The differences between selling $100 and $100,000

I’ve sold services for $100, $1,000, $10,000, and $100,000. Here’s what it takes to sell each one. 

Generally speaking, booking a $100 job can happen over text. When I was a 23-year old production assistant in Los Angeles, I’d get texts from my network asking me to jump on a half-day job to drive something across town. All it took was a text or two. 

A $1,000 job can be booked over a ten-minute phone call. Now that I’m producing campaigns for agency and production company clients, they can give me a short phone call to let me know the project scope and what they need. After a few minutes, we’re both on the same page. 

A $10,000 job usually takes a 30-minute video call. Maybe two. It helps to have at least one other person on the phone with you depending if you need a team to execute the project. With this amount of money, people want to be sure that you’ve got a plan, but they don’t need to spend too much time talking through the details. 

A $100,000 job takes between two and four phone calls. It helps to have three or four people from your team on the call, because your clients will probably have three or four people from their side on as well. You’ll need to have a clear roadmap in place to how the client how you’ll take them where they want to go.

Things don’t always go this way. If you have no portfolio or reputation, it might take more to book these. If you’re well-respected in the space, it might take less. But something is fishy if the $100 and $1,000 clients ask you to get on three or four calls. These jobs shouldn’t be so complicated to book.