And I sat there and looked him dead cold in the eye and said “you are not paying me for tapping, you are paying me for knowing where to tap.”
After two days of back-to-back negotiations, I wanted him to know in no uncertain terms why the fuck we were seated there in the first place.
Rewind to the day before
My team and I had just finished the first day of the negotiation. We had made some compromises here and there to make the price work for both parties — us, and our company trying to become our client.
It was about 7 pm in the evening, the deal seemed fair. But in hindsight, while deliberating with my team, all we saw was how we might just have shot ourselves in the foot.
“But the company has potential though…plus we get some cool perks from the deal. Let’s make it work.”
Present Day, 9:05 am
I just got to the office, only to hear that the deal had been revised even more than what was agreed to the day before.
So I go into his office, and I make it clear that he is not paying for the service, he’s paying for how we think. I give some case studies of our current clients, and I close the deal.
But I still didn’t like the deal. Here’s what I learned later on about how to get to charge higher…
And before I go on, this has to be one of the most profound things I’ve learned in a minute. It was a video of Chris Do interviewing Blair Enns. And here’s what Blair said:
At the end of the day, if you CAN’T get the market to say: “hey, you’re worth more for this”, then it’s a sign that you might be earning a living.
So you’re like you’re kind of lower down on the maslow hierarchy of needs. You’re earning a living. But what we all really want to do is we want to transform others.
When you think about it, almost everybody has the same “why”. During a weeklong training by Salem Kinging, he asked us what our why is. And almost everyone had the same why.
When you pay close attention, you notice that everyone’s why is fundamentally the same. We all want to rise by lifting others. We want to improve our lives while improving the lives of people around us. Could be your close friends, could be your family, but you want to experience transformation, so you transform someone else’s lives.
What this means for you as a solution provider is HUGE!
And I’ll put it in the words of Blair Enns.
At the end of your career, what would give you fulfilment is if you can look back and you have because of that career, been able to improve the lives of the ones you love.
Now Imagine you go to work in the morning with your noble goal and after getting beat down a bit you have a client meeting at the close of work by say 7pm. And the CEO of the company has the same why, the same motivation.
So you’re sitting across the table from the CEO of the (potential) client company and you’re both kind of beat down by the issues of the day. And so where the client wanted to do some transformational work right now, they’re looking at a to-do list and on that to-do list is to hire you to deliver x and transformation’s gonna have to wait for another day.
And you’re looking at the bank account thinking: okay you know i just need to take the money. So you both make compromises. Fast forward a few years fast forward to the end of your career and what have you done. Have you lifted yourselves? Have you transformed others?
You can’t do any of that without a struggle and the struggle is in that moment. You stop and say I’m not going to do this one for the money. I’m not going to do this one cheap. I’m not going to let the client get away with a pass on a strategic opportunity by framing this as a simple tactical challenge. “I just need a video.”
As Remmie Ajayi said in his viral video, “Is it not just to tweak something here and tweak something there?” But no. It’s not.
They have a bigger opportunity. I am going to lean into this one and I am going to try to channel my why and tap into the clients why and push them to think bigger about what we might accomplish here and to fund it at a higher level. If you don’t step up in those moments you will never be the career professional that you want to be.
It is your duty to help your client make the best of the opportunity to do something truly remarkable. And the way to do it is to…
Move away from merely providing services and providing solutions, to helping your client achieve their big goal. That changes the dynamics of things. And at this point, you both get more satisfaction from the project.
