Introduction

How often are you getting on discovery calls with potential clients? Once a week? Maybe less? Maybe a few times per month? 

Let’s be generous and say you’re getting on one discovery call every week. If we do quick math on that, we’ll realize that’s probably 50 calls per year (because of holidays and sick time). 

How big is your average project? $2,500? $5,000? $10,000? Maybe more? You can let me know, but for the sake of this one, let’s say it’s $5,000. That means in order to make $100,000, you need to close 20 projects per year. Which means 40% of your discovery calls need to turn into clients. 

Of course, that number goes up a little bit if your average project is smaller. It goes down if your average project is bigger. It all depends. 

But real quick…

What percentage of your discovery calls are you turning into clients? Is it 40%? Is it closer to 25%? For some creative businesses, it’s closer to 10%. What’s your percentage? 

This is why you need to increase the amount of discovery calls that turn into clients. Because if you don’t, it will slowly kill your business. You’ll be making money, sure, but not enough money at a quick enough rate to stay in business. You’ll have to take on random freelance contracts instead of building your business. You won’t be making the kind of content that big brands notice, because you’ll be working with smaller budgets just to make ends meet. 

For the last five years, I’ve been running a creative video production studio called Us Vs Them. I ran hundreds of discovery calls over the past few years. I lost a lot of clients, but I also won a lot of clients. Along the way, I made a lot of mistakes, and took a lot of notes, and slowly, I started to discover a process that reliably turned prospects into clients for the business. 

Now I’m going to share that process with you over the next ten days. I want to be up front with you. I’m angling my career towards speaking, writing, and running workshops for content businesses. So, throughout this course, you may hear me pitching you on a capabilities deck workshop. 

You’re going to learn a lot about how to over the next ten days. We’ll get to know each other. And, if the capabilities Deck Workshop sounds like a good fit for your business, then I’d love to come in, crush your copywriting, create a killer design, and train you on how to run solid discovery calls. But that’s only for the businesses who need that. 

If you’re just waiting on the wings, kicking the tires, trying to learn how to make things better in the short term, that’s great, too. I’m happy to have you here. 

Well, without further ado, let’s dive into lesson 1.

Lesson 1 - Consistent Outreach 

There are so many things you can’t control in the pitching process. You can’t control if your client gets back to your email. You can’t control if they show up to your call. You can’t control if they listen to your pitch. You can’t control how big their marketing budget is. You can’t control if they send your deck to their bosses. You can’t control if they hire you. 

This really is an uphill battle, isn’t it? 

When I feel overwhelmed about things, I try to focus on the things I can control. And that’s exactly what we need to do here. 

You can control how often you do outreach for your business. You can control how consistently you reach out to leads. You can control your energy on discovery calls. You can control the kinds of questions you ask potential clients. You can control how clear your offer is. You can control how well you follow up. 

Now, even with all the things you can’t control, it becomes clear that all the things you can control—little by little—increase your chances of turning a potential client into a paying client. When we focus on what we can control, the next steps we need to take become clear. 

Throughout this course, I will be sharing things that help you turn potential clients into paying clients with discovery calls. We’ll talk about the key pages you need to have in your decks. We’ll talk about the right questions to ask clients. We’ll talk about the demeanor you need to have on these discovery calls. All of this will help you convert more clients over the long term. But, if you’re too hung up on all the things you can’t control, you won’t have the right mindset to make this work. 

That’s the lesson for today: focus on the parts of your process that you can control, and forget about everything you can’t control. Over the next few days, we’ll be diving into the things you can control that will help you turn more potential clients into paying clients. 

See you tomorrow.