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Sales: Turn Prospects into Paying Customers Part II

Just a quick recap of what we have already discussed where we are right now on what we're going to talk about today so yesterday we talked about every single business has five parts that are absolutely necessary for the functioning of the business creating something of value getting the attention of qualified prospects which is marketing uh making sure those prospects actually pull out a wallet, checkbook or credit card and give you money which is sales making sure you deliver what you promised to your customers which is valued delivery and finance is looking at all the money you're spending and looking at all the money bringing in and answering two very important questions are you bringing in more money than you're spending and is it enough to make it worthwhile for you to keep going so since every single business does those five things in those order in that order our job is to understand how each of those core fundamental business processes work as as well as we possibly can and for...

your own business toe understand the parts of the process you're doing well so far so you can keep doing it and understand the parts of that process that you may be undervaluing are not paying enough attention to or could use a lot of improvement so yesterday we covered the entire value creation process going from having an idea to validating and testing it making sure that the market actually wants that thing right, then we talked about marketing, attracting attention for this wonderful thing that you've created. We closed the day yesterday, uh, in sales, so the magic point in every business, the on ly point in every business where resource is actually flow in to you. So when you sell something there, said there's, a ah point, where transaction takes place, you give your customers something that they want, and they give you something that you want, which is typically money in your pocket, which you can spend on improving your business. You can pay salaries, you can do all sorts of wonderful things, which makes sales a very, very important part of the process. So we talked about, uh, transactions and the prerequisites to a transaction which is having the trust of the person that you're dealing with, and also have in common common ground, something that they want, and they have something you want. We talked a little bit about pricing, and that in the pricing uncertainty principle, you can set any price for anything at any time and change it without limitation. As long as you are able to support the price you're asking. Just because you set a price doesn't mean somebody will actually pay you that thing, and then we talked about basic ways to support a price so when you set a price on something, how can you talk about that price in a way that the other party that you're dealing with can understand why the price is set that way and agree with you that whatever price you're asking is valid? Does that make sense? Okay, so for this morning, what we're going to talk about is the remainder of the sales process and ah, couple of techniques on ensuring that your customers value what you do or what you offer as much as you do and a couple of specific ways, you can make it easier for your customers to say, you know what? This is a good deal for me. I am going to give you money in the expectation you're going to give me something even more valuable, so we'll talk about the rest of the sales process this morning, then we'll talk about value delivery, so making sure your customers are happy and satisfied with this transaction that they have completed with you. And then this afternoon we're going to talk about finance, analyzing the inflows in the outflows of money through the business and very importantly, using that information to make better decisions about how the business is operating right now and how you can employ the resources you have at your disposal in the most effective, efficient way possible does that make sense? Okay so first, I need that we will start off with today it's an idea called a price transition, jack so yesterday we were talking about the idea of you, khun change your prices, you can raise or lower them at any time, but raising or lowering your prices has a very, very important impact on what we talked about yesterday in the marketing section, which is your probable purchaser or your ideal customer. So as we talked about yesterday as well, prices send an important signal to the market, they send a signal of status, and they send a signal of quality and different types of customers as we talked about in alternatives and trade off different customers value different things, right? And so the price that you set for whatever it is that you're offering sends a very clear, very important signal that this is right for some segment of customers and is not right for another important segment of customers. Now, when you change your prices, what a price transaction print transition, shaq says is when you change the price of an offer, the effects aren't limited to your current target market. Often you will stop appealing to one target market, and you'll start appealing to another your customer based changes, and sometimes that change is really good, and sometimes I change is not to get so, for example, uh, I have a client that I had been working with specifically on making sure their offer was very clear and supporting that offer in a way that raised the price. And the result of that was they were able to increase their profitability by a factor of eight times eight hundred percent. They were doing less work and they were getting paid more for it. And they were. They were focused on serving their absolute ideal customer all day every day, no distractions. That is an unqualified win. Right? All but by raising prices and being very clear about who that person was selling to, they were able to make more money, be happier. Everything was good. But what changed when when, when he raised his prices, the customer that he was targeting changed all of the low end clients that he was formerly serving went away. And that was a good thing, right? Because they were not his ideal client. So by raising the prices, he was sending a very important signal to the market that I am for this person. And because I am the best at serving this particular client. If you want to work with me, you need to pay me what I'm worth, and it worked actually may not be totally profit positive to make that yes but it may be worth to you in closing life exactly so even if raising your prices nets you less income if you want to spend most of your day working with folks who find fun and you're running your own business and you have the power to make that decision you can perfectly accept less money in order to get a better quality customer right so a price transition shock in that sense was very positive raise your prices target a very specific customer make more money have more fun get more done perfect they now here's another example there was another business I was involved with that decided it was it was a ah resale business that decided to cut all of their low end stock and focus on their higher and stock and the the initial result was the average price of a sale at the company doubled awesome for a retail business right you know if somebody if your average customer is paying you one hundred dollars and you can get each customer to pay two hundred dollars awesome right but here's what changed when the average price of the sale went up all of a sudden they started dealing with a very different type of customer and those customers were demanding they were not so fun to deal with for the staff they were stressful. There were a lot of customer service issues that came out of adjusting the price in an upward direction that actually made it a worse situation for the company, so even though on paper they were making more money, the staff of the business was really, really frustrated because all of their best ideal customers that were thrilled to be there, happy to work with them very reasonable they're great folks all left and they were left with the customers that they didn't want to deal with, right? So that's, what a price transition shock is sometimes when you change your prices, all of a sudden your customer base changes too, and if you're not sensitive to that and you don't think about how that might change your experience and working in the business every day, sometimes pricing decisions can be not so great. So it's it's something that you need to pay attention to, um great example of this in the product business for a long time, we're talking about luxury brands yesterday coach used to be a high end luxury brand, then they came out with a line that is now sold at target lower price, a little bit less of a bill quality it's ubiquitous everywhere, it's no longer unique it's no longer status signal. So when this line came out a target which a huge retailer right, you're putting this products potentially in front of millions upon millions of people that happened and all of sudden they're luxury business started going away because it no longer meant what it used tio mean that make sense anybody else have ah a good example of of this inaction changing your prices in your customer base changes I have in a way I've gone back and forth on my pricing and um I know that for my wedding photography, my skill set and the experience I give my clients I could demand a much higher price but it actually been a conscious choice not to go higher than what I'm at because of that exact issue you're talking about where you know, if I'm charging mohr it goes into a higher and bride and a higher maintenance bride, which isn't a particular situation I want to be and I would rather have my pricing in a spot where you know, this isn't going to be in a super extravagant wedding it's going to be a nice wedding I might be the most expensive thing on their bill but they're still laid back relax people, right? Because I don't I don't want to be answering random high maintenance questions and things like that that that sounds stressful to me, so I've avoided going past where I'm at for that reason I made a similar decision when it when I uh, after I've been running the personal mba for a couple years I started offering consulting and advising services and I made a very conscious decision not to go out and try to sell the ceos of very large companies for the same reason it would have been more profitable but the type of customer the type of decisions or discussions that we would make the timing, the travel all of the things that would be required to serve that customer in the very best possible way I didn't want to do and so I decided to set my price is such that they were high enough to make it worth it for me to do this, but they were low enough that the early stage entrepreneurs that I wanted to work with could afford it and find it valuable just makes you think about a really good friend of mine who has a web design business in michigan he found something interesting similar to the example that you have on the reverse he found a certain price threshold changed everything with customer service he found that clients that paid one thousand dollars and under for projects the biggest pain in the butt yes ones that twenty five hundred dollars or more were much easier toe work with less time this exhausting so he kind of I guess, she said, fired some of those or didn't take on those thousand dollar projects and under and only worked at that threshold of twenty five hundred have you seen that as well with absolutely absolutely and it's it's dependent upon the market where it is sometimes your lower priced offers attract clients that are the low maintenance once so so that one's very market specific but yeah, a lot of this goes back to understanding who your offer is really ideally suited to if you understand that and you have something to offer that is going to get them really excited and you're dealing with people that that are generally fun and interesting and low maintenance to deal with finding that price is it just takes experimentation it's different for every market. Uh, the good news is that for pretty much every market there is a sweet spot between bringing in enough money serving awesome people in a way that makes them happy. That is not super stressful for you. I just need to be very sensitive to your pricing is the single biggest determining factor in appealing to that sweet spot in the market makes sense now value based selling and this is this is a something a series of two concepts that is, you can think of it a zey, a philosophical approach to how you go through the sales process. So just like we talked about yesterday, the popular image of the marketer as shadowy master manipulator making people want things they don't really need right, which is wrong and misleading people have an image of sales, people right? What? Come with me when I say sales person what comes to your mind, she's cheesy what else? Don't salesman door to door salesmen pushy right? Force it. Buy it now close. Close the deal, right? Yeah, just doing. Yeah. And yeah, the high pressure you get you get the sense are the feeling that the sales person is on ly in it because they want tio make him make more money. They're not interested in you, they're interested in closing a deal. So the good news is that this popular conception of what sales is and how it works and what you do when you are a sales person is not true earth misleading. You don't have to do it that way, and there are two important things to know about the sales process that can help you be more effective and can help you not be eye pressure, not push things actually act in the customer's best interest to make their life better in a way that actually supports you too. So two very, very important concepts. The first is value based selling and value based selling is the process of understanding and reinforcing the reasons your offer is valuable to the prospect. So this is where sales intersects with with the marketing process that we talked about yesterday, the better you understand your prospect and the better you understand the offer that you're selling the more you're able to see the parts of your offer that really really helped and are in the best interest of the prospects that you're dealing with and so as a sales process if you are able to highlight to your prospect why this offer is a really good idea for them and the better you understand all of the other decisions their choices that they could possibly make and the pros and cons of that the better you are able to talk about what it is that you have to offer in a way that's going to show them that this is the most valuable thing that they could do and once the prospect really understands that this is the best decision they could make based on what they care about the sale almost comes as an after effect it's not a push it's not high pressure it's helping people understand that you can help them in some important way and when they when they really understand that and feel that because sales is an emotional activity as much as it is a rational activity when your prospect understands and feels that you are providing something that is worth way more than the cost that there that you are asking them to give up they buy simple is that okay now related concept one of the very best things that you can do in the sales process is spend time and energy making your prospects better, mohr informed customers of whatever it is that they're interested and buying and there's a wonderful quote by kathy sierra who created a series of programming and design and project management books called the head first series of books really cool and she had a really popular website for for a number of years and this is something that came from that uh and the quotas upgrade your user not your product value is less about the stuff and more about this stuff this stuff enables so don't build better cameras bill better photographers because if you build up the better photographer, if you spend time helping a person understand what makes good photography all of a sudden they're going to want that right because they understand more about what's going on if you're training a photographer uh and you increase their skills in some important way guess what all of a sudden they start wanting a fancier camera and they want better lenses and they want better lights and better gear and all of those things fall out naturally from spending some time increasing the knowledge and the skills that your customers have to evaluate whatever it is that's on offer so my favorite one of my favorite examples of this is is my wife kelsey we lived in new york city for a number of years and kelsey was the sales manager at the mark ingram bart bridal italia, which is one of one of the top, if not the top bridal salon in the entire world. People come from all over the world to buy a dress from mark's affiliate so kelsey's job as a sales manager was not to have a bright come in the door, pick up the most expensive dress and convince the bride to buy that one right. It was not high pressure, it was not pushing at all kelsey's job was to make her make the bride feel comfortable and to help the bride understand when you were looking at a twenty thousand or thirty thousand dollars gown from oscar de la renta, why that gown is worth twenty or thirty, thirty thousand dollars or more, and a lot of it goes into the materials and how they're made the construction the alteration process that happens to make this gown that comes from a designer that the bride absolutely perfectly and the bridal italia had some of the top seamstresses in the entire world working for it. So kelsey's job was to help the bride understand, find a great dress and then understand why it was worth the asking price her job was education and by educating the right about here are some things that are really important things that are worth valuing things that are worth knowing about this whole process the bride was very comfortable and buying because they knew that kelsey was not out to just sell them address kelsey was there to help them make the best buying decision possible for them. So there's there's an old zig ziglar famous sales person quote you can get anything you want as long as you help enough other people get what they want value based selling an education based selling are the ways that you do that right you're investing your time and your energy in making your customer smarter and if you do that they will buy from you instead of somebody else they will buy the best that you can offer them and they will buy most often all because you invested a little time and energy in helping them make a better decision for themselves that makes sense any question from the questions from the internet on these uh these two ideas josh don't ask me we have questions from the internet of course we have tons a question of internet so I'm gonna go back to a few things you mentioned a little bit earlier this goes back to prices and sam ask sam cox when you raise prices are you setting an expectation that you may be raising prices again in the future to your customer base? Not necessarily even that's that's one of the things that you can you can signal impending price increases to your market or not um I think the wonderful things being willing to raise prices demonstrating that you're willing to raise prices er and potentially raising prices in the future is a very strong, confident signal that you can send to your market saying this is worth a certain amount and we'll talk about the value of urgency and making a buying decision. Having a little bit of urgency like if you are interested in this thing, if you think it's valuable you should buy it now because it may be more expensive later is a really valuable way that you can encourage people to stop thinking about a purchase and make a decision either way to go ahead before the price goes up or tow to wait a while and take the risk that may be the one that later in the price will go up later so depends on the market depends on what you're trying to do, but prices signal a lot about the value of your offer to the market and so you can you could be very specific in the way that you choose to talk about that and talk about it as a benefit to the customer. Another question about prices rodrigo colleen oh from brazil asked regarding setting prices and negotiating is there any problem with having a group of ten students and a single classroom but with each one paying a different price for the course because a different discounts applied when each deal was closed how do you avoid becoming a problem? How does that yeah there's actually this this is another something that's that's industry or market specific but a similar situation is you buy a ticket for a seat on an airplane everybody's going from point a to point b but they they may have paid radically different prices for the opportunity to occupy a sea and in the airline industry that's a pretty accepted practice what you need to be be careful about in some markets and education is a little bit more in this territory the expectation of of fairness or in equity and dealing with all with all customers so you can you can definitely do things like charge a price but then offered discounts based on certain things there there's a lot of flexibility and how you choose two to charge for a lot of different things aa lot of it is setting expectations about what you're charging and why you're charging it. Why that's a value to the customer and making sure that if customers find out that they're being charged different prices there's a good supportable reason why that is the case that makes sense from the internet and this is probably because you mentioned your wife in her background selling high in bridal gowns a lmc bride dublin, ireland windows josh recommend splitting services so you have a premium service and a lower answers should people be considering that it depends on the size of the business and how much the reputation of being a high and supplier that service matters? So for example that's what that's exactly what the coach handbag klein tried to do have a really high end service and have a low and service but the low end ended up taking taking away from the reputation of the high end um there are you know this this is one of the things that experimentation is a very important part of figuring out how this would potentially work in your business. The biggest thing is understanding who are your ideal customers wanted their characteristics and what offers can you create that will help you serve those folks most of the time and not serve the folks who are not so ideal customers. Um so I would just say experiment with it if you have two different tiers then experiment and see which customers you get see how much revenue and profit you generate from both territories and if one starts making mohr sense than the other, you're probably better off not serving one of those two groups and just focusing on serving the group that has more of your ideal customers could you see there being a conflict of issue in regards to a service based industry like, for example, as a wedding photographer you can't be like well on saturday is I'm going to charge you ten grand on tuesdays I'm going to charge you two grand because it's the same product, same service that the same person is providing would you suggest avoiding during that? I note some studios that try and do the two tier it's like you get their main grid, the fabulous photographers for the premium and then associate beginning photographers for the cheaper. So I see that but the same person do you? Would you see that as a conflict? Not necessarily as long as you're able to support it? So, so good way uh an example, I could see that working I mean, this is this is really common in the event industry in general is during the busy season our prices are ex during the less busy season, you have a discount because we're not as busy and we would like you to do this so that's that's, a very simple form of price discrimination when were hectic were expensive when we're not so hectic were a little bit cheaper, same service, but you're also giving this business that you otherwise we otherwise wouldn't get, so we're going to give you a benefit for doing that. So if you have a discrepancy or a difference in pricing, you need to be able to support that in a way that makes sense to the customer and ideally, if you can frame that in a way that it is a value or a benefit to them for this discrepancy to exist, you get bonus points, make sense, okay, now, next idea is a very important concept that actually comes from negotiation, which is the idea of the next best alternative, and the next best alternative is a way to answer the question, what will your prospect do if they don't buy from you? Okay, so assume that for a second they're not going to buy what are they going to go do? What are they going to look at? Who are they going to talk to? What are all of the options that they have in their world that might solve their need? Why would it be valuable to know this when you're in a sales process or in a negotiation? I was just doing a mental face poll on this because because that's that's a question in a sales environment that I didn't ask just last week, so I didn't, I did, I don't know what they're going to, what this your company is going to do since they didn't have elected to close the deal on on something that expected them to, so I don't know what they're going to do, so how would I sell against that? Right? And so if I know what their plan b is, then I know how to help them choose what I want them to choose this planet. Exactly. So if you know what their plan b is, you can make really darn sure what you're offering is better than their next best alternative. And if it's better and more valuable for them to go with you than to do something else, guess what? I'm gonna go with you, but if there's another competing offer out there that's better, they're probably going to do that one, right? This is actually one of the reasons that if you're running a business that that relies on contractors or employees to operate the business, you do not want to be the business that pays the lowest in the area, right? Because if everybody's next best alternative to working with you is quitting, going and working someplace else. Guess what? You're not gonna have a staff very long, and if you do, your staff is not going to be as good as they possibly a cz you can possibly attract for the business, right? So it's really important in every negotiation, the power lies with the ability with the person or the party who is willing to walk away because they have a better alternative. Right so if you're negotiating with something you want to make sure what you're offering is better than their next best alternative but if you are the party being negotiated with you want to have a potentially better option or just a good option waiting in the wings so you can you're you're not tied to this particular deal going through you can always walk away and deal with somebody else don't make sense go ahead it really makes sense especially going through this course just so quick in two days everything lines up and if you are purposefully targeting your ideal customer the benefits which seems to be your method of saying look don't go tom the features or the advantages tom what is the benefit to them if you're going after the correct customer, your offer has the potential to benefit them the most if you're trying to serve everybody we're going after the wrong customer. This next best alternative is a little more difficult well, those customers likely should be going with somebody else unless they're willing to meet with you at where you're at in the benefit and the same thing is walking away is just a different perspective but fits right in line with everything you've been talking about and that's the business case for being making sure not trying to appeal to everybody because you're never going to be perfect for everybody on the face of the earth ever uh, being very specific on who's, your ideal customer, who do you want to serve it spent all your time serving? And how do you make sure that your offer is the absolute best thing in the world for this type of person who cares about something very specific in this? If you do that, you end well, in a sense, you don't have a choice that you have been, you have to be number one. There's, no, like second, isn't like second place surprise isn't like that, if you like the second or third best it's not like in a customer's, might you don't get like half the money you get zero, everyone gets zero, except for the winner, the person the company has the best offer, so you have to start yourself to be the best for someone. Yeah, and one of the exciting things is over the course of history that wasn't necessarily true because of asymmetry of information, if you didn't know about all of the options that existed in the world, so when you and choose what you believe to be the best local option that you knew about, right? But the internet changed that right? Finding the best provider of something is a click away, and so now it is really important to hyper focus on a specific type of customer and be the best at serving them for whatever that need is just go to a quick question from the internet in just the next best alternative is belong my my mind because I realized I'm going about dating the wrong way through way of presenting my bars back in the day was totally rolling that do know um but there's never expect from a business course right right thank you man uh this question has come from greg dean you talk about things being just a click away and he says greg d says no sorry april even western massachusetts how do you find out what the clients plan b is talk to them it's really that's not research to talk about exactly there's there's a wonderful book on on the personal mbia recommended reading list called spin selling and by neil rectum and and he talks about the most effective sales conversations come the image we all have in our head is getting in front of a prospect in giving them all of this information about why your thing is the very best thing what's been selling talks about and there's a tremendous amount of research behind the techniques in the book is rackem says the very best sales conversations are the sales person asking the prospect a bunch of different questions it's a listening process and then you take what the prospect is telling it they may tell you their plan b you have to ask them right so and what you'll find is is the longer you're in an industry or a business the better you're able to anticipate what the options are that are out there and the more you know about the industry in general the better you can understand what those trade offs are probably going to be that it all all you need to do is ask and listen I've had a lot of success in my own business with that particular situation so when I have clients come in to my home studio and we consult actually have a questionnaire that I'm like we're going to play a little game you know it's important that I know just about as much uh just a cz much about you and what makes you tick as it is that you like me so I asked them a slew of different questions that get passed just the how do you propose and you know the thing that everybody who knows that they're engaged asked them to you know like what are the three things that you like about yourself and your fiance and you know what makes you tick and in a year when you look back at your wedding what will make you happiest like things like that that well let me know if they're my ideal client um and also how to aim things correctly at them to tell them what it is about me that they would want right so and it's also it's a really great way to signal to your prospects that you care about more than just this particular engagement you're asking them personal questions because you want to know right now one of the very best things you can do is have a situation where there are no best next best alternatives because you are the on ly one that does what you do and this is an idea called exclusivity and exclusivity is just a unique offer uh or quality that your competitors can't match so good example way brought up apple the company quite a few times if you want an iphone guess what at some point you're going to have to buy it from apple because whether you go to an apple store or buy it online or go into another reseller like best buy or wal mart or target or amazon or whatever at some point that iphone that you have in your pocket came from apple and apple got paid for that and there may be other alternatives that do kind of the same thing but the iphone has unique qualities that may make it particularly well suited to you right there are no other options if you want that specific thing so having something that you offer that nobody else offers in quite the same way is one of the best ways you can you can overcome some of the limitations of having an expressed alternative right? Encouraging people to want something that you and only you provide makes it much easier to land a business with the ideal prospects who want what only you can provide that make sense really simple idea, but you can have lots of very productive thinking sessions when you start asking yourself the question, what are some things that I can do that nobody else is doing and no videos can do? Those are the things that your customers your potential customers are going to value value most highly and those of the types of things that are going toe land you business that you think it no other way that makes sense. I thought there's a brand new company called over dog that has relationships with major nfl players, nhl players and they connect people who want to play video games or enjoy playing video games with being able to play video games with their favorite sports celebrity and you can't do it anywhere else. Yeah, I do anywhere else except with them totally totally any other examples that come to mind of of a business that offers something exclusive that you can't get anywhere else I think we try to do home inspection company is it's more wrapped around an education, but we give like free webinars we do things that some other inspectors could do, but nobody does and when you do have a value and education based selling you can do it really easily without having to talk to them on the phone for half hour. You could do a via video, and so we just put up videos on our website and then that generally sells them before they even call us exemptions. That's a fantastic prospecting tool, right? I mean, how many other companies are taking the time to educate their customers before they even enter a sales conversation? Right? Um, so that's, that's a really great way that you can bring more prospects in the door when you meet somebody who may be interested in services that's something that free of benefit, that you can give them right away that they are under no obligation to purchase from you. You're just giving them value in a way that's going to educate them about what's important what's? Not so that particular approach providing free education to people who might be at some point interested in your services. It's a great way to bring your prospects in the door it's not that hard doesn't cost that much, but most companies don't take the energy or effort to offer it, even though it works and scales really well, it does. He spent no time they just watch your video and you show up with the door it's magic exactly fantastic and it's a great system too because you don't have to spend a whole lot of energy continuing to do it and set it up and it goes go now in every negotiation this is an idea called three universal cut currencies in every negotiation there are not one currency money they're actually three and as you're going through a sales processor as as you're in the process of negotiating with another party it helps to understand that you could negotiate on more than just money so the three universal currencies are resource is so which are tangible items time our money uh gold oil you know some some tangible thing that people want right resource is the second is time how long will this will this thing take? We'll take more time less time you can trade time for money it's called getting a job right you given employee employer time and energy they give you money so you're trading one currency for another right time is interesting because all of us only have twenty four hours a day teo to invest right but if you're willing to trade one you can get more of the other vice versa right? So you want to get more time, pay somebody else to clean your house trading time for money right? We're trading money for time the third currency is flexibility, which is the cost of not doing something else okay, so for example, when you get a job at a company, you're not just trading your time there's usually either an explicit or implicit agreement that you're not going to be working for another company while you're working for this one right that's a flexibility cost there's usually usually an expectation for a full time job that you were going to be there in certain hours from monday through friday right that's a flexibility cost here's the cool thing you can go to your employer if you have a job right now and say I would like to work monday through thursday and willing to take a little bit less of a salary to do that many employers are perfectly willing to do something like that and you know what? You trading money for flexibility, right? So understanding the three universal currencies and that you can trade mohr or less of one for more or less of another gives you much more flexibility in finding a point of common ground that you can both agree on like opens your negotiating abilities dramatically just by understanding that there are there's more to a negotiation than just the resource is involved any good examples of trading time or flexibility for more or less resources you can think of one of the companies that I work with um are we have three different partners and have the flexibility and do the the other companies that I started and work with myself? Um, it is creating the opportunity for me to be charging and billing less to my own company, racking up more hours, racking up more salary then say are our ops guy that's on the ground the other way? And the other side of our company is coaching and consulting and we offer phone and skype uh, sessions as instead of in person strategy meetings there's a little bit of a difference and cause driving it to that point because I would rather have the flexibility right? I'm overseas or I'm here in seattle to be able to still meet those needs while making it more affordable for them that's a really great example flexibility for resource is other examples. One thing that going through your value creation and test marketing has got me thinking it's really it's really hard to listen to you take notes and think about your own business yes, a question a lot information but that's what the recordings air for you let's go over a couple of times but it's one thing I want to try because more than things that are going on in our real estate market is it's really busy, really hot market so you get multiple offers on properties and such and there's a time sensitivity to getting an inspector there to check and see it see if the property has has any problems. One thing that I want to test is to see if they're they're willing to pay a premium if I guarantee in service over twenty four hours or forty eight hours and see if people are willing to pay an additional hundred bucks. So I guarantee when you want to see that house on saturday, I'll make sure someone's there to inspect it the next we'll see what the test works out. Yeah, and one thing that you may be able to do, which is trading resource is for flexibility if there are, for example, investors that look at a lot of properties making an agreement that I would I am reserving capacity to look at your stuff in a very time sensitive way with a very high quality of service, but if they're willing to put you on a retainer so they're willing to pay you every single month without fail, regardless of how many properties you look at that's a trading of resources of for flexibility, right? You're reserving some capacity, but you're being paid very well for limiting your flexibility on a really important way it's an option it's an option exactly what's going on with a subscription, you know it also like yes we're said that there are multiple people looking at each property made me think is is there an option to offer the first inspection of the house at one price and then offer offer that same inspection to multiple people at a reduced price? So maybe connecting with the offering real estate agent and say this this assessment is complete and I can offer it to any of the people who are interested in looking at the house for this this rape that's good that's pretty exaggerated down because you know you have an asset in selling a product I've done in a way that happened it's interesting said that they did that once the last three thousand inspections that happened about ten days ago, where was inspecting the same house on friday exact same house on sunday, so I called both of the parties and said, hey, you know, I really want inspect exact same house in the same time so how that'll just split both your fees in their super happy we both were going to say, I just showed up for the last one to get the check and hannah mon binder, which was nice, you say we're doing a brilliant tio so one moment are you a former value that is classically a service based business, right? You pay me, I come out and do something and deliver results for you by looking at the three universal currencies and the negotiations and the different forms of value, we talked about how to turn a service based business into a product based business or an option with with a subscription component like there's all sorts of different ways that you can take something that has been around as long as home inspection and do it in a slightly different way to serve what may be an ideal customer. So for example, if you want to work with all of the top commercial, commercial or retail investors in town, this may be a really good way to stand out and give them something that they can get in no other way. It just takes a little bit of creativity in flexibility, and the nice thing about what we're talking about here is these are all of the ways that you contest and tweak and do things a little bit differently to appeal to more of your idea of customers. This is the valuable thinking that goes into how to set up the sales process that finds your ideal customers and make sure that you were the very best option for them to continue to work on my business and great guys, yes, I love it and I'm looking forward to in after you do some of this stuff following back up to see what that does for the disgusting coming right now, thanks sure now just like there are three universal currencies there are called, there are there are three dimensions to the sales of the negotiation process and there's there's, a really great book called three d negotiation that covers this in great detail. What we're just going to talk about. A lot of when when you think about the word negotiation, uh, what comes to mind is sitting down across the table from a prospect and hashing out a deal right what's important to understand is that is only one part of the negotiation process, and two thirds of the negotiation is already over by the time he's actually sit down at the table. Okay, so the three dimensions of negotiation the first is called set up and set up involves setting a stage for positive outcome of the negotiation. So if you can control the environment, if you can do research in in terms of what the customer or what the prospect is doing and what they want and what they're likely to ask about all of that preparation work that happens well before you sit down across from the prospect at the negotiation table, controlling the environment in doing the research and understanding enough about the prospects of situation has a huge influence on the final outcome of that negotiation, so the more advanced work that you can do, the more information that you have the better you can prepare for the actual negotiation or the actual discussion part of the negotiation right the second dimension is the structure so when you've done your research you can do some thinking about ok what if I had my own way if this negotiation went perfectly what would I want the prospect to do or to decide so what would be the ideal circumstance for you from your perspective and then based on everything you know about the prospect what should I propose that will be best for me and also hit what the prospect wants and give them a deal that they want right? You are finding common ground in advance and trying t propose something that's going to be really great for you and really great for the prospect right this is the part where you also want to try to understand what are their next best alternatives and if they don't want one thing what's potentially an alternative that I can offer that may alleviate some of their concerns right so it's pre thinking about how you want that discussion to go and then the third part is the discussion right you present this offer that you've created to the other party right so by the time you put you create that offer you present that offer in the discussion two there's a negotiation is already over it's the research and the preparation that gets you to a great outcome if you skipped the first two, the discussion is not going to go as as well as you you would want it or expected to go does that make sense? Okay, now sometimes you do not want to be the one who is selling you would have somebody else selling or negotiating on your behalf. This is idea called a buffer, and a buffer is an experienced third party that that is empowered to negotiate on your behalf. So think of something like professional athletes. Do you think they sit down directly with the other with a team that is interested in hiring them and hash out their own deal? Agents do that lawyers do that? Why don't they do it themselves? They could save the lawyer fees in the agent he's, right? Why don't they do it themselves? We asked. The experts know they wouldn't get as good of a deal as they would working with people who know very specifically about this negotiation territory that dealing with right, we hire real estate agents for this for the same reason we don't know in general uh, as much about that process as they do, and by having some additional knowledge of experience oftentimes they can get a much better deal, then you can get for yourself, right? So what's also nice is take it take, for example, a professional athlete if they negotiated for themselves and they negotiated really hard right? It was a really intense conversation with with lots of emotion on both sides that team may not be as excited about working with that athlete when it comes to the playing field right? What hiring buffers like agents like attorneys helps the athlete do is get a better deal, but if somebody needs to be the hard negotiation person it's not the athlete it's the agent or it's the the attorney and they can potentially get a much better deal and the team can still feel really good about hiring this particular person right? So having some distance in some negotiations at certain points is very, very valuable, right? So for example, when I do another book my agent lisa negotiates the deal for me she's fantastic and the resulting deal is much, much better than otherwise would be if I tried to do it myself in general just personality wise, I love to do things myself that is not the best thing for me to do by myself, right so least takes care but leases probably watching so highly so uh so buffers can be super great with the caveat which is buffers are usually agents right? Agents are paid on commission commissions are paid when a deal takes place right so usually it's in the buffers best interest to make sure a transaction takes place even if it may not be the absolute best thing for you right classic example moved to town let's say you're looking at buying a house and you talk to a buy side real estate agent it is not in there the agents interest to tell you you know what based on the current environment it's way better for you to rent than it is to buy right now, right? Because if they give you that advice which may be true they don't pay right so you're probably not going to hear that from them, which is ok just understand when you when you when you hire a buffer you empower some need to negotiate on your behalf understand what their incentive is in that particular negotiation and sometimes if that's the situation, you can use the three universal currencies too to change the situation a little bit right so you can pay and the agent for example on a consulting basis, right? I'm just going I'm going to give you some money to give me advice what should I do? And that changes the incentives in the relationship in you maybe get a much better outcome, right? So you just when when you're working with buffers you need to be very, very clear what air their incentives, how did they get paid and make sure that their interests are in line with your own you know, a good example of this. I spent the last three months trying to put together a software purchase, my company, and we're really excited about the software that we were purchasing and you build up a relationship with, you know, their sales team over time, but we were able to engage our procurement group, actually act as a buffer, and so, you know, I was able to take the deal so far handed over to them, and, you know, they were able to finish it up and remove that emotion side of it and were able to get, you know, better distance and, you know, at the end of the day, also with the expertise of the, whether an agent or a procurement group or whomever, you know, we're able to get better terms and conditions, be ableto index things to, you know, the consumer price index, things like that, right? That at the end of day was a much better deal for the company, but yeah, that's definitely a very valuable service to utilize absolutely and kind of flipping that right? Because, that's one of the interesting things of understanding how large companies work is they have entire groups of people in procurement or or sales or negotiation or whatever their entire job is negotiating with other companies to suppliers to get better deals. All right, fantastic for the company those those employees pay for themselves because they are so good and well versed in all of the different ways the deal can take place that they're able to save the company a ton of money over a very long period of time, right? So if you are a small entrepreneur dealing with a large company understand that they have dedicated individuals whose sole job is to pay you less money right or trying to pay us money, right? So as an entrepreneur selling to a large company, your interest is in bypassing the procurement division and dealing directly with an executive who could pay you what you're worth, right? So it helps to understand how these negotiations take place and a particular industry way had a we should do you know that so many people here on the internet are a lot of our photography followers, a lot of photography questions, but particular one is from elegant photography. Where do I find this third party? I'm a photographer I'm very good at what I do. However, this marketing sales business does not come very easily to me sure, and I think we all can relate to that where would I find someone like josh is referring to? What kind of percentage does this negotiator make? And what types of questions should I ask to make sure the person is a good negotiator yeah, a lot of times, there's there are all sorts of different ways to do this, so if you're in, for example, high end commercial photography it's not uncommon for photographers toe have agents in the same way you would have a literary agent, somebody that just handles handles the deal's handles the paperwork, handles the payments so you could spend most of your time shooting. Uh, those folks do exist now, depending on the type of photography or the specific specific industry or market that you're in a lot of times if you don't want to do this by yourself, you can find an individual who is just willing to take on these responsibilities, either in exchange for a salary or a retainer, or in exchange for a commission and establishing that relationship is is a negotiation in and of itself, right? So what are what's the size of the photography engagement that you you tend to do? How much do you get paid? How often do you do it? And what percentage of each deal with the person who is acting as your buffer? I need to have in order to make doing this thing their best alternative instead of doing something else right? And as long as you're able to find an arrangement where both parties mutually benefit from good things happening in this photography business all it takes is is doing a little searching to see if somebody is willing toe toe act in the sales capacity or in negotiating capacity on your behalf and just just to quickly follow up on that think this goes back to something you mentioned a little earlier a few slides earlier al mcbride's is by definition as this presuppose that agent or that buffer ads farm or values in the cost of their feet yes so the on ly the only reason to hire a buffer is if you believe that they're going to be able to get you more business or make your life so much easier by not having to deal with with aa lot of the actual negotiation or the finance or the legal or all of the things that agents are buffers typically do that the value the agent or buffer provides is far outweighed by what you are paying them on a retainer or commission basis to do it. Uh so yeah, and that is particularly starting out sometimes that's not exactly known, so if you're hiring a buffer or an agent um a lot of times the agreements air time bounded so I agree that you can you have the ability to represent me for a year and we're going to see how it goes in a year from now we're going to revisit this agreement and see if it's working for both of us you can make and and that's just making an agreement using the universal currency is right. I'm going to limit my flexibility to sell myself for a year to let you do it, but after that year is up, we're going to revisit there's there's a lot of flexibility in how these arrangements are set up. I know of an example that is something that a lot of people, especially in job market, might not necessarily think about. One of my really good friends is looking for ah, a better job as an executive assistant and she is dealing with a headhunter because she knows that by putting in applications via monster dot com or any of those things show only oh get so far but a headhunter will work in the company's there on retainer by the company to find good people and the company will pay the headhunter and then my friend will get a better job from it. It's a classic rougher situation, josh, I actually within our company just dealt with this and it's saved us so much time. Uh, we were trying to get our products from production to the end buyer and it basically took us thinking, ok, here's who we want to actually get teo all right, where do they get it? Where did they get it? Where did they get it? And it's it's saved us over the last two months. We were trying to go go to the top, go to the top, and then that wasn't working. Ok, how do you go? How do you go to the next? And we ended up we needed to find the distributor we needed to get in there. And what? We ended up a little bit of luck. A little bit of just trying all of our different options. We ended up finding the logistics company delivered everything to that. Once we're able to make that strategic link, we understood what they were buying. How much, what price is what condition, what features? And it allowed us to understand going into that negotiation exactly what they needed, and it allowed us by making that strategic relationship to benefit that company, the logistics company, giving them an opportunity to make a percentage on our sales with that company. We ended up walking in with such a position of strength right into the offices that we've been trying to get into for two months on our own, and it ended up costing us such a small percentage overall, but providing just tremendous value to us and giving us a strategic link into the, you know, into the other buyers? Absolutely, it was. That's, the buffer is if there's a way, if you can't think like the person on the internet, who is that third party? Think about who you really want and then think about other ways to get to that person, because I wouldn't have initially thought I'll go to the logistics person, but yeah, but I'm buffers the best buffers typically have connections or knowledge in an industry that's very, very difficult to get on your own. So, for example, in the in the literary market, one of the things that makes my agent lisa, so amazing in every respect is she knows everybody in the industry has known them for decades, and so all of the major publishers that are interested in acquiring the books that she is interested in representing. She knows them personally and can pick up the phone. And so so, for example, head publisher penguin portfolio adrian zakheim, lisa and adrian have known each other forever, and so when I have a new book out, lisa picks up the phone and talk to adrian directly, and he picks up every time she calls, so that type of knowledge and connections is super super valuable, so buffers can add a tremendous amount of value to your sales of negotiation process used to be very, very clear on what their incentives are and make sure that the relationship is mutually beneficial so you don't do anything else exams and its other real quick josh, of course, is important for folks, as you just mentioned to be really careful about who you're making your buffer and signing contracts looking in those terms, right? Absolutely, and that's always the general rule is don't let using a buffer replace your own judgment. They are an adviser to you, but when you sign a contract it's it's you who is on the line, not necessarily the buffer, right? So they can be tremendously valuable, but be very, very careful when you're signing an agreement know exactly what you're going to just one thing that we've done our offer that we're working with now is we developed a working agreement and it's it's ah it's a ninety day contract to evaluate yeah, and it comes back and says, we're going to reevaluate this, we're going toe and then we're going to see is there more appropriate vehicle for us to use working together in the future? If we need more time, we're going to extend it ninety days, so it allows us that time to say because it's an experiment, you know, just like you say. All of the concepts and the theories working in specific businesses require testing going back through that federation cycle. Hey, how could we be making this a more of a benefit to us more of a benefit to the company? Well and and adding that flexibility close to a contract uh, makes it way easier to agree to test it in the first place? Much more freeze of the contract is like you are signing alive layers to this right it's given us so much more flexibility to try it and go back and say, ok, you know, do this work, how did it work? How can we make it better? It cz much of a load off good. I like a story that you tell before about one of your clients who decided not to work with the or if q r p process because they're doing the opposite. I will not work with work against a buffer or negotiate with a buffer only negotiate with the decision maker because the client in that for perspective found that their ideal customers, where folks that were well that trusted their experienced, understood the value and we're willing to hire right away versus a and r p request for proposal process is a process that lots of large companies procurement divisions within a company will use to try to get vendors to negotiate against each other. In an effort to lower the prices, so whoever has the lowest price gets the sale, and so, uh, what this individual chose to do is tell all their clients it's, like I'm a really high quality provider of the service, and if you would like to bid out this project, if you don't think I'm the best person for you to do this and you want to go to an r p process, I'm not going to participate in that, so if you want the best, hire me, if you want to get the cheapest you khun, go through the rpi process, hire a low cost provider, and then you can contact me six months later when the project doesn't go well, and I would be happy to fix it for you, and they got so much more business from that strong confidence is signaling that I am not going to participate in something that lowers my fees because I'm worth it. They were willing to walk away from negotiations have exactly power power, hand, and sometimes one of the best things that you can do in a negotiation situation is signal that you are perfectly willing to walk away at this point, because whoever is willing to walk away the most has the upper hand in any negotiation situation, I wonder, as a wedding photographer, I mean, a buffer doesn't really in many ways sense but I'm negotiated the bride and groom because I want them to connect with me as their tire for so and I think going back to the question that was on the internet my guess is if they're on the wedding photography side of industry instead of like the commercial side of the industry um a buffer you might be able to get if you had like a trade show that you are at and you had passed brides there with you to say yes, this is great but that's more of a testimonial thing anyways that I don't think a buffer would necessarily be well and it doesn't necessarily going to be either or either so so you can have a personal connection to the client and also say, you know when it when it comes time to do agreements I have this person who takes care of that for me because I spend all my time shooting photos, right? So if you agree that this is something we can explore, I'm going to introduce you to this person to take care of the paperwork now related to this is an idea called persuasion resistance and persuasion resistance one of the things that makes prospects uncomfortable about around salespeople is the fear that there are going to be pushed into our pressured into doing something right or tricked into agreeing to something that they should probably not agree to right and so persuasion resistance is the idea that the harder you push or the harder you try to force a sale the more the prospect was it and the wall goes up and they kind of back aways slowly and the more you push the more you push them or the wall goes up right and there are a couple of things that really prompt this this reaction of persuasion resistance the first is is this a term that comes from psychology term called reactive so when a prospect senses that someone is trying to compel them or force them to do something the automatic responses to push away right the harder you try to compel them or they push right this is ah one of the reasons that that from a management situation if you try to really force your employees to do something in a particular way they push and push and push and they finally quit right this is this is a universal phenomenon has been identified in labs all over the place um the more you you force the more people tend to withdraw the second form of persuasion resistance or something that you can do to prompt persuasion resistance is signaling desperation I really want to close this deal I really want to get this done I would do anything to work with you I would tell me what you need to tell me what you need I will do it because I really want this business right your prospect more often than not we'll turn around and run away screaming right? Because signaling desperation is telling them something is not exactly right with you and with your business there's a reason that you are desperate for the sale and if you're desperate for the sale it's highly likely that this is not going to be the best thing for you are you that you're not ah high quality provider of of this this product or service or offering someone should perform right so the more desperate you seem the less likely we are to make the sale which is why being willing to walk away or saying or projecting confidence in that I am only interested in selling to you if this is the best fit for you not going to chase you, I'm not going to make unnecessary concessions so the r f p like the client saying I'm not going to participate in an r p process is a way of signaling non desperation right? My services air good I deliver really high quality work I'm not going to make concessions there if you want to hire me you jaime this is these are the terms right that's why that works and the third is chasing in chasing is one of those really old, almost primal things that are lodged that's lodged in the back of the human mind there's there's a there's a really great, very entertaining sales in negotiation book buy or in class called pitch anything he spends a lot of time talking about uh on on the plains of africa uh if you are being chased really bad thing right sometimes after you and so the response is I'm being chased run away as fast as you possibly can right versus if you are the one that is chasing something, whatever is ahead of you you probably really, really want in some way shape or form right? So there's something in the back of our minds that really signals when when you perceived you're being chased you tried to move away because that's a threat if you feel like you're the one chasing something that's probably something that you want right apply that to a negotiation position or sales situation if you feel like a sales person is chasing you hunting you down, you're going to you're going to have that experience of persuasion resistance, right? But if the prospect feels like they are the ones that have to convince you to spend your limited time and energy and resource is serving them, providing this thing that they want the dynamic completely flips, right? So one of the most interesting things um, that you can do in a sale situation particularly if your service based business is starting the opening conversation with, uh helping the prospect understand exactly what it is you do and saying, you know what? We only we are only able to serve a certain number of customers at the quality that that we expect of ourselves. So tell me why this would be a good fit for you, so if you would like a space, I can save you one and guess what if if you don't tell me that I'm probably going to be books out, so let me know why this is a good fit for you the dynamic completely changes, right? It's not you pushing a sale on them it's them telling you why you should reserve some of your limited capacity to serve them sales conversation changes immediately, right? One of those things that's really, really with testing that make sense and in all cases presenting yourselves or yourself and your offer with confidence gets you the very best results that you possibly can get. Ok, so when in doubt project that confidence don't chase don't be desperate, and sometimes sometimes you don't have a lot of money, right? Sometimes you really do need to land the sale, right? So it's important going into a negotiating negotiating position to remind yourself that the more you chase, the more desperate you seem, the more you push, the less likely you are to land this particular deal so it's, it could be a little a nice little pre negotiating checklist to remind yourself here's all the things that I am not going to do in this conversation, and it will get you a much better outcome reminds me of, um, ra meets class that we're talking about the other day. One of things he talks about when you're negotiating is you when they talk about salaries, you don't, you don't continue that conversation, you say, you know, if it's a good fit will talk about this later, and that signals to them that you're worth what you're asking for because you don't need to chase the money down. Exactly. So a lot of the techniques room eat talks about in in his negotiating courses in his career courses all come back to persuasion, resistance, minimizing it and signaling confidence. And if you do that, you know the nice part if you're in a job interview, if you are up for promotion and having the conversation about that, if you're meeting with prospects, all of these things that you can do to bring more money into your business and or get a higher salary, it's all this stuff, right, the techniques boil down to this, oh. And so if you understand this is how the human mind works in negotiating situation, you can make sure that you are sending the signals to the other party that maximize the chances that you're going to get a good outcome. Reciprocation is the desire of most people feel to pay back what they've received, and this is one of the most powerful psychological tendencies underlying human cooperation we talked about yesterday really fabulous book I highly recommend it influence by robert sheldon e it's it's on the personal mba recommended reading list that book talks about six of fundamental human psychological tendencies that all of us have across cultures universally, so when somebody benefits us in some way, we feel an internal psychological pressure to reciprocate that in in some way so we like to help people that help us. We like to benefit people that benefit us and going back to our conversation of free yesterday, the more you benefit people in advance ah, they sales are in a negotiation situation, the more pressure the other party feels to reciprocate that benefit in some way, shape or form. So one of the reasons offering free value works is it serves a dual purpose, right? You're giving people benefits in advance, so you're helping them experience what you have to offer you may be in the case of the webinars that you do, you may be educating them or spending resources making them a better customer of this particular thing you're providing lots of benefits up front and the wonderful thing about that it's a really effective way to get attention and use it as a prospecting tool but it also invokes this reciprocation tendency that we all have in the back of our mind the more you help people when you come out with something where you make them an offer, the more likely they are to take you up on it, right? One of my favorite examples of this in the book industry is seth code anybody read sets plug um seth has been giving away almost all of his writing ninety nine point nine nine nine percent of his writing for ten years every single day he posts something that people find valuable and he's been doing it every single day for the past decade, right? It's in a lot of knowledge is a lot of work he just gives it away and when seth comes out with a new book all he needs to do is put it on his website he doesn't send an email he doesn't have a lot of publicists do you doing all this stuff? Um he just says, hey, this thing is available and everybody who has been reading him for the past ten years clicks the buy button without thinking about it once because he's given everybody so much that the desire to help him in some way shape performed by buying this new thing that he's created that's also going to be awesome is an absolute no brainer right? So reciprocation is one of the best justifications for being as generous as you possibly can in the running of your business right because it helps the people that you're trying to serve but it also makes it more likely that when you ask for the sale or when you're in a negotiating position the other party is going to be more inclined to agree to what you propose generosity works this is why a couple ideas and then we'll open it so it's like that made me think that maybe even had the example in your book about ongoing into a car dealership and they give you like a cup of coffee or that nature yes this is this is fascinating let's let's do talk about this so then the interesting thing psychologically about reciprocation is the reciprocation does not necessarily need to be at the same scale as the original gift right so robert sheldon is a psychologist does lots of studies about how this works and they did the started city of car dealerships and when you walk into a dealership into the office area do you want some coffee? You want some water? We have some cookies can I get you anything like small gifts like a cup of coffee may cost the dealership ten cents right super super not not a huge expenditure of resource is by any sense when a person when it s o by offering that gift, the person is more likely to purchase a car which is an expenditure of thousands sometimes tens of thousands of dollars, they're more likely to get it extended insurance they're more likely to buy upgrades to the car. They're more likely to make things very large outlay of money because of a very small gift given by the sales person at the beginning, right? So the scale you just being generous and lots of small ways can have outsized returns when it comes to the ways people tend to reciprocate right? And there are ways to use this for very good reasons and there are ways to go really dark side with this stuff too, right? This is one of things you have to be very careful about but it's very, very true people reciprocate when you are generous with them and that idea is a damaging admission and a damaging admission means acknowledging potential risks and offer they have talking about the ways or the reasons that something may not be right for you or for the prospect that you're discussing and what's interesting is making a damaging admission can actually increase the prospects trust that you are being straightforward and acting in their best interests, right? No offers perfect ever will be even for your ideal customers there may be something about that offer that is not ideal that is not perfect that is a little rough right as a sales person it's really enticing to try to gloss over that stuff right? Frame it out of the picture not talk about it but guess what? They're going to see it and if you as a sales person are comfortable talking about that with them then that increases the trust that they have in you that that you are giving them all of the information that they need to make a good decision and that you are actually operating in their best interests right? Sometimes the drawbacks are minor not a huge deal not a deal breaker but important to know so as a sales person highlighting for them some of the rate the reasons this is not ideal actually works in your favor makes it more likely that a sale is going to take place. And so with wedding photography I tell my client that you know after their wedding they'll see their images of four to six weeks after the wedding. You know I try for sooner but with especially in the heat of the season definitely four to six weeks I usually just trying say that and then move on so that it's not something because everyone wants everything instantly, you know, would you see just bringing it up and say, I know that you like things instantly, but it takes time to create the images. Tio process the images so they look the best that they can and talk about, even though they're giving up four to six weeks. It will be a better product for that exactly. So the damaging admission is not takes it's not, and it takes four to six weeks from your wedding to the time to get the images. And and here is the reason why it takes that long. I'm doing this for you. I'm doing this for you. I'm doing this for you. I'm doing this for you and it, and that takes time. And the quality of your service is you invest the time and attention to make their images as possible a cz good as possible. So instead of providing them instantly, it takes a little time. But you're getting this much better result because of it. Yeah, it's a good way to do it.