Nicolas Cole pitched a $3,000-per-month content package to a lingerie brand CEO who asked for a discount. Cole refused to negotiate on the call, the client accepted the original price within minutes, and stayed for three and a half years. The lesson: present your price, step away, and follow up later.
When I was starting my agency and we were still trying to get our first handful of clients and we were doing outreach, we were doing everything that we're talking about here. We did outreach to this woman. She was the CEO of a women's lingerie brand. And we saw that she had just raised a big round and we saw that in the news and we were like, you know what? There's like some thought leadership here. Let's reach out to her. So we found her email, we reached out and we got on a call with her and we explained, here's our offer. Like, I think we had one client, like we were desperate and we reached out to her and we were like, here's how we can help you. And we charge, and this was early days, we charge like $3,000 a month for like 2 articles a week. She goes, "Oh, okay, let me think about it." We get off the call and she emails us a day later and goes, "Hey guys, I thought about it. It's just a little outside of what I budgeted for this year. They just raised $30 million. It's a little bit outside of what I budgeted this year, but it is something that I would really like to do. Would you be willing to do it at a discount?" And I will never forget me and my best friend sitting on his balcony. We were desperate, like desperate for clients and cash. And we sat on the balcony and we had a whole conversation about it. And we were like, "If we discount this thing, like this is going to suck. Like we're going to resent it. I think we should just hold our ground. And we emailed her back and we said, we really stand by the quality of our work. We're really good at this one thing. And so this is the package we offer. We'd love to work with you, but we understand if it's outside your budget. It was one back and forth. It wasn't some massive negotiation. She literally emailed us back 20 minutes later and went, okay. And she proceeded to be one of our longest standing clients. She was with us for like 3 and a half years. She sent us all sorts of business, co-founder friends. She was always referring us business. And it got to the point where we had built such a good relationship. We flew out to San Francisco, we met her, we went to her whole office. We built built a great relationship with her. And then she started just prepaying us for the whole year upfront. She was like, guys, I trust you. You trust me. I'll just give you all the cash upfront. Just keep doing what you're doing. It was one of the biggest learning experiences for me in my entire career. And I tell that story to share that the vast majority of the time when you just stand your ground and you go, no, I'm really good at this thing and this is how much it costs. The other person goes, okay. So that's why you should never negotiate on the call ever. You should always get off the call, let them sit with it, and then follow up with them.
What Every Writer Gets Wrong About Their Audience #writing #creator #writingtips
