How to Pitch Your Services and Create Proposals

You can always come back and check out the replay. Alrighty. That is enough out of me for the moment. I would like to pass this off now to Terry Rice, our business development expert. So, Terry, take it away.

Thank you so much for the introduction and just to make sure, before I get into it, can you all hear me? Okay. Can you see me? Okay, we get there, take that as a yes. So I'll keep moving on here, but one thing I want to encourage you all to do is just to focus for this next hour. And I know we all have a lot going on right now, but I want you to shut down some of those folders that are already open in your head and just lock in for the next hour. One of my best tips for doing that is just to wiggle your toes right now. Remind yourself where you are and definitely take notes. But do be aware that this is being recorded and I'm going to give you a link to get a copy of the deck directly from my website. So just focusing on being present, not necessarily trying to document everything that you see.

All right.

And along with those distractions, I have three kids here. I'm hoping none of them come barging in, but they might make an appearance. We'll see. But they like learning as well. So I'm going to go ahead and share my screen and once I do that, if you can just let me know if you can see that. Okay, that would be great as well. So let me do this and if you can just let me know in the chat window, yes or no, if you can see my screen. Okay. And if so, I will go ahead and get rolling here.

Cool.

Looks like we're good. Sweet. So let's go in here. So yeah, as said previously, I'm a business development consultant. And what does that mean? I help knowledge based entrepreneurs grow their business.

Right.

I help with the. The way they're going to present yourself, the way you're going to structure your services, the way you're going to price them and obviously help you how you're going to help, how you're going to attract clients to you. But I want to make sure you're attracting the right clients that you want to work with. Then you're a friend of their future.

Right.

And we'll talk about that later. And then beyond that, I'm also a digital, sorry, a business development expert in residence and Entrepreneur magazine. And the fun part of that is I get to interview a lot of entrepreneurs and then from there I'll learn their best practices, try it out on myself. And if it works, I teach it to you as well, right? Somewhat conduit between some of these people that are like best in class at what they do and a larger audience. Before that I worked at Facebook. I also worked at Adobe and consulting roles. That's where I honed my craft as a consultant. And again, that's what I help people do as well, to monetize their knowledge. Also a mentor at techstars and the NYU Entrepreneur Institute. I also have my contact information here. Here's my social handles, Instagram, there's my email if you want to jot that down. Where one of the most important things to think about right now is if you want to get a copy of this deck, I made a bitly for you. It's just bitly backslash, rice, my last name and then 4:30.

Right?

So if you want to screenshot this now, I will have it up later in the deck as well. But if you want to get this now, it's a good time to do so. But let's get rolling. So like I said, I help people monetize their knowledge. And one of the most common questions I get is this, how do I get more clients and how much should I charge? And yes, we want to get there, but it actually starts here. How are you reflecting an understanding of your audience's challenges or aspirations?

Right?

Because one of my favorite quotes is this. People don't care how much you know until they know how much you care. So if you can't reflect that you actually care about them and understand them, they're not going to care about your rates or how you're packaging it.

Right.

Then the next step is what solution have you created that would make you their obvious choice? And this all comes from doing a deep, deep research on your target audience, right? You don't want to assume things.

Okay.

So one way to reflect that understanding is this three step storytelling process is another good one to take a screenshot of.

Right?

If you can tell this story of your audience, you're already in a really good spot to communicate with them better, where they'll want to learn more about your services. So the first step is, hey, you know how you're in this situation? Well, what I do is how you solve the problem or meet a desire. And in fact, here's proof of my expertise. Three steps. This is all you need to know to do to show people that you understand them and your position to help them solve the problem. Here's how it looks for me.

All right?

You know how it can be Challenging to figure out the best way to launch and scale your consulting business. You want to help people, but the overall process can be extremely confusing and frustrating. Well, what I do is I help you focus on impact by discovering and implementing the critical steps aligned with your desired revenue and lifestyle. In fact, I've helped hundreds of consultants launch their careers and have helped established consultants increase their revenue by $50,000 in just one year. So you all need to have a general way to reflect this to your understanding, your audience as well. And. And you're going to have different variations. How you put it on your website, how you communicate in social media, how you talk in real person, person to person as well. But you have to have this nailed down. If you're struggling to complete this exercise, that means you need to do more research on your audience and how you're going to help them, because you should be able to rattle through this relatively quickly, right? So if you're struggling here, that's fine, but you got to go back and say, okay, well, let's see. Like, how do I. How do I better reflect my understanding of their audience and how I could help them?

Right?

So three simple steps. Another thing you want to do is create a positioning statement. This is not an elevator pitch. This is a very succinct statement where you're saying, I am a. Whatever your title is, I help this specific audience so they know you're talking to you, achieve this specific outcome.

All right?

So I am a. I help this audience achieve this specific audience. And the reason why you want to say this succinctly is you want to get to the point quickly, to the point where people are like, oh, tell me more about this.

Right?

So it's not an elevator pitch. And I'm sure you've had that happen. You're at a networking event, and someone gives you their elevator pitch, and you're like, can you, like, blink or, like, stop making eye contact for a second or something? You don't want to be that person, Right? You just want to get to the point. Here's what mine looks like. I am a business development consultant, and I help entrepreneurs and consultants monetize their knowledge so they can grow their business without sacrificing their health, family, or personal interests. Now, that last part is unique because often you meet coaches like, oh, I'm gonna push you to your limits. They're gonna make you do this and that. You're gonna, you know, burn the midnight oil and hustle harder. I'm like, man, I don't have time for that because I have three kids, so I have to be as efficient as possible with my time and I want to have more time to spend with my kids, my health and any kind of other personal interests. So that's who I want to attract. I want to show you how to do these things as efficiently as possible. So you can also do that without sacrificing your health, your family or personal interest.

Right?

So I'm really big on focusing on impact and that's why I want to attract to me, I want to say, look, there's no reason you can't be happy with your business life and still fulfilled in your personal life as well. Let me show you the way, right? Let me show you how I do it. And lately the way I've been doing it is I've been waking up at 4:30 in the morning so I can get my most important work done before one of my three kids wakes up. So in those two hours that I have in the morning, I'm super efficient. And that's the way I would teach my clients to behave as well. Hopefully not wake up at 4:30 in the morning. But it is what it is. Now let me help you make it easier, right? Or at least clearer. That's the way I position myself. And if you go to my website, same thing I say, get paid for who you are instead of just what you do. Because the value of your knowledge is contextual. And, and I want to show you how to scale the amount you're getting paid based on the situation you're in. So if you're a consultant, maybe I can help you also get paid speaking gigs or how to monetize it through an online course. But then I go back to saying exactly what I do. I help entrepreneurs and consultants monetize their knowledge. So on your website again, you want to declare this statement. You want to have a picture of yourself looking at something aspirationally as well. You know, don't just hide behind a logo or something. But you're building a personal brand in this case, right? No matter what you do. If you're a photographer, you know, if you're a wedding planner, whatever it is your personal brand. And this is how you're going to make that first initial connection with them being very clear on who you are. So you also have to clearly define your process.

All right?

And here's where you might run into trouble. Since you're an expert, you're like, oh, all these things are obvious. They don't need all these details. Yes they do. You want to detail the sequential steps that leads them to where they want to be and reflect an understanding of all the challenges along the way.

Right.

So pretend like they're at step A, how do you get them to their desired outcome? But don't gloss over the details because even if they already know some of that stuff, they're going to say, good, I'm glad you know this. Now tell me more. All right, so don't skip over the details because I've talked to people before where I'm like, what do you do? Like, well, it kind of depends. Sometimes I do this, sometimes I do that, and other times like, look, just what do you do? You know, like, I understand it depends on, and that's fine. But if you don't seem very clear on how you get someone from A to B, no one's going to want to align with you.

Right?

Sure. You're going to shift and you're going to make it bespoke. That's fine. You should say, here's where I start. Now how can I make it specific to you? Let's, let's talk. Let me ask some questions. So I have a very clearly defined process and I have some people, especially creatives, they're like, I don't like being defined in a box with process. And I say, you know what, process gives you the freedom to be creative and here's why. Let's pretend you're doing like a dance competition. You're doing like the cha cha or whatever. There are certain steps aligned with the cha cha that you have to do in order for it to be declared. Yes, that's the cha cha. But as long as you adhere to those things, you can get as creative as you want. And that's how you win the competition. But if you start doing like the Electric Slide or something, people can say, dude, that is not the cha cha you lost.

Right?

So the benefit of having a process is so long as you follow those steps, you can get as creative and bespoke as you would like to.

Right?

So it's not going to take away your creativity. It's going to give you these guardrails to make sure you still reach the desired outcome that your audience is looking for. So this is my process for when I'm helping people launch their consulting business or scale it or any kind of knowledge based service. Follow what I'm saying, because you need to have the same thing, the same five, six, seven bullet points to take them from point A to point B. So these are my five pillars of consulting success. The first thing is clarity.

Right?

We're going to nail down the services you offer, how much to charge, who you offer them to, and why you're the obvious choice. Next thing, business process. I want to help you focus on doing what you love by implementing routines and apps such as Honeybook to help you streamline your business process.

Right.

This is really big because you want to operate in your zone of genius, and maybe sending out proposals and following up afterwards is not your zone of genius.

Right.

You're really good at some kind of consulting or really good at photography.

Cool.

Let's use an app like Honeybook to solve for that so you can spend more time operating in your zone of genius. Then there's marketing and branding. Right. How do you position yourself and provide value to your audience? And do what I call passive prospecting, which we'll get more into later. Few events, podcasts and social media. Next thing, pitching proposals. We're going to talk about that a lot today, so I'll gloss over that one. And then lastly, fulfillment. How do you deliver.