ago and obviously evolved it over the years. When we were selling, you know, when we were selling $2,000 projects, it was one set of handoff documents. When we were selling $250,000 projects, it was a completely different and more more involved and evolved process. So, so, but early on, you want to capture in this internal handoff template, and in that meeting, you want to capture everything that's important to the client, their preferences. Maybe they're not the email type, they like you to text them if there's an issue or there's an update. Other people hate texting, never text them, right? So you have to bring that into the way you deliver your project. If you've committed to have in-person meetings for this client during the sales process, you might not have put that in the contract, but that's what you— you made that commitment. You have to honor that commitment, and you have to remind yourself that that is going to be on my calendar. Every Tuesday afternoon, I'm meeting with John, with John or Jim. So, so that is also important. If the client, the main point of contact, if they shared with you that, you know what, these 3 other stakeholders are really key to the success of this project, one of them is in IT and they're in charge of giving you access, and this other person is the head of marketing, she has to approve everything we do, and and then the CEO has to give the final blessing, right? So those are important pieces of information that you want to include, that you want to add to this internal handoff document. This way you reorient yourself from this sort of high-level operating at 10,000 feet with this main point of contact to get the contract signed. Now you're going to be on the ground. So everything has to be more explicit, more detailed, with some sort of structure. So let me walk you through this template, and if you like to get a copy of it, just leave me a comment. I'll, I'll, I'll send it to you. So if we go here, right there. Cool. Okay, so Here you go. And this is an example of someone who sells a speaking engagement placement. They, they go after people in the industry who want to be speakers and they help them secure speaking gigs, right? So, so then I won't go over the entire document again. It is available for you, just let me know. But basically you put all these info— all this information in this template. Basically the client name is Dr. Emily Hayes. It's a 6-month speaking placement strategy. It's $15,000. All that should be pretty straightforward from, from the contract. But now here, quote, copy and paste the exact statements that the client told you. Like, that's what they're passionate about. That's what's really important to them. I, I need to raise my profile and generate high-quality leads for corporate training workshops, right? I I want to be on 5 to 8 industry-leading podcasts. So that's the scope and there are 3 deliverables. And then obviously, if you watch that ultimate guide video on proposals, I'm a big fan of this section, what is not included, right? List everything that's not included and remind the client when you kick off the project, when you start to deliver the project, remind the client of what you told them that is not included. Part of the contract. In this example, you did not commit as, as a speaking, speaking engagement, uh, speaking engagement consultant, you do not commit to secure paid keynote slots, right? You'll get them paid, you'll get them speaking slots or keynote slot, but paid slot, that's a different level of service or something that you cannot guarantee, right? So, uh, you want them to provide— this might be silly, but it's really important to include and remind the client what is it that they should provide to help you succeed. So in this example, a high-res professional photo, right? Current biography, any talk outlines. You cannot read their mind. They have to give you this information. And then obviously access to their calendar so you can book meetings for them. Um, now internal approvals, right? This is important. She, Dr. Hayes, is the final decision maker. In other places, in other contracts, it could be some other people. So you have to remind yourself who to get approvals from, uh, what information you need access to. And then this is the stuff that's more of preferences and the stylistic things. So, so she likes Prefers brief bullet summaries. That's her preference. Your job as a consultant, to make the client happy, to satisfy, to delight the client. So use their preferences and their sensitivities. She's very busy, usually responds late in the evening, so make a habit to review it then or first thing in the morning so that you can, you can get— if you're looking for If she's responding in the evenings, it's not bad. It's not a bad idea to check. Let her know that, hey, I'll check my email for you because you're such a special client for me. Um, write when you are available so I can get back to you, so you can get back to me. And then instead of waiting 24 hours for her to respond to my email, I get my— what I need right away. So be flexible, especially early on. This is what will make these clients love you and refer you to others and also come back to you for more services. Uh, tone, uh, focus on API. Again, all these details, um, you can use for your own. Make a copy of this template and then use it as part of the process, add to it, remove from it. But it's a good template that I recommend, highly recommend you, um, use, uh, in your, in your workflow. Okay, so So that is on, on this transition. Let me go back. Now in terms of— hold on, let me go back. Yeah, you've done, you've done this internal handoff between you with a sales hat on and then you with a delivery hat on. Next is you send an onboarding email depending on the complexity of, of the service and what you're doing and the contract. Onboarding could be very, very elaborate, and I'll spend some time on it. I have a whole section on onboarding in The Ultimate Guide to Delivery that, that, that you can check out on the channel. But a lot of, a lot of consultants, they're so happy they closed the deal, they forget to follow up, and they don't understand the psychology of the buyer. Remember The buyer just signed the contract. They put their trust in you, and now they're waiting on your move. So if you go and disappear for two weeks or don't get back to them, don't let them know. You don't let them know what to expect. That trust that you build, it starts to erode. So make it part of your process once as soon as you've done this internal handoff between you and and. Your business partner or someone, a contractor, is helping you deliver. Or again, if it's just you, you're delivering, you're changing that mindset. Once you've done that, immediately you want to start this onboarding process. Onboarding, basically, it could be a simple email saying, thank you so much for signing the contract. It's an absolute honor to have you as a client. And then here's what will happen next. I need 2 days to turn the contract into the workflow. I need a week. Whatever you've set up, whatever expectation you've set in the contract during the negotiation process, during the sales process, reiterate that in this email and let the client know exactly what will happen next and when it will happen. This way you're managing, you're setting— this way you're setting expectations and then you're managing and exceeding those expectations. So give you an example. We just signed up with a consultant who's helping us with some speaking engagements, and, and he was very clear. He said no meetings after the initial discovery. I do everything over email, but I have this thorough, thorough system. If there's an emergency, we can set up a call. But in terms of expectations, you will get a weekly email from me on this day with what we've done the week before, what we are planning on doing the week after. And it's been over a month, and this consultant has been doing exactly what they promised. I'm happy. I have no other expectations except what I agreed to, what he set up with me, that he will send an email every week with the progress. And they've been They've been making— he and his team, they've been making amazing progress. So, so let me know, let the client know what is it will happen right after the contract is signed. And remember, the person who helped you get the contract signed, your main point of contact, they've built some trust. They've— you and them, they've— you've established some rapport, but there could be 3 or 4 or 5 or 10 other other stakeholders within that company that are in the dark. They don't know who you are yet. They don't know how great of a consultant you are. They are waiting to be told on what will happen next with this new amazing consultant that we have just signed up with. So make sure you are sending an email with what next, what will happen What will happen next and when it will happen. And as I always say, complexity demands formality. If you're selling a $1,000 project that you'll deliver in 3 days, you just need a quick email in terms of onboarding, just a quick email, here's what will happen next. But if you're selling a $50,000 project to a Fortune 1,000, you can't just send in a quick email for onboarding. You should have more structure. You might want to have Maybe a Loom video. You might want to have an onboarding, like a one-pager or a slide deck, or you might want to do something a bit more formal. Again, depending, depending on the complexity of your service, depending on the complexity of the project, depending on what the client is expecting and how other consultants have delivered services to them. There are certain standards as you go from selling to small businesses to mid-sized businesses, to the enterprise, and to Fortune 500 and Fortune 50, and I've sold to all of those. There's just different levels of expectations. When you go to the Fortune 500, the Fortune 50, they're hiring the McKinseys and the PwCs and the EYs who have very elaborate and sophisticated processes for everything, for contracts, for negotiation, for onboarding, for kicking off, so you want to be a bit more, a whole lot more formal and more sophisticated if you're starting, if you're going upmarket, but initially if you're going after small and mid-sized businesses, you don't need a whole lot of that process, okay? So that is onboarding, so we talked about watching out, let me go back to my graphics just so you know where we are. Right here. So this is what I shared earlier. Remember, we are— this is the sales process track right here on the left-hand side. We have discovery, proposal, negotiation. We got to a signed contract, a huge milestone. And then we covered the sales to delivery handoff. We just talked about onboarding the client. And then next is the external kickoff. And that's really, really important. So this is where you kick off the project with the client and everyone who's involved on the client side. The internal handoff, that was you internally, right? The external handoff is between you and your team and the client. So with that, going back. Good. So, and if you need a copy of this graphic, let me know. Happy to send it to you. Just leave me a comment. So the external kickoff, this is also super important. If the internal handoff was important, the external kickoff is twice as important. And a lot of clients, a lot of, a lot of consultants, they're happy the contract is signed and they start to execute. And then you jump into the work, you skip onboarding the client. You skip this external kickoff, and then clients start losing trust. Clients don't know what to expect, or worse, they have specific expectations. They think you're delivering this audit within 3 days, and you cannot start the audit because you don't have access, and you need to beg their IT department to prioritize your request for access so that you can get the job done. So in this external kickoff that I am highlighting and highly recommending, this is a perfect time to go on site if it's a larger project and that's what you told the client, or if it's ver— if it's virtual on Zoom, on Google Meet, that's fine. But in that meeting, you should be Resetting expectations, reiterating what the contract said, what's included, what's not included, and then if there are new people who are involved, this is the perfect timing for you to introduce yourself and to also summarize, reiterate what this contract is about. See, a lot of things happen, especially in B2B, especially in larger projects. There could be anywhere from 5 to 10 other stakeholders involved, and each come to the project with specific expectations, with specific objectives in mind, with specific questions or question marks about, about your ability to solve this problem because they've hired 2 other consultants in the past and those consultants could not do the work. So you don't know, you don't know. People have all kinds of experiences with consultants. So in this kickoff meeting You introduce yourself, you summarize the problem as you understood it, and by now you should really have a deep understanding. By the time you get the contract signed, you should have a deep understanding of the client, their needs, their wants, their wishes, the problems you're solving. And then in this kickoff meeting, you summarize all of that. You show your knowledge of the problem, your proposed solution, the approach to solving the problem, your understanding of their industry, their competition, all that will establish more trust, more confidence in you with the people that, with the people whom you haven't spoken with, you hadn't spoken with during the sales process. So in this external kickoff meeting, you summarize what the contract is, any verbal discussions, any last-minute requests that did not make it to the contract, You highlight that. You also tell people what the first milestone is. You tell people if you have a project manager or maybe your business partner will be coming in to lead the delivery, you introduce them as well. You show their credentials. All of that is done in the kickoff meeting. And if you're looking for a template, I have a template on for kickoff somewhere. I can find it. Just let me know. Leave me a comment. I will send you— I'll find the kickoff meeting template and share it with you. So that is— those are the things that I wanted to cover today. A couple of things before we wrap it up. One is that it will be super helpful, it will help you establish a lot of credibility if you can deliver some early win. Let's say your first— let's say you're doing an IT— let's say you're an IT consultant, you're a cybersecurity consultant, and The first deliverable is a thorough audit of their remote devices and their security system and making sure they're on the latest software for antivirus and all that good stuff, and that will take you a couple of weeks to deliver. You might want to do something very quickly. For example, say here's an internal— here's a recent report from your industry potential hack threats, for example. You might go in as you get access to their system and find something that can be a quick— of high value to someone right away. Let's say they've been blocked from using a specific software because of certain threats, and you can maybe find a workaround or a way to do it. Whatever the case might be, if you're an HR consultant, maybe a quick fix to the HR manual that they have, the employee manual. Obviously, if you're doing an audit on their employee manual, it's a thick document, you might need 2 weeks to do that, but you might— maybe you find something like early on, like something that is out of compliance of some new regulation, point that out very quickly. They can amend their existing HR manual so this way they've benefited from your knowledge and expertise right away. So, so don't disappear. I— if sometimes it's difficult to do this depending on what you're selling, but if there's any chance for you to offer something really early on above and beyond what you committed in the contract, it does leave a very good taste with the clients. They, they say, oh my God, this person exceeded expectations already. So it doesn't have to be It doesn't have to be something big, some— something here, something that they find something of value. It could be a training session. A— again, this is above and beyond what's in the contract. Say, hey, I'll do a quick Zoom with all the stakeholders and do a quick review of X, right? X is of value to people. So instead of, again, disappearing for a couple weeks and then coming back with this big reveal, if you can do something incremental, something new something small quickly. I think that is very important. Of course, of course, in terms of the whole project management aspect, this is all— the whole session today is about pre-sales to handing off the project to doing this external kickoff and onboarding. The entire project management lifecycle, that's something I cover in The Ultimate Guide to Delivery. like a 50-minute video on that, but, but I want you to really make sure what you do pre-sales does not harm your delivery, and then how you, you handle these 2 points of interaction— the internal, internal handoff from sales to delivery, and then also the external handoff from the signed contract to starting, starting to, to work on the project. So scoping— these are, these are the early mistakes that I want you to avoid during the, the sales process. I want— I know you want to close the deal, so don't say yes to everything unless deliberately you want to do that. If you haven't sold yet and you just want to get that first client, yes, you, you don't have to make money on that first project. That's okay. But if this is your 10th project and and your margin is suffering, then reconsider saying yes to everything. The second issue that I see a lot, a lot of time, which we covered throughout the session, is poor communication. You're not communicating about what will happen next and when it will happen, and then not managing expectations, and then waiting too long to show the work. So that's, that is it for today. For those of you, I see we have some comments. Let me see if we have some questions from From the community, I did get a couple questions and I'll answer those. But let me see what we got live first. MDN MDN seventy-two, please send me a copy. Okay, if I will do that. Very good content. Thank you. I appreciate it. Thanks a lot for sharing. I'm happy to share. So I you know what I'll do is I'll put a I'll put a link to that. You can email me at info@startupwithferas.com. I'll send you a copy, or I can just— I'll just add a link to the template in the description for, for this live stream. Okay, but here's, uh, let me know, for those of you who are live, let me know if you have any questions. Happy to answer that. I did get a couple of questions ahead of time. What's been harder for you, getting clients or delivering? Oh my goodness, both were difficult. Sequentially, from a timeline perspective, getting the first client was really, really hard. It took me 6 to 7 weeks, and my co-founder and I, it took us 7 weeks to get that very first client. So it was really hard. We almost quit. We thought we can't do this, and we got a whole lot of rejections. So that was really difficult. Now, once we signed that deal and we celebrated, It was very, very difficult to deliver that very first project. And if you look at it now, it was a 4-page website, a simple— no e-commerce, nothing. 4 pages for a small restaurant, menu items, text and images, and a form if someone had a question, contact us form. That's it. And it took us 3 months to deliver that very first project. So if you're struggling with delivery, It's just part of, part of that muscle. It's another muscle. So you have to build a sales muscle, and then you have to build the delivery muscle. I mean, things come up that you never thought of. Like, for example, with that one client, we went and we went with them. They're local, and we'd go and eat there, and I would get all the information I need. And then they didn't have pictures. I mean, this is, again, this is for me, this is 2003. There were no iPhones. So, so getting pictures, uh, images of their food, of their dishes, was a challenge. So what I ended up doing is we had a high school intern, great guy, very resourceful. I said, okay, go, I'll pay you $10 an hour, go and during their lunchtime and take pictures of the different dishes. So that's how we got around it. They were not the best pictures, but they did the job at the time. I mean, now I would do it differently. Now I would include a line item. If I were selling websites today, I would include a line item You can provide the pictures, Mr. Client, and they have to be high quality so they look great on the website. We can use AI-generated pictures, or I have a partner, a photographer, who would come in and do a superb job of making those dishes just look alive on your website. So I would give clients option, and I would say the photographer, it'll be $1,000. If it's AI, it's included, we have it part of our pricing. Or if you're providing this make sure I get them within 1 week of signing. So, so again, you learn all these things when you have to do and deliver the work. So that's one of the questions. I have another question from Larry1891. Uh, Larry, thank you. So Larry1891, thank you for the question. Let me put it up here. It says, um, thank you for sharing, Feras. You are most welcome. I'm hoping to get my first client, not sure what else to do. Uh, your question is not sure what else to do in terms of, in terms of delivering to the client or in terms of getting more leads? I'm not clear. Let me see this. Social media. Okay, so it sounds like, yeah, yeah. So, so I mean, I'm hoping to get my first client soon, so, so I'm a big proponent of meeting people and networking and practicing your pitch and practicing your active listening skills. So if you happen to— I'm not saying social media is bad. I'm not saying paid ads are bad. I'm not saying putting an ad in a newspaper— all of these marketing channels, and there are hundreds, there are tens of them, From earned media to social media, shared media to to paid media. There are many of them, but initially, especially if you said your first client, so that sounds like you're a new consultant. Most of your new most of the first clients for most people they come from your network. So I would say start with your network. So if you happen to live in a place where maybe in a small town or somewhere where you're target audience, people you sell to, are not local. So you have to do things online or potentially travel to a nearby city where there's an event, or maybe go to a conference where you can network with people. So I'm a big proponent, and that's what worked for me all the years. Even, even when we got to selling, start to sell to Fortune 1000 and Fortune 500, I still I still dedicated time to be out there. I was speaking at conferences at that time. This is, you know, 10+ years in learning our craft at the time. And then I was still involved in our association, our industry association. I was a mentor. I was starting to be really active in the community. And that always, always, always, always brought us exposure, brought us leads. So I would say, if you haven't Um, Larry1891, if you haven't watched the video that I have on the ultimate guide to starting a consulting business, go to that. If you go to the homepage on my channel, it's the first— it says start here— that very first video. It's a— I believe it's a 51-minute video, so it's, it's long, but I go through the exact process with templates and worksheets on, on getting your first clients. So I, I'm a big believer of outreach to your network, to your warm network, your ex-colleagues, ex-clients— unless there's some confidentiality non-compete— to your ex-suppliers, uh, people you've worked with, people whom you've left a positive impression on. They'll, they'll be there to support you. Not everyone will reply, not everyone will send you a lead, but many will be willing to help you and to get the word out to, to their to their network. So hopefully this is helpful. Any— I have one more question I got I will answer. Meanwhile, for those of you who are live, feel free to leave a comment. I will be more than happy to address it today. Um, let's see. Um, do you recommend— do you currently use any kind of project structure or just manage things in your head? No, my friend, I don't manage things in my head, especially I mean, it's a different level of, of projects now, and I'm doing other things. But when I was running, when I was starting, I always bring examples from when I was starting. I'm a big believer of, of using systems, using processes. You can start off with a Google spreadsheet, with an Excel spreadsheet or a Google Sheet worksheet. Just start listing. Have one tab for pre-sales, one tab for sales, one tab for delivery. Start listing the things that you want to do. I'm going to a networking event. What should I do? Okay, practice my pitch, understand who the attendees are, understand, um, find a way to— okay, I'm going to scan their cards, I want to capture business cards, I want to connect with them on LinkedIn. There's a feature on LinkedIn when you click on the search box, you can then immediately connect with the person. So, so just be ready. And then after the event, as soon as I get back from the event, even if it's late at night, I will put all those contact information, all the contact information in a spreadsheet. I will, the next morning, I'll send a follow-up email. So make a system of your own. It could be as simple as a Google spreadsheet. And then over time, you can use a lot of these low-cost or no-cost tools. You can use something like Asana. You can use something— I use Notion now in one of the businesses. In the other business, we use We use HubSpot and we use other task— what is it? ClickUp, I think. I forgot the name of it now. Very, very, very well-known one. I can't believe I forgot the name of it now. But the point is, but we have a number of employees. We have a remote work structure. So we cannot— we live and die by these systems. So even if it's just you, I would definitely find a system. Start with a Google Sheet and then use Asana or Notion or Basecamp or one of these systems. And, and they're all— most of them have a free, free subscription. You can try it out. If you don't like it, try something different. So the last question here before we wrap it up, again, if you are live with us, feel free to add your comment or your question or something that worked well for you, uh, in, in terms of managing clients' expectations. I'd love, I'd love to hear your wins and about what you're doing out there in the field. So, uh, let's see. What if the client is unclear about what they want? No way. Clients unclear? So I'm big on delighting the customers. I'm, you know, I made a lot of mistakes in that, in that category early on. So, so big on delighting the customer, big on bending over backward to make the client Happy. A lot of times, the client—they're focused on the business outcome, their business on saving cost, making more money. They don't know that jargon. They don't know what's included, what's not included. So so it's not that the clients are trying to get you; they just—they're not clear. So it's on you. It's on you, the consultant, the expert, to. To share with the client what's included, what's not included. So again, I gave several examples in this session today. I'll give you other examples. So when we were selling e-commerce websites, again, this, this is 2004, 2005, early, early internet. I mean, e-commerce was new. I had no idea. So, so we would sell these initial first few projects. They were just Oh my goodness, they were awful in terms of us losing money because the scope was significant and I sold it for pennies. But basically, I sold the client, yeah, you want e-commerce? We will do an e-commerce website. And 2-page contract, we're done. $5,000. I was happy I closed the deal. We should have sold that for $15,000 because ecommerce, there's so many features, there's so many capabilities. So if the client wanted to have a lot of those features that the product that we were using and reselling did not have these features, that we had to go back to the product owner and ask them to customize these features to meet the client's needs. So the client, they might go on Amazon and see all these features that Amazon has, and they want the same features for their website. So you can tell them it's going to cost you a million dollars, right? So, so as you sell and as you deliver projects, you'll have a better idea of educating the client. Initially, you'll make mistakes. You won't know what to include, what not to include. You won't know the client preferences. And it's okay for the first couple of projects. It's okay go and do more work and deliver to the client and make them happy and get that testimonial from them, get that case study from them, that is okay. But over time, you're learning from every project that you're doing. And these days you can go and search on Claude or ChatGPT and, and like, what are the common issues? Give it a lot of context. I'm a consultant in this area, I sell to this audience. Give it that context What should I be asking for? What should I be avoiding? Um, you know, speak with peers in your industry, speak with potentially— even if you speak with competitors initially, it might be awkward to speak with competitors, but they could be people in adjacent industries. They don't work with a client the same client size that you work with. So do your own research and go to these sales meetings or to these networking events, and when you're pitching, go and, and and make it clear to the client what is it that you're delivering, what is it that you're not delivering, and what is it for them to do for you to be successful. So that is— that's really important. So yes, it is. You'll get better at it over time. Over time, you'll have that, you know, the, the 10 things that, that clients always ask about, and you can include them as part of the deliverable and adjust the pricing accordingly. Or you can say this These will not— out of the 10 things that people always ask for, 8 are included, and then item 9 and 10, these are extra for this line, you know, and have a price, you know, line item for that. Okay. All right. So we thank you. So we have actually another— this is from Ahmed, uh, @key3996. Thank you for being on this live stream, and thank you for the comment. Let me read. Major challenge is when my client gets pressure from their company's top management for tight deadline, and then because our rates are high, the expectations are high. Well, I'm happy to hear that your rates are high. That's good. A lot of people try to compete on price. That was initially— it's okay, later it's not. So, so I think, um, Ahmed, I'm not sure when those discussions are happening. If it's Presales is one thing. If they're happening after the contract is another. So when you're negotiating the contract, I'm assuming you're defining the scope, your high rates, awesome, and you're providing with this high— with your high rates, I'm assuming you're offering premium service. So that's great. I think in that sales process, right, clearly define the timelines. Now, to the extent that you can have milestones and sub-milestones and also dependencies on what the client should be doing, I think that will help a lot. A lot of— I learned this the hard way so many times early on. I didn't know, like I couldn't deliver something if, like when we were doing analytics, I would commit to a 1-week timeframe to do a complete audit, and we would work really hard to do that. It'll be a thorough audit. People would love it. But if I don't get— let's say we signed the deal on Monday. Next Monday they'll have the audit. If I don't get access to the analytics, to the data, till Thursday or Friday of that week, then I have the weekend to do the work, and that's not sufficient because a lot of times they're back and forth questions to get from the client to make the audit to make it very, very specific and custom for them. So the trick I learned at the time was that instead of saying in my proposal document, you'll have the audit 1 week from signing the contract, I would say the first milestone, in this case the audit, will be 1 week from— and I would list all the dependencies. 1 is having the kickoff meeting. 2 having access to the system, and 3, having answers to our questions within 24 hours. So again, tweak these conditions to whatever works for your business. But initially when I started, I would say I'll do it in a week, and the client will take 3 days to sign the contract, and they're still expecting a week from when I said I'll do it in a week. Later I learned, okay, I will do it in a week from signing the contract. That wasn't me. That was an improvement into my process. That was an improvement to my process. And then later I learned that I'd be more granular in the things I need as a consultant to deliver. And then I would list those as dependent. I would be very— don't put these in fine print. No, just be very upfront. Again, make it easy for the client. You don't want to You don't want to have like a 50-page document as a proposal, you know, you'll lose the deal, but on critical things, especially these early, the early phase of the engagement, you want to exceed expectations, you want to impress the point of contact, you want to make them look great within the company because they chose you, so you want them to look like champions, they made the right choice, so you have to manage those expectations really, really well. I hope that's helpful. So you said here, again, it's from Ahmed, thank you. So you're describing a situation that I'm facing now where key information are still missing and I keep updating the client on the impact of missing data on delivery plan. Yeah, it is common. So, and the issue, I hear you, I hear your pain, and at times top management is you know, they signed the contract, they paid you that initial amount, and they're expecting some results, and you can't do anything because you're waiting on them. So you don't want to be nagging like every hour and emailing and texting, but you really have to like do everything you can with that that's not dependent on the client. But if you have multiple points of contact within the company, you might want to just let them know on one email thread, hey folks, here's the update. We— I've got the resources, I've got myself and my team ready. We are now— the project is on hold. We're really— we cannot make any progress till we have access. What is it that I can do to help you? And at times it could be you need approval from IT for you to do the work, right? So can you provide that you have certifications, you have compliance, you have whatever it is? So I mean, you know your situation more than I do. But if you're stuck because of the client, you really wanna be on top of it, and sometimes, again, it could be political, it could be something they can't say in writing, so if you can meet them in person, if it's feasible, that would be great. They can tell you exactly what's going on, or at least maybe on a Zoom call, on a Google Meet, and understand where the holdup is. Otherwise, they'll wait till like 2 days before, Otherwise, they'll wait 2 days before the deliverable is due and then they say, hey, here's access now, get it to me over the weekend. So yeah, it is not an easy situation, I agree with you, but you got to be on top of it, you got to, and again, that would be a learning for the next proposal you send, and I think people are afraid to mention this during the sales process because they don't want to scare the clients off, No, but I think it shows sophistication. It shows that you know the space really well when you come and say, hey, we'll take care of everything. We are a do-it-for-you, DFY type of consultant, you know, premium rates, premium service. We'll come in and take care of A to Z. I just need your help in these 3 things to help me get this job done. So, so when you— if let's say you're competing for this, for this client and you have 3 other consultants also bidding, and you come in and you show all the, you know, because everybody will say, oh, we know this stuff cold, da da da da, but when you go into these potential issues upfront and you tell the client, in our work with other clients, we run into these 4 areas of concerns, I want to be upfront with you about it, and if we work together on these issues ahead of time, we will deliver on time and you'll be very happy. So actually having these conversations and showing the clients in the sales process the potential challenges that typically happen in a client situation, actually it'll show how good of a consultant, how— it'll show off your experience without you saying I'm experienced or I have expertise, just showing the potential blocks in the road ahead of time so that you and the client can navigate this is really important, especially when it comes to access to data and IT. Had a lot of experience in that. It could, it could just kill the whole, the whole project. All right, so another comment here. Yeah, agree, no nagging, but making sure there's a record of missing data requests made. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. And again, it's not, it's not like you're trying to cover your back. No, you want to do it in a collaborative way. Just show them that everything is on hold and I'm here to help. And you tell them, kind of make, make them feel bad just a little bit. I have my— I dedicated resources for this and now they're on hold. I can't put them on another project. They're waiting to work for you, but you're holding me back. So be nice about it, but yeah, be, be upfront about it too. All right, that is it for today. So for those of you who are not, um, following the YouTube channel Go ahead and click the like button if you like what you're hearing, and subscribe, share it with other founders, especially in the consulting space, and then let me know, let me know if you have any questions after this session. I'll be more than happy to answer them. We, we are about to release this Ultimate Guide to Service Delivery, and I'll have a couple of live streams on delivery. It's an important component of growing the business. Once you've figured out how to sell, or at least have some sales under your belt, it's all about delivery. It's all about satisfying, delighting those clients, because they will sing your praises and they will get you referrals. They will have the case studies for you. They'll come back for more business. So taking care of the clients and having a system that will scale so that you become more of an owner, not a day-to-day operator— that is the ultimate goal, that you're not working as much in the system, you're working on— that you're not working so much in, in the business, you're working on the business. That's where I want you to get over time. So stay tuned and we'll see you next time. Have a good one.