Lesson 3 - Understand your client’s constraints

There is nothing worse than sitting through a presentation for a product or service that you know you don’t have the budget for. But the reason so many creative folks fumble their discovery calls is because they do just that. 

This is why it’s really important to understand your client’s constraints in the first few minutes of the call. But this isn’t so easy as just asking “what’s your budget?” You need to use strategic questions that let them save face. 

After your intro conversation, you can ask a simple question like this:

“What kinds of projects are you usually running? Is it social stuff mostly, or digital campaigns? Or commercials?” 

After you ask this question, just go silent. Let them talk. They’ll tell you what kinds of projects they usually run, and what they’re working on in the current moment.

This gives you an idea of which of your services to focus on during your presentation. If all they mention is social content, you’d be a fool to spend a lot of time walking them through your commercial campaign offerings. They’ll feel awkward, and they’ll nervously nod through your presentation. You should focus first on your social offerings, and then if there’s time left, you can fly over your bigger offerings so they have an idea of what you can do. 

There are a few other ways to extract information from your client about their budget. This is just the first place, and it’s a great place to go after your intro discussion. 

In the coming days, we’ll discuss more strategies to get your client to tell you their budget. Tomorrow, we’ll discuss the right way to take them through your service offerings.