0:16

Big Ten Can is the world's leading

0:18

sales learning and enablement platform that

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delivers the onboarding and training, preparation,

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need to win.

0:30

Welcome to the Salesforce Podcast where we

0:32

talk about filing the why

0:34

and how people buy. I'm your host, Victor,

0:36

Antonio. Thank you for joining me. Thank you

0:38

for letting me those wonderful years if you

0:40

watch and some video, which you should also be

0:42

doing. Thank you for the eyeballs today.

0:44

We're gonna talk money. More specifically, we're gonna

0:47

talk the console with mister smart

0:49

pricing table himself. Job

0:52

Ardeeser. Did I get that right, Joe? You

0:54

did, Victor. He nailed it. Joe,

0:56

let these folks know, fool you out. Give me me

0:59

give us your thirty second to one minute spiel

1:01

about who you are and

1:03

Let's talk about your company little bit. Yeah.

1:06

Well, I I'm former agency owner.

1:08

I started agency back

1:10

in two thousand eight eight and scaled

1:12

it from myself to about ten employees. Never

1:15

planned on doing that, but got

1:17

a great education doing so.

1:19

And a few years ago,

1:21

I ended up selling my agency, and

1:24

I started smart racing table,

1:26

which was some proposal software that

1:28

we we wrote for our own agency,

1:31

which I think is a great model, build

1:33

something that works for you and then take it to

1:35

others. So that's kind of my quick background.

1:38

I love it. Hey, Joe. What is your definition?

1:40

I've heard people use word agency in

1:42

in several different ways. What's your definition

1:44

of

1:44

agency? Yeah. Well, I I think it I

1:47

tend to think of it in terms of a marketing

1:49

context. So we, you know, we were a marketing agency,

1:52

digital agency, know,

1:54

people come to us help

1:57

with their marketing tools, website,

2:00

SEO,

2:01

adWords, that kind of stuff. That's my main

2:04

context. Oh, I love that,

2:06

by the way. I before we get into, by the

2:08

way, folks, check out smart pricing table dot com

2:10

so you can see what Joe's talking about. He's got

2:12

a demo video on there. He's also got a demo,

2:14

a live demo on this. You can actually see it Was

2:17

that was that demo on your website based

2:19

on your

2:19

agency, your marketing, digital marketing agency?

2:22

Yeah. We some of that kinda carried over from

2:24

the old days you know, I'm

2:26

I'm really big into going into detail.

2:28

And so if you saw that sample proposal

2:30

on our website, lots of detail

2:32

really described to the prospect what they're gonna

2:35

get. Yeah. What what I liked about

2:37

the software when I looked at it is that

2:39

it's clean. I love clean

2:41

looks. You know what I mean? It's simple to go through.

2:43

And that if was actually going through that,

2:45

I would actually enjoy it. It was actually can

2:48

I say that, Joe, that your proposal

2:50

software was actually enjoyable? Is that like wrong

2:52

to say?

2:53

Hey, that's my goal. Hi, Victor.

2:55

So you I've accomplished that hopefully.

2:57

I'm I'm I'm a big believer

3:00

in and simplicity. Right? There's

3:02

lots of software out there. And

3:04

that's one of our high points is, you

3:06

know, prospect can see it. They can interact

3:09

without a lot of help. And they can

3:11

get

3:11

going. Yeah. So you put you

3:13

put this together because you had a digital marketing

3:15

agency. Right? Right. What I'm sure

3:17

it's like website you know, build website blogs,

3:19

search search engine optimization, search engine marketing,

3:22

all the wonderful things to get your your your

3:24

business out there. And so as you were

3:26

doing this, you know, how did the thought of

3:28

this smart pricings proposal

3:30

software come about, like, what will what were

3:32

some of the difficulties you were seeing in putting together

3:34

a proposal? You go say, hey, no. We need there's something

3:37

we need something in the market. Right.

3:39

Yeah. I well, I was using some software. So originally,

3:41

I started using, you know, I was just using Google

3:43

Docs, which is just a total headache.

3:46

Right? You you see a spelling error,

3:48

oh, Fred. He can be very

3:50

fast into the email. Got to go back,

3:52

check fix a spelling error, export it

3:54

as a PDF, delete the first version.

3:56

I pre upload it. Oh, crap. I just uploaded

3:59

the same version one. That's probably here.

4:01

Right? And so that that drove

4:03

me many moons ago. Try

4:05

some proposal software, one of the

4:07

big box suppliers. And it

4:10

worked really well. I think I used it for, like,

4:12

four years. But the

4:14

challenge was

4:17

I wanted to have a really comprehensive pricing

4:20

table or scope of work table so

4:22

that we weren't starting from scratch

4:24

every single time. And

4:26

when I would load my

4:28

master template, it took about forty

4:30

five seconds. To create

4:32

a new proposal based on it. And, Victor,

4:34

I'm a sales guy. Like, I got

4:37

stuff to do and The

4:39

last thing on my list is staring at my screen waiting

4:41

for some software to load. And

4:44

so we originally set out, you know,

4:46

we're not gonna create this whole

4:48

proposal software setup. Let's

4:50

just create a pricing or a scope of

4:52

work table, and then we'll

4:55

export that, put it into our bids.

4:58

But one thing led to another. And

5:00

before we knew it, we had a fully functioning

5:03

product. It was just internal only. But

5:06

it to this day goes

5:08

really quick, speed,

5:11

creation, of adding new line items,

5:13

of just using the app that's been

5:16

a real, you know, North Star

5:18

for me go quick because

5:21

of my need. You

5:23

yeah.

5:23

You know, you remind you remind me of the story.

5:25

I think think it's Slack. Like

5:27

Slack was in the original product. They had

5:29

they were building some other product and they internally

5:32

built these things called now called Slack to

5:34

communicate within the company. And that, you

5:36

know, after the first thing bombed, They're like,

5:38

well, what about this thing we developed on the side?

5:41

And that's almost a consequence, kind of a derivative.

5:44

What is when you look at happening in

5:46

the market? Like, why why would I wanna use besides

5:48

the fact that I'm probably using cheesy software or maybe

5:50

Google Docs, what is what what

5:52

are the holes problems in the market that you saw

5:54

that said, you know what? think I can make a business of

5:56

it because these are the type of people

5:58

that will need this

5:59

product. Well,

6:02

every business has to pick its niche.

6:04

Right? Or it should. You you have to know your

6:06

customer And for me,

6:08

you know, there's a lot of, you know,

6:11

Joe, there's lots of proposal software. Why are you

6:13

doing this? It sounds like a suicide mission.

6:15

Well, it is if Everyone

6:17

is my market and everything is my market. But

6:19

for you know, the the the driver

6:22

is in the name, smart pricing

6:24

table. And so where I really

6:26

hit hard on is the interact interactivity

6:29

of proposal software. With with our

6:31

software, you know, you can have a lot of optional line

6:33

items you can have

6:36

what I call line item upsells. So

6:38

I'll give you an example of this picture. Let's

6:40

say I'm pitching you on a new website. And

6:43

I've got a line item for a blog and

6:45

it's say a thousand dollars. Well,

6:48

with smart pricing table, you can actually

6:50

include upsells on the line

6:52

item level. And I could say things like,

6:54

hey, Victor, would you also like to integrate

6:57

Mailchimp into your blog? Hey, that's two

6:59

fifty. And what about author biopages?

7:01

That's four hundred. And all

7:03

the sudden, you have more than

7:06

just this proposal, but you also

7:08

have like a brochure and an educational tool.

7:11

And people start clicking and turning things on

7:13

that you didn't even know that they were interested in.

7:16

And so back to interactivity, we also have

7:19

quantities. We have different

7:23

types of line items, like, you can have free

7:25

or you can have task based,

7:27

which is like a, you know, you enter

7:29

your tasks into the system and you can calculate

7:31

stuff automatically for you. But

7:35

the the idea is cut down on the back and

7:37

forth by presenting more to the customer

7:40

and empower them by allowing

7:42

them to adjust the scope and

7:45

and and affect the price to some

7:46

degree. And that that the mark really

7:49

after. Let me I I wanna

7:51

get people a visual if they're if they're listening to

7:53

this or watching this, but they haven't seen your software, which

7:55

think is so, again, it's it's simple,

7:57

cool. That's what I thought software. Is that

8:00

I can send you a proposal. Right? Right. And

8:02

and you you hit one of my favorite topics, which is

8:04

upselling -- Yeah. -- nicely done. Yeah.

8:06

And that is you could add things on all these

8:08

different line items. And you could add them subtract as

8:10

you're going to the proposal, as you say turning them

8:12

on or off. Right. So this creates almost

8:14

like an engaging conversation about the

8:16

pricing proposal with the client.

8:20

Right. Get that? Absolutely. By

8:22

the way, I'm I'm hitting the point extra hard because

8:24

I because I think that's pretty cool. That instead of

8:26

me just mailing you a PDF faucet, what do

8:28

you think? The pricing and then I gotta come

8:31

back and maybe scratch things off. We can

8:33

actually pull it up and look at it together

8:35

and turn things on or off by just hitting on

8:37

and off

8:37

buttons. Yeah. And and it really it's

8:40

such an enjoyable experience.

8:43

Can I tell you fun story? I

8:46

I once had a This is kind of

8:48

where the interactivity comes with

8:50

a punch. I once had a prospect

8:52

call me and say, hey, we'd like a proposal

8:55

so they asked for their proposal. And

8:58

by the way, we can't meet with you. That's

9:01

a great prospect. Right?

9:03

And twenty five k is our is our minimum.

9:06

At that time, my agency you

9:08

know, we we were really high end,

9:10

and that was on the lower side of things.

9:13

But we needed the work. And so,

9:16

you know, just thought there were some more put

9:18

together a proposal and

9:21

probably spent no more than ten minutes, Victor,

9:23

because let's get back this gets back to time.

9:25

I don't have time It took an

9:27

hour on a proposal that I don't even get a percent.

9:30

Right? Mhmm. But I have ten minutes. And

9:33

so we put put it together, deselected a

9:35

bunch of stuff, and and I brought the cardinal

9:37

rule of mind which is throwing a proposal over

9:40

the fence. Right? Two

9:42

weeks goes by, don't hear anything

9:45

from the prospect. Until finally

9:47

we get a signature request for thirty

9:49

four thousand dollars. And

9:52

what had happened is they had simply interacted

9:54

with a proposal by themselves. They had this

9:56

online interacts proposal. They

9:59

turned things on and off. And,

10:01

magically, Victor, I don't know how this happened,

10:03

but nine grand magically appear.

10:06

I love I love nine extra grand. I'll take

10:08

that. This is what's you know, I

10:10

I'm gonna scold you Joe in a good way.

10:12

Sure. think you're missing out by not really

10:14

pushing the interactivity piece -- Yeah. -- to the

10:16

smart pricing table. That interactivity

10:19

piece was the aha, Bowman formats. Okay. That's

10:21

why this is different. And I want people

10:23

to kinda see it or visually see it in their head. Is that

10:25

again, what you just said is you just gave them the proposal

10:27

and then they can sit there and turn on and

10:29

offline items, right, that have been preloaded

10:32

in the proposal. Right? And what

10:34

what I love about that I wanted to ask you

10:36

about this. Because what I love about this is they can share

10:38

that. Right? They can have a discussion amongst their groups

10:40

to start turning things on and off. Y'all take that. No. I

10:42

don't want that. Turn that off. You know, little buttons turning

10:44

on and off. Can you

10:47

track

10:48

in that software? You know, how many people have

10:50

viewed it? How often they've viewed it? Was it shared?

10:52

Stuff like that. Yeah. And that I think

10:54

that's the power of the interactivity as

10:56

well. Every

10:58

software is gonna do analytics differently.

11:01

With our software, so

11:04

the things that are trapped, whether

11:07

our our line items can open and close,

11:09

which allow you to go into detail without

11:11

overwhelming your prospect. Let's say,

11:13

again again back to that blog line item,

11:16

Victor, you could you just see it

11:18

there. It would share price, and then you can click

11:20

on it, get lots of details. Well,

11:23

on the admin side, if someone

11:25

opens a line item, it's locked.

11:27

So you you not only that they're looking at

11:29

your scope of work, but they you know exactly what

11:31

they've opened, which is very helpful as a salesperson.

11:34

You can see if they turn things on or off. Including,

11:37

you know, optional line items or line

11:39

upsells. You can see if they changed quantities.

11:42

You can track what other pages they've looked

11:44

at, you can because it's more than scope of work

11:46

you can have about us, your terms,

11:48

the cover page, all that kind of stuff. And

11:51

so, yeah, it it breaks it down, shows

11:53

you really so much of the engagement

11:55

that's happening with the proposal and

11:57

how they're looking at it and interfacing

11:59

with. Yeah. I I like to I

12:01

love the software, the whole concept. I like I said, the

12:03

interactivity piece, the engagement piece,

12:06

the I guess, the self pricing?

12:09

Were you doing it on your own? I don't need you. I'll

12:11

just kinda sit there and turn things out at all. Right?

12:13

What did have you found any interesting

12:16

stuff within the data? Like, you know,

12:18

say, you know, Victor, every time we add this many items,

12:20

we see this happen or every time we do it, you

12:22

know, I we we see look at proposal

12:23

analytics, we see this. Do you have any cool

12:26

insights?

12:28

That's a that's a good question. don't

12:31

know that we've we've looked terribly

12:33

close into that. You

12:35

know, I I think one of the things one

12:38

this is a database, but it's an in interesting

12:41

surprise that I found my

12:44

agency, we discovered that as

12:46

if we went into detail and we'd provided,

12:49

like, transparency with prices and

12:52

spelled things out. There's actually

12:54

a certain amount of people that were turned off by that.

12:56

I'd say about three or four percent. And

12:59

the reason why is some some

13:01

companies, I don't agree with this,

13:04

they want that. They

13:06

don't like, you know, it's this

13:09

it it's basically like, I'd rather

13:11

have you tell me, I'm gonna make a website

13:13

for thirty thousand dollars. And

13:16

I can just do whatever I want and

13:18

we don't really know when the project's done.

13:20

So that knows kind of interesting thing that,

13:23

you know, the format there's

13:25

a there's a small sector that don't like

13:27

it. And for me, that was really helpful because it's like

13:29

that. You told me what I needed to know. We wouldn't

13:31

be good fit. But

13:34

as far as the data that, you know, I I think I'm

13:36

gonna, you know, probably crunch a little bit

13:38

more on that picture. I don't have any

13:40

big, like, insights from looking at you

13:43

know, on

13:43

on that. And that'll be yeah.

13:44

III just think it'll be kinda cool. Like, I was

13:46

talking to you, what was the company's name? They

13:50

do demos. Right? They demo

13:52

software. And they can actually measure,

13:54

you know, how, you know, it's been passed around,

13:56

how many people passed around, how many people viewed it, how

13:58

long they viewed it. Right. They had some interesting

14:01

insights from the

14:01

analytics. Yeah. So what's cool? What is

14:04

that data down the road? It's gonna be very valuable.

14:06

I I think it I think looking for certain patterns

14:08

can be super full. So for

14:11

instance, if someone

14:14

did a bunch of interactions, goes

14:16

completely quiet and they come back two weeks

14:18

later, what does not mean? What

14:20

what's the, you know, what's their level

14:23

of interest? And one thing I should note

14:25

is we also send vacation.

14:27

So if someone opens up your proposal, you get

14:29

it. And then that kind of gets wind of,

14:31

hey, there's activity, track it, and

14:33

see what's going on. I

14:35

would say, you know, it's

14:38

really telling if someone is looking

14:40

at your scope of work and they're actually

14:42

going through each individual line item

14:45

and they're reading it. Right? You

14:47

gotta put yourself in your prospect

14:49

shoes. A lot of times when you're sending out a

14:51

bid, they're getting four,

14:53

five, ten different proposals and

14:56

some of them go straight in

14:58

the trash. And so to see

15:00

that engagement and to, you know,

15:02

because people care about price, they care

15:04

about the actual work, that's, you know,

15:07

I can look at boilerplate terms

15:10

some other time. Right? But what are you

15:12

actually what's your actual offering? You

15:14

know, to be able to see how they're interacting interacting

15:17

with

15:17

that, I think that gives a real clue into

15:19

their level of interest.

15:21

Yeah. I mean, I just it's I think it's just

15:24

a fascinating concept. Like, I never really thought

15:26

about it. like, you know, your company came across

15:28

my table. Right? And I go, oh, this is

15:30

interesting. Having this whole interactive pricing,

15:32

because I'm thinking, okay, we send a proposal. Right?

15:35

And they look at the proposal. They're turning things

15:37

on it off. That level of engagement's gonna

15:40

even the level of engagement tells

15:42

me that they're looking at it as opposed not

15:44

knowing, you know, shooting stuff into the void. Right.

15:47

You set a proposal. So I think that's pretty

15:49

cool. Have you found that,

15:52

you know, when you fully look, let's say, you

15:54

let's go back to your digital marketing agency. Right?

15:57

I came to you. I want a certain level of service.

15:59

I want the whole, you know, the kit you know, everything up.

16:02

What did you find in terms of price or any insights

16:04

on pricing on your using the

16:06

the software? In terms of presenting

16:09

a fully loaded option like boom. Here it is.

16:11

Right? Then you can turn things on and off. Right?

16:13

Or is there a possibility maybe doing

16:16

option one? Option two, option

16:18

three. Yeah. You know, good, better, best type of

16:20

thing. Yeah. Well, this

16:22

the software is very versatile, and I I

16:24

encourage that kind of that kind of

16:26

use of it. And one of the things

16:28

one of the things I'm really adamant about,

16:30

I'm kind of an evangelist about this bad

16:32

thing, is building

16:35

your system. Most of

16:37

the time when people are creating proposals,

16:40

they're thinking it a one off mentality. But

16:43

it's it's that whole, you know, working

16:46

in your business versus working on your

16:48

business. Mhmm. I

16:50

we built a lot into the software so

16:52

that you can create templates

16:55

and proposals very quickly. And

16:58

you could send two different

17:00

versions of a proposal to

17:03

a particular customer. That's a lot

17:05

Ardeeser you're never working on your

17:07

business. Right? Like, asking big questions, like,

17:09

what do we sell? What packages

17:12

do we actually want to present What

17:14

packages do we actually make money?

17:16

Right? And so

17:19

I definitely I definitely can see a lot

17:21

of value in presenting

17:24

ABC or simply

17:27

in including this whole gamut

17:30

of things with optionality

17:32

to turn it down. One

17:34

of my favorite tactics.

17:37

Victor was actually I we would include

17:40

you know, our websites were thirty,

17:42

forty, fifty thousand dollar websites. Right?

17:44

We'd include a section called additional items

17:47

for your consideration. And

17:49

if I leave that out, That's to my

17:51

own detriment because

17:54

we build it with

17:56

that kind of thing. You know, maybe maybe

17:58

there was something that In a sales call,

18:00

we kinda talked about, but didn't really get

18:02

it get our hands dirty with, or

18:04

maybe I haven't something that I sold to someone

18:07

else in a similar business. That I think

18:09

would match for them. Just putting two

18:11

or three line items

18:13

under the header of additional items to

18:15

consider was really really huge.

18:17

And for me, personally, I saw, you know,

18:21

III would guess, you know,

18:23

when we really got serious, building

18:26

a system, putting together proposals

18:29

with optionality and control. I

18:32

think we we saw probably about a twenty

18:34

to twenty five percent increase in our

18:36

average project price. Nice.

18:39

That's not. Because another thing, Victor, is

18:41

like, Let me give me

18:43

another example. Let's say that you want

18:46

a what's something complicated

18:48

on a on a website? Let's say you want

18:51

AAA way for

18:53

your listeners to log in

18:55

and view all your podcasts

18:57

and and maybe even a

19:00

forum to interact with each other. Right.

19:03

Now as a business owner

19:05

or an agency owner, If

19:07

I've never thought about that, I go into

19:09

panic mode. Like, what

19:12

what that sounds complicated, you know?

19:14

Like, are we monthly marketing sites? Right?

19:16

But if I turn it a little bit and I think

19:19

every time a prospect tells

19:22

me they want something, If I look

19:24

at that as an opportunity to build

19:26

a reusable line item where

19:28

I flush out what's included, what's

19:31

excluded? What are upsells?

19:35

Then all of a sudden, I'm not

19:37

thinking about just you, Victor, but I'm working

19:39

on my business. And if

19:41

I save that for reuse, then

19:44

all of a sudden, the next time I talk

19:47

to someone who wants something similar, It

19:49

doesn't take me an hour to scope

19:51

it out. It takes me a couple of minute.

19:54

Sorry. Take me literally seconds to throw it

19:56

on there and guess what there's even upsells. And

19:59

so I I really encourage people

20:01

no no matter what platform you're using, you

20:03

know, really

20:05

pause, slow down to speed

20:07

up, and get your things in gear.

20:09

And proposal writing's a lot more fun.

20:11

No. I'm I'm with you, by the way.

20:14

I like the Michael Gerber philosophy. Never

20:16

work in your business, work on your business. Right?

20:19

And I I love the fact that

20:21

the there there's a psychological term about mirror

20:23

exposure just because either you mentioned it

20:25

or I see it as a line out of additional things you

20:28

want to consider because sometimes you did

20:30

say it. You did mention it. Right?

20:32

Right? And you probably thought it was a throwaway

20:34

phrase or something that you mentioned, but the customer

20:36

goes, and just left it there. And then when

20:38

they see it on the proposal, they're like, oh, that's what he

20:41

mentioned. Right? That's how much it costs. And sometimes

20:43

people are afraid to ask you these things because they don't

20:45

wanna be sold. Right? And to see this as an

20:47

additional line item, it's almost like a menu

20:49

option. Right? She's like, oh, I mean, I'll add that.

20:51

I remember he mentioned that. I love the fact that you

20:53

use again what other people are buying or

20:56

what they bought in the past as additional

20:58

item that's kind of social proof there. Right?

21:00

Here's what other companies are mine. So and

21:02

the fact that you're seeing that type of increase, twenty

21:05

percent is pretty I mean, yeah, that's

21:07

real money right there, I think. And

21:09

then I was gonna ask you, you

21:11

know, and this is a tough one. I was, I'll put you on

21:13

spot here. You know, when you look at

21:15

how you used to do it with Google Docs, and

21:17

then all of a sudden, now you, like, you know,

21:20

you have your software. The smart

21:22

pricing table software. You know, have you seen

21:24

like, what's the conversion rate

21:26

in terms of close rate? Do you see more deals

21:28

close? You talk about average deal size to be twenty

21:30

percent higher? But have you seen, like, conversion rates

21:33

go up? Yeah. It I haven't

21:35

it's all anecdotal. I don't have statistics

21:37

on that. can tell you. Sure.

21:40

I am a friggin believer. Right?

21:42

It it just We and and

21:45

it was also it it was also effort. Right?

21:47

If if you can put together a proposal in

21:50

five to fifteen minutes instead of an

21:52

hour, you can get exposure to

21:54

things that you wouldn't have previously because you just didn't

21:56

have time. I know

21:59

I know I can't tell you how many comments

22:01

we had about. I love

22:03

that, you know, we can change our proposal.

22:05

We can we can edit it.

22:07

We can we can interact.

22:10

We can get it down to one of the,

22:12

you know, one of the really

22:14

helpful things is let let's say that your

22:17

second in charge, Victor, but you've got to get a

22:20

new website approved or new whatever approved

22:22

by your superior. And maybe you've

22:24

gotten a sixteen thousand dollar budget. Well,

22:27

all these other proposals are static.

22:29

And maybe there's one under sixteen

22:32

thousand, but the other ones aren't. And then there's this

22:34

interactive one where it's actually eighteen

22:36

five. But you'd clicked

22:38

on a couple different things and you

22:40

got it down to fifteen five and now it's the

22:42

lowest one and you had

22:44

the blessing of not having to reach

22:46

out to agency like you did with all

22:49

the other ones. That

22:51

right there I mean, that right there,

22:53

you know, rewind it if you gave

22:55

me listener watch that again. That right there to

22:57

me is magic. You know what I

22:59

mean? Because it's dynamic and also you're handing

23:01

over control to the

23:02

client. I think that's magic. Yeah. Yeah. And

23:04

and I mean, does that affect your close rate? You

23:07

better freaking believe it. Right? I

23:09

I had I had a customer say, I wish we

23:11

had this three weeks ago We just

23:13

lost this city deal, a deal with the city because

23:16

over three hundred dollars. Because

23:18

you gotta understand your prospect. Is

23:21

every every interaction with you

23:23

times

23:24

five times ten. They don't

23:26

have time to go back and forth or they may

23:28

not have the will power. And so the one that

23:30

tends to win is just the Apple that got

23:33

closest to what they want it.

23:35

Right. So I think by the way, the the

23:37

back and forth, all show. I mean, that's that's

23:39

a powerful thing. Right? Because the back and forth is one thing.

23:41

Nobody wants to do that. Right? You

23:43

you brought up a very subtle point, which

23:45

I think is really good. And that is sometimes,

23:48

especially when you deal with, like, government agencies.

23:50

Right? Right? When they got a budget, they got

23:52

a budget, and that's it. The budget's not moving.

23:55

And they're not gonna go back and

23:56

forth. And so the winner's gonna be the person

23:58

whose proposal you can actually interact with

24:00

and just knock it down right underneath

24:02

that. Yeah. Because they don't wanna go back and get

24:04

additional signals. Yes. Yes. Yeah. That's totally

24:06

true to the government contracts. I mean, you

24:08

you think you can get some crickets in

24:11

in private business, started in government

24:13

contracting. And you don't even you don't even know if

24:15

they opened the dark thing, if they got it, let

24:17

alone will they actually sit I've been in

24:19

conversation. So I've been there, right? I sold

24:21

the government. This is like -- Yeah. -- it's it's

24:23

it's one of the worst sales jobs they have,

24:26

but Yeah. It's one of the greatest sales jobs

24:28

I have if you get the deal. Right. Because that's

24:30

a perpetual contract. Right? That that's exciting.

24:32

Right. Yeah. The interactive part is

24:34

just amazing. I wanted,

24:37

you know, the I had a guy by the name of MacDickson

24:40

on the podcast about, I don't know, about

24:42

two months ago. Matt Dixon wrote a book called

24:44

the Jolt Effect. And

24:47

there's roundabout way to asking you a question.

24:49

In there, he analyzed data and

24:51

he found that downselling. Downselling

24:55

was actually a very powerful technique. Downselling

24:57

in this case. You tell me your budget's

24:59

twenty thousand. Right? Then I come

25:01

in with a proposal at sixteen.

25:04

Right? But in your case,

25:06

I would think because you have additional items

25:08

that they can now add that

25:11

salespeople who downsold did two things.

25:13

One is they build credibility with the customer because you

25:15

didn't try to oversell me. You actually came

25:17

in under budget. But now because

25:19

of your software, you give

25:21

me the options to add items. Do

25:24

you wanna put some common

25:26

dumbass, some twist dumbass, because I thought it was fascinating

25:28

data. Yeah. Well, I think it does I

25:30

think it builds trust. I mean,

25:32

if if I used to tell people

25:35

But I don't care if we do a ten thousand

25:37

dollar project or hundred thousand dollar

25:39

project. Because I know if you select

25:41

or deselect something, it's gonna add

25:43

or remove scope. Right? It doesn't

25:45

it doesn't matter what you select because we've thought

25:48

through our line items and

25:50

we know we're charging the right amount because we've

25:52

broken it down. We're not just saying fifty

25:54

grand for a website. We've broken it down.

25:56

We analyzed it. We know we we

25:58

we revisit our prices. And so

26:00

I don't care what you select. And that's a that

26:02

builds a huge amount of trust. I think

26:04

I think in addition, big advocate

26:07

of providing a

26:09

decent level of detail for each of your

26:11

line items. Don't overdo it, but don't

26:13

underdo it. And I think

26:15

that builds trust as well. When

26:19

it comes -- Like, when it comes to money,

26:22

you know, people often say, this is

26:24

my budget. Where did you get that? I

26:26

don't know. Where

26:29

did your boss get that? I don't know. It's they're

26:31

a lot like timelines. Right? It's like,

26:33

we need this done in two months, and then

26:35

you break your bum doing it.

26:38

And they're like, oh, yeah. We're not going to that conference.

26:41

Yeah. Yeah. You're like, what what what after

26:43

all that talk, we used to we used to analyze how

26:45

much time it would take to put a proposal together.

26:48

I work with one company in the

26:50

the pool industry, for example. You know,

26:53

swimming pools. Yeah. And on average,

26:56

it takes about two to three hours to put a proposal

26:58

together, which is why they're always

27:00

like, you know, really qualifying hard to see

27:02

if these people are actually serious. So because, again,

27:04

Sometimes it just takes too much time. I

27:06

wanted to ask if I could pivot just a little

27:08

bit. The because I wanna talk about

27:11

the talked about the interactivity of the software,

27:13

right, the pricing software, how you can work it on your

27:15

own. But I I wanna I wanna bring it over

27:17

to, like, presentations. So

27:19

now, you have to do a presentation. Right?

27:21

And you're there live. And you bet you gotta get

27:23

to the pricing piece. Right? Right? Talk to

27:25

me about what you've seen in a

27:28

about with the presentation, your your smart pricing

27:30

table software, and how that's

27:32

helped or what impact does it have

27:35

during a live presentation?

27:37

Yeah. Well, I I you

27:39

know, one thing that goes to mind is I always

27:42

almost always require a

27:44

proposal meeting so

27:46

that I can review my proposal with

27:49

my prospect. This is just a quick

27:51

little tidbit. I'm sorry, a

27:53

lot of your visitors who even maybe use this. They

27:55

think about this. If your

27:57

proposal is not or your prospects

27:59

are willing to schedule proposal review

28:02

meeting, how much do they care about your

28:04

time? So I'm willing to

28:06

put in, you know, my side is I'm gonna get

28:08

down to ten minutes if I can. I'll put that time

28:10

in, but I want that meeting. And

28:12

with that, try try

28:14

doing a presentation of a

28:16

proposal that's in a PDF form.

28:19

Like -- Yeah. -- you want to work. You want

28:22

to get people to sleep, you know, roll

28:24

through a document, you hypnotize them,

28:26

knock them out, I'm great. It's

28:29

very, very hard to do that. When it's

28:31

interactive, you know, when and,

28:33

you know, I I would a lot of times, we'd go

28:35

through the geographical stuff. Here's our

28:37

team. Here's, you know,

28:39

maybe a few terms that we'll mention. But

28:42

when it's interactive, I can actually bring

28:44

the proposal into my present station.

28:46

Yeah. And be again,

28:48

the expandable, collapsible line

28:51

items allows me to touch

28:53

high level. So they're kinda revealing, oh,

28:55

you're including this line item.

28:57

Oh, and that line item. Oh, and I see that one that's

29:00

not turned on. It's optional. I can interact with that.

29:02

Okay. Great. And then I open

29:04

one. And they zoom in

29:07

and then I click on it because they say they want it

29:09

and they see the price update. You

29:12

just need a little bit of that kind of

29:15

you know, excitement to really keep

29:17

the engagement going well. And so I think

29:19

think that's if

29:21

you're presenting the proposal in

29:23

your actual meeting, I think having

29:26

it be interactive is a great way

29:28

to stimulate conversations and to keep

29:30

your prospect

29:30

engaged. You know, it it's

29:33

almost like, you know, what I love

29:35

about the turning things on and off or using

29:37

the the pull down menus to see how all

29:39

the items under these, you know, the the main category.

29:42

It's almost like a pattern interrupt. You

29:44

know, when you're doing like a presentation, I'll say you gotta

29:46

you gotta switch it. Right? So I you're watching me

29:48

that I switched to the proposal, and now we're

29:50

interacting with it. Right? It's a totally

29:52

different dynamic than just presenting

29:54

pricing. And then you don't have to come back, you

29:56

know, there's always that one person that's gonna say, yeah.

29:59

Well, we don't want we don't want that. We wouldn't want that. We

30:01

wouldn't want that. So now you gotta go back and

30:03

redo The whole you know, then resend the PDF.

30:05

And there's there's a certain momentum that's

30:07

lost. Yeah. That's why I was asking earlier

30:09

about the close rate or at least the advancement

30:11

rate. I gotta believe it's much higher

30:14

when you can work pricing in the room,

30:16

right, with the actual

30:18

client. Yeah. Remove friction wherever

30:21

possible. And if you can

30:22

give us a I mean, how chance have you been

30:24

talking to a contractor working on your house

30:26

or some very or some vendor I

30:29

really would love to know the price how

30:31

how much of a distinction is it?

30:33

You can get the price right in the

30:35

meeting. Or even, you know,

30:37

line items can be added to our

30:40

software suit quickly that you could be in a

30:42

meeting and say, oh, you wanna have you

30:44

wanna do business cards? Victor, I'd be

30:46

happy to, you know, throw

30:48

that on. Type it in real

30:50

quick, edit done. Oh, did you want us to print

30:52

it to? Okay. I'll turn that on for you. Done

30:55

is absolutely completely masked it

30:57

because the other five vendors are still

30:59

still, like, in pending okay. We've got your

31:01

changes. You know, we'll have them back

31:04

and and go back to all that kind of

31:05

stuff. Right? And

31:07

I love it, man. I I think people should check out

31:09

the self worth. So anyway, Joe,

31:11

give these folks a little bit of information

31:13

where they could find out more information about you

31:15

your software, which I highly recommend

31:18

they look at, give them some information. Yeah.

31:20

Well, besides like LinkedIn, which

31:23

engaging on LinkedIn, or you can find me

31:25

at smart pricing table dot com. And

31:27

if if you're business and you write proposals

31:30

and let's say that process is a bit painful,

31:33

I would encourage you to do a free trial of

31:35

our software. It's thirty day free trial. If

31:37

you mentioned this podcast, I'll

31:40

actually give you an additional fifty percent off

31:42

your first two months and after a free

31:44

trial. So lots of time to

31:46

interact with the system. And then I

31:49

also I love proposal writing.

31:51

I love sales But this is my main

31:53

thing. And I also do consulting.

31:55

If you're just wanting to think through your process,

31:58

maybe you've you know, you think of proposals

32:00

and you make sure you wanna crawl on a whole. Mhmm.

32:03

Happy to engage with that as well, and you can

32:06

learn more about all that at sport pricing

32:08

table dot com. You know, I'm glad you've

32:10

mentioned that because I I mean, I don't think I've ever

32:12

heard anybody talk about the proposal

32:15

step in the actual sales process. Really

32:18

thinking that through. We just take it for granted default.

32:20

Just put the proposal together. Right? Yeah. Have

32:22

you worked with companies? Well, of course, you have.

32:24

When you work with company on the proposal process,

32:26

you know, what have you found?

32:30

Yeah. I think there

32:32

a lot of times, there's some very obvious things that

32:34

are missing. You know, if

32:36

you don't have any biographical information about

32:38

your company, kind of, with anonymous. Right?

32:41

I find another common thing I find in

32:43

consulting is not putting

32:45

offense around your work. And I could talk

32:47

about that for hours, Victor. I mean,

32:49

what do what do mean by that? What do you mean by that? Well, a lot

32:51

of people a good example of says let's say

32:54

business cards. I'm gonna

32:56

pre you business card get you business cards and

32:58

also do some letterhead for you. And

33:01

and I'm gonna say a thousand bucks. And you're like,

33:03

great. Joe thinks this sounds

33:05

awesome. I have signed myself

33:08

up for a miserable

33:10

time. Victor, if I send you that and

33:12

you agree to it, one of three things is gonna happen.

33:15

One, I'm gonna get very lucky and

33:17

it just ends up being okay and I make a

33:19

decent ways. Right? The

33:22

the second thing is that could happen is it's

33:24

gonna go terrible because I haven't defined

33:26

my scope. I haven't

33:28

said Who's printing?

33:30

Who's taking care of printing? Maybe the customer assumes

33:32

that if I'm giving business cards, I'm also gonna print it.

33:35

What's the quality? How many revisions

33:37

do I get? What's the turnaround

33:39

time? When you don't clarify

33:41

anything like that, you're signing yourself up

33:43

for pain. I mean, so the second thing is

33:45

you The second option is you could

33:48

end up, you know, you have to arbitrarily just

33:51

be a jerk and say the project's done

33:54

because I said it is, Victor. Or

33:57

you have to do what I would always do when I didn't

33:59

define the step. And I would

34:01

take that and abs I'd absorb that.

34:03

You have to basically say, I didn't define

34:05

the scope, and so I have to just finish

34:07

this project for my client because that's my

34:09

fault. And if I make minimum wage, then

34:11

I'm just gonna learn this lesson even better.

34:14

So that that's the big idea there is put a fence

34:16

around to

34:17

work. What is included and

34:19

what's excluded from this particular work?

34:21

Man, Joe, that's I learned

34:23

that I learned that painful lesson many

34:25

years ago. When I didn't scope

34:27

my work or put a fence around it,

34:30

And the customer says, well, I thought it included that.

34:32

And I'm like, no. And there's just there's

34:34

this antagonism obviously between you

34:36

and the client. And that's never a win win.

34:38

So so I love that. As

34:41

we close out common mistakes

34:44

companies make with their proposal.

34:47

Just give me a quick hit list of things that are

34:49

doing wrong that they that might

34:51

be causing them to lose some

34:52

deals. Yeah. I've got it. I'll I'll walk

34:54

it through a few bullet points I wrote down here.

34:56

Being vague with your included words, I just

34:59

covered that. I'm not building

35:01

on past proposals. So you

35:04

give momentum, but you also make proposals

35:07

or or you you make line items better

35:09

when you're building on them. You're you're

35:11

including new limitations based on

35:13

project that's bad. Another

35:15

one would be, I'm not asking for a meeting

35:17

before agreeing to a proposal. We discussed that.

35:20

I'm not giving customers options. Not

35:22

listening to the customer and pitching them something

35:25

they didn't ask for. That's

35:28

a that's a big one. Not including

35:30

limitations, just touch on that. Not

35:32

using failures to improve the

35:34

system. I love it's

35:37

hard to fail, but

35:39

I love it because of what it does.

35:42

If I sell you business Ardeeser a thousand dollars

35:45

and I get paid seven dollars an hour,

35:47

I'm not gonna do that again. If

35:49

I don't fail and it just magically works out, I'm

35:51

not gonna learn my lesson nearly as well.

35:54

And then the last one I've I've written down here

35:56

is bad payment setups. Thirty

35:58

seconds on this really quick. I love this journey.

36:00

You're done. Instead of fifty percent

36:02

down and fifty percent on completion, this

36:05

is shout out to Jason Swank agency

36:07

guy taught me this many years ago.

36:09

He said, the idea is do I

36:12

do we did I did quarterly payments

36:14

and that were milestone based

36:17

and had a day clause on

36:19

it. So project start, twenty

36:21

five percent. Go.

36:24

Then after this next milestone is

36:26

complete, or

36:28

twenty five days and then it's an

36:30

additional twenty five percent then milestone

36:34

three and then or sixty five

36:36

days. And then finally, the

36:38

project completion and

36:41

or a hundred and twenty days. What's

36:44

so helpful about this is when you structure your payments

36:46

like that? If your client drags

36:48

their feet, you still paid. And I can

36:50

tell you, I've had customers pay a

36:53

hundred percent for projects

36:55

that were less than twenty percent. And

36:57

so but again, that that's

37:00

that all comes down to us as business owners.

37:02

If I don't define my terms, my

37:04

business is gonna run

37:05

me. And so that payment mistakes

37:07

is a common issue that people I'm

37:09

happy with. Man, let's send

37:12

out that one. That that's a good one, by the way.

37:14

You know, again, something you don't think about.

37:16

Right? As far as you don't timetables and

37:18

payment schedules. So I love that. Alright.

37:20

On that note, I'm wrapping this thing up.

37:23

Check out Joe r d cert on

37:25

LinkedIn. Check out the a website smart

37:27

pricing table dot com, look him up, connect

37:29

with him, take advantage of the trial, look at

37:31

the software demo on his website. It'll be

37:33

worth your time at Nafrab And after you do

37:35

that, check out the Sales Velocity Academy. We just had

37:37

some new courses. And as always, this is Victoria

37:40

Antonio Wick, my friend Joe, reminded you

37:42

That's selling it hard when you know how to price

37:44

it with the right software and you know how. Take

37:46

care.

37:48

Big Ten can is the world's leading

37:50

sales learning and enablement platform that

37:52

delivers the onboarding and training, preparation,

37:55

coaching, customer engagement, and

37:57

follow-up and insights that modern businesses

38:00

need to win.