Coaching Session With Lain – Goals And Confidence Levels
A slightly manic writer, speaker, and deep thinker – Lain Ehmann
How to break down your yearly money goals into monthly numbers. How to raise prices across the board for every client you currently have. What you should and shouldn’t bill into your final cost of your project. What you should and shouldn’t bill into your final cost of your project. How to get out of the hourly mindset. Types of questions to ask during sales calls so your prospects realize how much money they’re losing by not hiring you. A simple exercise to assess you current confidence levels. LainEhmann.com
Hey! I’m Lain, and I’m your human guinea pig.
Just kidding!
I’m a business/marketing communications strategist and copywriter, and I worked with Jaime last year in the Million Masters group coaching program and made tremendous strides. She helped me transform my consumer-facing business into a professional services business, pretty darned fast. (You can hear my story here).
Long story short, in 2016 I went from shutting down an online events company and having ZERO idea what I wanted to do, to bringing in a consistent $8-$10K per month via copywriting and marketing consulting by the end of the year. Yahoo!
When Jaime mentioned she was looking for someone to do live coaching with for her audience, I jumped at the chance. Now that my business is headed in a new direction, I want to build? leverage? grow? AND MAKE MORE MONEY! 🙂
Anyway, I’ll be writing these posts on a regular basis to tell you how the coaching is going and what discoveries and changes I’m making along the way. Stay tuned!
Synopsis
In this, our first coaching session, Jaime walked me through my financial goals: Where I want to be by year-end, and, given my current average project size, how many projects I’d have to complete this year and this month.
Those numbers were a bit staggering.
At an average project price of $1500, I’d need to complete 14 projects a month — or 4 or so per week — to reach my annual goal of $250,000.
ACK!
That quick analysis told us a few things really fast:
- I need to be valuing my time more
- I need to bump up my prices to cover the “incidentals” and “extras” that clients ask for so I’m not losing money, nor having to “nickel and dime” them.
- I need to propose more options to my clients so I’m not just selling them a small project.
We also talked about how to quantify my results for people who ask for metrics. This is really hard for me, first, because I’m not a details person, and second, because I haven’t gone back to my clients to see what kind of ROI I’ve gotten them.
Well, that’s gonna change!
Jaime has charged me with getting conversion rales and asking past clients about the specific metric changes they’ve achieved by working with me.
The other thing we talked a lot about was confidence? you’d think after being online for over a decade, I’d be more confident in my skills and abilities.
And we discovered that while I internally am really confident, I don’t convey that confidence externally.
In fact, while my internal confidence is a 7-8 (on a scale of 1-10), my external confidence is only a 3!
That is my second “ack!” for this session. (No wonder I’m hesitant to quote my prices!) If I know Jaime, she’ll whip that out of me in no time. 😉
One final thing we talked about is how it’s critical that I present packages to my prospects LIVE. I tend to create a lovely proposal in writing and just email that out.
No more? Now, my new process is:
- At end of discovery call, schedule a time for the next call to discuss the proposal
- Send the written proposal just before the next call so I can walk them through it live
This will be hard as it’s really uncomfortable. But that’s what this is all about…
Topics Covered
- Annual revenue goal, broken down into monthly and weekly numbers
- Project proposals and how to handle requests for ROI
- Confidence!
Action Items
- What did you deliver for my clients, how much did I charge – what value did they get?
- Outline each package and what each includes
- Email for 5 more testimonials AND referrals (and ask testimonial from last week for another referral like the one he already gave)
- Call myself a strategist! 🙂
GOAL 2 weeks – set the packages and get ONE new client under the new packages 🙂
One product – One Funnel – Whole biz (white glove)
In Reflection?
Looking back at this session from the distance of a couple of months, I see how I’ve made big progress on some of these items and still have a long way to go with others!
I would say my internal and external confidence levels are moving closer together — I’m at least an external 4 now! 😉
I also have started consistently pitching higher packages, with some success. (And I present my proposal live on the phone or Skype, not just via email.) I’ve been asking for testimonials more regularly, too.
BUT? I’ve been really bad about processes and systems, and it’s clear this is going to rear up and bite me big time, as I’m spending way too much time creating custom solutions, repeating work I’ve already done, and in general not working very “smart.” I have a feeling we’re going to be tackling that soon?
Stay tuned!
Thanks so much for listening!
Lain Series
Part1 – Coaching Session With Lain: Goals And Confidence Levels
Part2 – Coaching Session With Lain: Packages And Pricing
Part3 – Coaching Session With Lain: Selling Like A Pro
Part4 – Coaching Session With Lain: Her Biggest Month EVER
Part5 – Coaching Session with Lain: On-boarding a Team Member
Transcript: Download
Video Transcription provided by GMR Transcription Services
How to break down your yearly money goals into monthly numbers. How to raise prices across the board for every client you currently have. What you should and shouldn't bill into your final cost of your project. What you should and shouldn't bill into your final cost of your project. How to get out of the hourly mindset.
Categories: All, Goal Setting, Other, Sales
16 responses
I have tried to write this comment several times. But the words are not quite right. So may be this won’t be a long comment–too much to digest. This was a fascinating opportunity to watch this call. Thank you. Very enlightening, as I ponder what my goals, or lack thereof. Hope to be able to listen to more….:)
I LOVE comments like this!!! So happy you enjoyed it! 🙂
So glad you liked it! More coming soon!
Genious! Love the 30-70 gap. I feel sooo identified with that!
Would love to hear what progress she’s made.
Glad I’m note the only one. 🙂 Let me know how yours is progressing!
I’m really enjoying listening to the series with Lain and learning so much. Lain it’s great to hear how much you’re growing from episode to episode, and love it when I have an “ah ha” moment with you. Great work!
Jaime. Constructive feedback for your site. I have been trying to find the series with Lain and either have to scroll through all your episodes, or do a search. The search doesn’t bring all the episodes to the top. It would be great if your site provided the list of all Lain’s podcasts so they were easier to find, especially on mobile. Or even cross-linking within each podcast post to previous posts. Just like blog posting ‘if you liked this you’ll like this’ with embedded links. Just a thought, and it keeps me on your site and wanting more from you.
Hi Lucinda,
Thank you for the feedback about the site. I will inform Jaime about it so that we can implement it.
Aizza