Lesson 8 - Scare the budget out of your client

Next, take the client through each of your offerings. After you’ve done this, ask the client, “do any of these budget ballparks fit what you’re looking for?” They still might not tell you what their exact budget is, but giving them categories to point to will help them give you a starter point. They might say “somewhere in Tier 3 or Tier 2.” Boom. They just gave you their budget range.

Finally, call that out. “Great—if I send you a campaign pitch in the $10k-$25k zone, would that be helpful for you to see? I can send over 2 or 3 tiers of budget options to help show you the difference. Does that budget range sound like what you’re looking to spend?”

The client will go one of two places from here. They’ll either say, “yes, that would be great!” Or, the budgets you spoke back to them will still be too high.

In tomorrow’s lesson, we’ll discuss how to “scare” the budget out of cheap clients, so you don’t waste precious time on building pieces for them.

It’s not really that scary.

This is how to get your client to tell you their budget on the discovery call. If you missed yesterday’s lesson, go back and watch it, because this is part two.

If you saw yesterday’s lesson, then you know the process to get to this point. Once you ask the client if you can send them a pitch in a ballpark budget zone (let’s say “$10,000 - $25,000”), they’ll either say yes, or that budget will still be too high for them.

In which case, you’ll scare their real budget out of them. They might say “actually, I think my boss is only approving like $1,500 for this one.”

How wonderful is that? You just discovered that your client’s budget was small after 15 minutes on the phone. Most creative businesses don’t discover that until after a 30-minute discovery call, then a full creative concept build, then another call to present the concept, then three or four follow-up emails. It all takes two weeks of wasted time.

But the breakdown page is different. It anchors your value, conveys your full capabilities, draws out solid budgets from good clients, and exposes small budgets from cheap clients.

Honestly, the breakdown page is the most important page in your deck. If you get this page right, and nail the process on your discovery calls, it will save you hundreds of hours, and make you hundreds of thousands of dollars.

Interested in getting this one right? You can book your capabilities deck workshop here.