We all love to offer our expertise when asked. But what if you don’t get paid for it?
Very often I get calls and emails asking for help. 99% of the time those cries for help turn into paying customers. However, sometimes they don’t work out that way…
Recently I got an enquiry following a referral and I spent endless amounts of time on the phone and answering emails back and forth, offering advice and how to move forward with their online marketing, and how I would help them moving forward…
During our call the client loved my ideas and my approach and said she would be in touch.
I never really heard back.
Of course, why would I? I gave my ideas for free and that gave them the opportunity to implement my strategies in-house…. Damn I must have been good.
I’m no dummy, I knew I shouldn’t have given away so much, but I didn’t know what else to do, I genuinely thought that the client was going to move forward with my plans with ME implementing them, not steal them and go away and do it for themselves. Of course, I’m delighted that they thought that my ideas were good enough to go ahead and use, but I gave away my time and knowledge for free.
My fault of course.
So how do you stop it?
Showing a prospect how you can help them is essential. They probably won’t work with you unless you prove you can. But the key is how you show them. Most people who run a service business provide two things—ideas and execution. Both are extremely valuable to your prospective clients and they should be paying you for each one. If you give your ideas away during the sales process, the only thing you have left to offer is your execution of those ideas. Sometimes your prospects can do the execution themselves, or use someone else. As I have just proved.
It’s deflating when your prospects go ahead and take your ideas and don’t use you. I’ve come across people who do it deliberately and you can usually tell those ones, but some often don’t really realise what they’re doing. Afteral, it was me that gave away my ideas for free.
So, next time this happens consider what your prospect clients needs to know in order for them to figure out if they want to hire you. They don’t need to know how you’re going to solve their problem, they only need to know that you can.
So, how do you show your prospects you’re capable of helping them? You have to demonstrate how you’ve helped other clients in similar situations. Provide examples of case studies. Reveal your clients problem and how you managed to solve it. Just don’t give it all away.
And the moment this turns into ‘how’ then you tell them that they need to pay you for your consultancy, whether or not they decide to use you to implement the plans you set out.
The main thing you MUST get across is that you can solve the problem. Not HOW you’re going to solve it, but that you can...
6 years on..it’s still a learning curve for me too 🙂
Hi, my name is Kelly and I am your Tech Angel. I am a multiple award winner for the UK and North East of England.
I work with Female Entrepreneurs who are simply overwhelmed with technology to help them start enjoying their business.
All so true Kelly – and so very frustrating.
We all love to share and sometimes we get treated so badly.
Hopefully, the ones that work with us prove to be so good it outweighs those bad ones.
Take care
Michelle
Thanks Michelle.
A shame that people take our knowledge for granted, event hough sometimes unintended.
At least we have good clients who value what we do for them though 🙂
Thank you Kelly I think we all have been in this situation at some point and your remarks are truly valid.I hope it helps others to see what could happen before it does,but as you say it is a learning curve and does it ever end really us learning…? I don’t think it does but thank you for this it was good to see others being made aware of what can happen sometimes.Good article,Thank you.
Hi Tracy, thanks for taking the time to comment.
To be honest I don’t think our learning will ever end, and it’s easy to get dragged into offering your advice to a potential client before converting, simply because you’re passionate about what you do. I find it difficult to not cross the line of demonstrating your experience without giving everything away sometimes.
But hopefully, this post will help readers be mindful of this in the future. Unfortunately most people want things for free and if you’re offering it to them unknowingly some will be savvy enough to run with it -1 client.
Try to maintain a firewall between ideas and execution so that something is missing from a potential client’s ability to put thing into action.
Also some of the people who steal your ideas are dirty rotten scoundrels and you don’t want them as clients. They ask for the earth and pay peanuts. Then you have to fire them, which is difficult and unpleasant for a customer driven company.
Great tips Charles! thanks
And thanks for taking the time to read and reply. I truly appreciate it 🙂
You are so right there – duh. I can kick myself sometimes – get so enthused with great ideas, then silence from them…..Thank you for helping me to think about what I need to do next time I have any bright ideas.
You’re very welcome! I STILL do it, and it’s so hard not to. I think it’s just natural that we want to help and go with our impulsive nature 😉
People always think I’m holding so,etching back so I tell them everything I know and so they think I know more than I’m telling them. If they call me a second time and ask for step two I recap how step one went and then I suggest they either pay me to fix step one or they pay me to tell them step two.