The Lead Product Method - Say Goodbye To Free Proposals, And Hello To Profits
Pitching for work.
Writing and sending proposals and then getting the dreaded ‘that’s more than we budgeted for’ crapola.
Isn’t it time there was another way of doing business in your branding agency, and eliminating the ‘free proposals’ BS once and for all?
Good news. That’s why I invented the Lead Product, and I’m going to tell you everything you need to know about it, and why it’ll quickly become the ONLY way you sell your branding services.
How it all began - the Lead Product origin story
If you’re new in the ‘No BS universe’ and you’ve no clue what I mean when I say Lead Product (or LP for short), this, my friend, is for you.
And even if you’ve been reading/watching my content for a while, but haven’t actually used this strategy in your business, you could probably do with a refresher.
But before we dive into what they are, what makes a great Lead Product and what makes a Lead Product not work, and why they’re so useful, let’s start with the origin story, or the prequel (if you love your movie references).
Years ago, when my husband, Steve and I started our small design agency, we’d show our work to clients just like a lot of newbie designers do…
Send 10 logos in a PDF…
Ask for clients to email their feedback..
Then we’d make the changes and ask for approval…
Then they’d come back with more changes…
Yada, yada…
Sound familiar?
Of course, they’d want 20 more iterations (even if they liked the 1st one), and of course, each one cost us time, and the profits from our project fee got eaten up pretty quickly.
So we started to get a little more savvy about how we should present the work.
We started to put into our presentation, or primer slides, the inspiration for the logos. And then we started to present this live. I still remember one of our first clients who loved this!
We found that to create those inspiration decks, we’d have to go back to the goals for the client. And that's when I realized that we were doing this for EVERY client - we were spending a lot of time upfront, getting all their goals, visions, outcomes, before we even opened our laptops and started designing.
With each new client, we went deeper and deeper into this inquiry, really getting under the skin of what they felt, wanted and needed, so that we could use that information to inspire the work and present it well.
Then the penny dropped.
All this upfront work that we were doing was incredibly valuable, especially when I saw the ‘aha’ moments on my clients faces when we would walk them through all the inspiration, retelling the story of their vision and translating it to their brand and their business.
And then I had another light bulb.
What if I could maybe sell this part for a little money?
I remember one of the first ones I sold was for $650 to a lingerie company in NYC that needed help with their brand strategy.
I called it a ‘Brandshrink’ and she loved it, even though she didn’t hire us for a full branding service.
But she loved the strategy, the thinking, the vision - all of it was immensely helpful.
So I kept doing it. I wasn’t even doing it to pitch anything after. It was just a way to get paid for our time.
And then something amazing happened.
When I’d do the Brandshrink, give the client the write up, they’d say ‘OK, I love this - what’s next?’
They wanted me to sell them the full branding service! And these started to be the easiest sales we made, which quickly got me and Steve out of the financial hole that all design agencies seemed to be stuck in.
I realized that I should do this for everybody - they were so much more willing to hire us for our full, higher-priced services because they saw the value in it - they could see my expertise.
And that’s how our Lead Product was born.
How Lead Products eliminate dreaded scope creep
The Lead Product Method is a cornerstone of the No BS agency strategy.
I talk about it all the time and it's the first thing I teach people in the No BS Agency Mastery Program
For the past eight years in my own design agency, I have insisted that every client that works with me does a Brandshrink first, so I have this very specific productized service, with a clear price point and a clear outcome.
It’s such a moving, transformational process - they see the vision of their brand and their business unfolding.
So when I say at the end “OK, these are all the changes you need. And this is what it costs for us to implement this”, they’re in a perfect position mentally to say yes, and much more comfortable investing more in their business, because they really understand the value in a way that people just can't when they’re getting a free proposal.
So let's talk about free proposals and why they’re not only ineffective in closing a sale, but if you do close that sale, you leave yourself open to scope creep, which is almost as bad as having no clients!
And I get it. You’re probably thinking ‘Pia - this works for you, but it really won’t work for me!’
It’s OK. You’re welcome to keep doing free proposals, but let me show you why you’re running into problems, and how Lead Products can solve that.
Imagine this scenario.
A prospect comes to you because they're interested in working with you. And right away, you’re thinking that you want that business.
So now, you're doing all of this hustling and free work to try to get the business - you are asking to spend more time with them to understand what they need, and then you're putting in tonnes of time to make this beautiful proposal.
Once they get it, it’s out of your hands. They have all the control - not only do they get to decide if they’re going to hire you or not, but also if they’re going to get back to you at all.
The result?
You spend a lot of time trying to get work. And sometimes you never even hear from them again.
So all of that time that you spent - a couple of hours or maybe even half a day - is completely lost, and if they don’t hire you, you’ve got nothing to show for it.
And even if you template it to save time, those ones aren’t as effective either, right?, Especially if they’re just a list of items with prices.
Now, it’s not that you can’t close those clients that way, but what’s usually happening is that the client will go for the lowest price, which isn’t what you really want to charge.
Bottom line - the proposal method takes a lot of time, and it puts you in this defensive position because they have all the control and you have none.
I also find that when a relationship starts in that power dynamic, even if they do hire you, you're not really the leader - you are the follower.
So from this point on, the client dictates how the project goes.
And that’s when you get scope creep.
They start delaying getting you the content you need.
They don’t give you the feedback they promised.
Shall I go on?
Another thing I really don't like about the free proposal process is that, especially if you are writing thoughtful, customized proposals for these clients, they get a lot of your intellectual property, and strategic thinking.
You’re using your expertise when you write that proposal, but no one’s paying for it, and the prospect doesn’t value it (even if they say they do).
In addition, you’re often basing the deliverables on what the client is telling you that they need.
They THINK they need a new website, so you end up asking them how many pages etc.
The problem is, clients don't always know exactly what they need. They certainly don't always know, for example, what pages a website should have - it’s not their area of expertise.
And that’s another reason these projects go off scope. You’re not leading it from your expert knowledge, they’re just telling you what they think, new things come up that you didn’t know going into it, and it all ends up a hot mess.
Even if you charge for the extra hours of work, you're not necessarily charging all the management in figuring out what that work is.
Either way, none of this gets you profits or freedom.
How Lead Products get you closing the big-ticket services
Still want to do free proposals? Hope not! ;)
If you’re sold on the idea of the Lead Product, then let’s get you actually selling them!
First thing - let’s get clear on what a Lead Product is, and what is really isn’t.
A Lead Product is a productized, easy-to-buy, initial offering.
It’s like a discovery interview with a strategic brief after, but we don’t use the word ‘discovery’ or ‘strategic brief’.
Why? Because those BS jargon words leave clients confused and worst case, have bad associations with them.
Most people don't really get what strategy is. And they really don’t get what ‘discovery' is.
At the very worst, they think it’s something creative people do to charge more money and waste more time. (And sadly, there’s a lot of blogs and social media content out there to convince people that’s what’s happening).
This is why it’s hard to sell a strategy brief or strategy session, and if you position your Lead Product that way, you’ll fail.
But that's essentially what a Lead Product is. The reason we sell it upfront is because it allows us to go deep with the client and figure out what they need and wants, instead of just relying on what the client thinks they need and want, which wastes everybody’s time.
We ask bigger questions. We want to understand the end goal and what the big problems are. And when we’ve got that, we can step back and assess - is that what they need? Or do they also need X, Y, and Z?
You’ve been there, right? A client says they need one thing but when you actually assess the whole project, you find they actually need either something else. What they said they needed was not the whole picture.
The Lead Product figures all this out, preemptively.
So if I come to you for a five page website, and you write me a proposal for a ten page website. I'm gonna go ‘No, thank you.’ I asked you for a five page website and I'm going to feel unheard, and like you're trying to upsell me.
Yuck.
But as we know, branding agencies are not supermarkets - we’re like doctors who have to ‘diagnose’ what the client needs first before we prescribe the solution.
If you go through the Lead Product process, I'm going to see why I need a ten page website. And not only am I going to understand it, but I'm going to nod along and say “Yes, I absolutely need and want that and I'll pay you to do it!”
I have spoken to so many small branding agency owners who say that when they're pitching clients, they know the client needs the whole thing, but the client doesn't want to go for it because it feels big and expensive. They say things like ‘Can we do this in phases?’ and want to ‘dribble in’ which is inefficient.
But when you use the Lead Product process, it means that they're bought in. You're not convincing them, you're not trying to educate them on the value of doing it like this, you're giving them an experience where they actually understand it themselves.
You get rid of all that wasted time pitching, you get paid upfront, and clients value it because they paid for it.
They then see the value of the bigger project, and they'll pay a higher price point for it.
There’s one more thing you need to get about Lead Products, that will not only help you sell them, but help you upsell to the bigger project.
You need to give the client just enough to lay out the strategy, without overwhelming them.
I’ll give you an example.
One of my students was charging $350 for her Lead Products, and they were incredibly valuable.
Her clients were telling her ‘Oh my goodness, this is amazing! I cannot believe that I got all of this value from you.’
But none of them were upselling.
They were all saying ‘This is so great, you know, like, I'm gonna go think about this….and we're definitely going to come back to you…’ but none of them did.
So when I looked at what she was giving the clients in her Lead Product brief, it was obvious to me, because I have done this so many times and have made the same mistakes.
She was literally writing them a research paper!
My student wanted to give so much value, but she was fire hosing them with information.
The client is really grateful because it feels like ‘Wow, I only paid $350 for this.’
But you're also paralyzing them that they feel like they need to spend some time with this information. And there seems to be so much they could do themselves (even if they never will).
So you want to give them enough information to see the vision of what's possible without overwhelming them. Once they see the execution that’s needed to take that vision into reality, then they’ll get that your high-ticket services are the only solution.
The easy sell
If you’re like a lot of branding agency owners and creatives, you probably think sales is icky, and don’t really like doing it.
Yes, it can be, and truth be told, I really didn't like selling either.
I hated that conversation where you're talking, you're vibing, they're loving you telling you all the stuff they need, and you're like ‘Sure! I can do all of that!’
And then they ask you how much it is.
So probably do one of two things.
You say ‘It depends’ - a total cop out answer!
Or you give some sort of range
Inevitably, it would be too much.
The Lead Product replaces all that.
Not only do you have a price point already set for this Lead Product, you can put it on your website, so your prospect already knows how much it is.
When you talk about it, you can just say, ‘Hey, you know, you're a perfect fit, I can definitely help you. My Brandshrink is $X and that would be the first step to working with us.’
It’s not really a hard sell. If the prospect is interested in So if you're interested in working with you know, they can book that or not - either way is okay.
Isn’t that better?
As I did that in my agency, all that sales pressure was off. No manipulation, no pitching anything. I was like ‘Well, I have this thing that can solve that. You can either buy it or not.’
And that's what I've heard from so many of my students.
Here’s what you need to get…
Free proposals may be something EVERYONE in the branding industry does, but that’s not a good reason for you to keep doing them, especially if you’re not making any money, and putting in all this work.
Learn the Lead Product Method and start using it now - it’ll get you cash in quickly, and then more often than not, you can upsell to the big ticket services, and clients will be happy to pay you!
P.S. You can always jump on a call with my team if you want to fast-track your way to using the best tools and strategies to scale up your agency - just go here to get started!