Why You Should Say No To Free Strategy Sessions
Let's talk about why I hate the idea of giving away free consultations or free strategy sessions to get clients.
It’s something that so many people in the agency world do. They say on their website ‘book a free consultation’, ‘book a 15 minute free consultation’ or ‘book an hour long, free strategy session’.
Today, I’ll talk about what you should do instead.
Why free strategy sessions are a bad idea
So, why do people do this and say this on their website?
Well, first of all, because everyone else does it right?
It just seems kind of natural.
We see it everywhere.
‘Book your 15 Minute free consultation.’
I feel like it reminds me of those infomercials from the 80s.
A lot of times as business owners, we just do things because they just seem like how you should do them.
We see it around and we just think that's how it's done.
The other reason that people offer up these free sessions, which I totally get, is if you have a prospect who doesn't know you very well, or who has no reason to trust you, then it feels like the best way you can build that trust is to give them some free time and that would be a reason to give away a free strategy session.
You figure ‘If I get on a call and I spend some time with them and I give them a lot of free advice and some ideas, then they'll see how much value I have to offer. Then they'll hire me because they'll say, “Wow, if you're giving that away for free, what are you gonna give me when I pay you?”’.
I think that's another reason people give away that free time and I get it.
If you don't have a different way of building that trust with clients, then giving away free consultations, free strategy sessions makes sense.
You need to build that trust with someone somehow.
And here's why I hate that framing, of the ‘free’ consultation or strategy session.
To me, they both sound like bullshit, because we all know that the purpose of the free consultation or free strategy session is just to sell you.
So it's really just a veiled sales call, and it's veiled under the guise of ‘Oh, I'm actually here to give you lots of free advice’, as if you're not here to sell them.
And to me, that's really uncomfortable.
The second reason I dislike it is because it’s framing your time as not being valuable.
You're saying ‘I am happy to give you some free advice’, but there is an unconscious message baked into that, which is that ‘my advice is not worth that much’.
I really don't like that the first step in working with a client or connecting with a potential client is to let them know that what you have to say is not valuable, or is worth literally $0.
I do not like that at all.
I think the uneven power dynamic it creates is going to haunt you later on in the project, if they do end up hiring you, because you’re starting off with the fact that you’re not worth money.
The other reason I don’t like free strategy sessions is because people don't value what they don't pay for.
So you can give someone the same advice for free or paid.
And they will literally not value it as much because they didn't give you money.
Now I know this because I used to do this all the time and I used to give people advice for free.
I still do it, sometimes, when I'm talking to someone I don't want to work with. I'm like, ‘Listen, let me just tell you what you should do. Let me tell you where you should focus…’
I have literally given people their brands, and they just throw it away, because they didn't pay for it and they don't value what I had to say.
They might think it was a good idea, but they're literally not going to personally value it enough to take action on it.
So if you really want to be helpful to people, you don't give them that advice for free, because it's not really that helpful.
Free strategy session, or sales call?
As I said earlier, these are actually just veiled sales calls and I find them to be very uncomfortable.
The setup for the call is that ‘I'm going to give you some free advice, and there's no sale.’
And then you get to the part where there should be a sale and it's like ‘who's going to break first?’ Right?
I know I used to get really uncomfortable at that moment because there's usually a point in that conversation where you have to switch the conversation to buying.
And that moment can be very tricky to navigate, especially for those of us who don't like to be salesy. It can be very uncomfortable, because now you have turned what was supposed to be a really free valuable call into a pitch.
And so it really wasn't a free strategy session, it was just a ploy to get you on the phone so you could sell them.
The Fit Call
Here's what I like to do instead.
I don't use the term ‘free strategy session’, I don't use the term ‘free consultation’ and I don't even use the word free.
Just call it what it is.
I like to call it a 15 minute Fit Call.
If you're on my website, and you're interested in hearing more, or you're interested in seeing if my services are a good fit for you, if you're interested in possibly hiring me, book a 15 minute Fit Call, so we can figure out if it's a fit.
That is literally the purpose of this call, so let's just call it what it is.
We don't have to call it free because we're not hawking T-shirts here.
We're selling very high-value, high-profit services.
So stop using ‘used car’ language.
When I see free, I think of this old 99 cent store called Woolworths that used to be on 14th Street and Union Square when I was a kid.
You know, big, yellow, neon star signs that say ‘$5’ and ‘free’ and all these call outs.
That's what I think of as free.
And when I say ‘Book this Fit Call here’, clearly you're not paying for it, but we don't need to position it as free.
We're just gonna call it what it is. And the reason I like to call it a Fit Call is because now we're on the same page.
You are getting on this call to see if we're a fit and I'm getting on this call to see if we're a fit.
Yes, I am doing this for free but there's a completely different positioning here of what the call is.
Of course I'm happy to get on a call for 15-30 minutes to figure out if you're a good fit for my services.
This is literally the barrier to entry to my business, right?
I'm going to protect my services and my value by making sure that I only work with clients who are a perfect fit for my services.
That's the purpose of this, and I'm happy to spend a little bit of free time on it because it's going to pay me back in spades.
But what I'm not going to do on this call is start giving you ideas and giving you free advice.
You're not going to value it anyway.
But also, if you want that advice, you're going to pay for it.
Ending the sales discomfort
So how do we use this Fit Call?
We use the 15 Minute Fit Call to determine whether or not this person is a great fit for us.
To give them a chance to ask us questions, and for them to figure out if we're a good fit for them.
We're looking for a meeting of the minds here.
We're coming onto this call, not with the intention of selling this person.
Because that’s what a free strategy session is, right?
It’s like ‘Okay, I'm going to come on this call, I'm going to give a lot of free advice. And then hopefully, I will have danced enough, I will have done my monkey dance enough to impress them and dazzle them and then they'll buy from me.’
There’s something not genuine about that.
Instead, we're getting on the call and we're saying, ‘Hey, I'm not here to give you advice. I'm here to figure out if we're a good fit, and at the end, I am clearly going to offer you a next step that's paid if you're a good fit.’
So when you get to that part, there's no discomfort. There's no switching of the conversation, because there is a natural progression of this conversation where we get to the point where it's like, ‘Well, you're either a good fit or not. Okay, well, thanks for sharing that you're a great fit. Let me tell you how we can work together’ or ‘Thanks for sharing that you're actually not who I work with. So unfortunately, I can't help you. But I can, you know, recommend you go look at this person's website or you know, I can introduce you to someone, you can be helpful.’
You can tell them politely that they're not a good fit.
To me, that creates a very high level of integrity.
And I've also found that when you are in integrity in these conversations, it's because you're very clear on who you work with and who you don't, and you're willing to pass.
In fact, you want to pass on anyone who's not a good fit.
And when you do that, I find that you actually generate so much goodwill, and often potential referral sources.
So I have had people that have said, ‘You know, I'm really sorry, but you're actually too early-stage,’ or ‘You're actually an e-commerce business, and I don't work with those businesses.’
Those people are also great referral sources because they really respect that you said no to them, and they often remember who you do work with, because it's clear who you work with and who you don't, because you don't work with them.
So these are all just great things for your business juju in the world.
There are great things for your authority and your reputation out in the world. And it's also going to make your job so much easier.
Because in a veiled sales call you have to kind of manoeuvre your way into a sale, and maybe even get somebody who thought they were just getting free advice to now talk about money, which they may not have been prepared for.
Instead, you get to just take them to that finish line. And you know that they came on the call understanding that that was the purpose, because it's literally called a Fit Call.
Are you a fit to work with me? Are you a fit to pay me?
When I switched over from doing these, “free” calls, to having these 15 minute Fit Calls, everything changed for me.
I no longer felt salesy.
I no longer felt that uncomfortable pressure to make this into a sales call.
I no longer felt bad when I brought up hiring us or brought up money, none of that. It all went away.
I solved it by just pre-framing the call with what it was going to be.
Now what do we offer at the end of this Fit Call? Well, if you are in my No BS Agency Owners Facebook Group, you follow me on social media or you're in my Mastery Program, then you know the whole purpose of a Fit Call is to book the client into your first step, which is the Lead Product.
For me that is a Brand Shrink.
Why do we do this? Because it's so easy.
There's just one thing, it's what everyone buys, there's no complication, there's no “I'll get back to you with a proposal”, there's no “Let me think about how much that will cost.”
It's this much, has this name, and is going to solve this problem.
And it's the only thing you have to sell at first.
And it simplifies that conversation so much.
It makes it so much easier to buy.
Because usually, if you're really following my methods, they already know how much it is.
And they know that that's the next step, because it says it on your website.
And because you say it in all of your materials, it just makes the whole thing so much more natural.
It makes it easy for people to buy this thing because it's so clear.
And it's clear that when you get to the point where you offer that Lead Product, you're not offering it because you want to sell them, you're offering it because you genuinely believe that it will help them, because they're genuinely a good fit.
Because it's a Fit Call and you figured out it was a fit.
It's such a great system.
I know I shouldn't say that because it's my system but I really believe that it's so helpful for all of those creatives and people like me who just hate the idea of pitching people.
It just used to terrify me to have that pricing conversation. I hated when I had to throw out some numbers and they came out of nowhere. I never knew how to transition.
All of it goes away - you just have this easy thing to buy.
And it makes sense for you to pitch it at the end because of the framing of the call.
So this is the big first thing that we have everyone do inside our No BS Agency Mastery Program.
I love when my students are always coming into our community and posting “that was the easiest close!” and “Oh my gosh! They wanted the Lead Product so badly, they paid for it on the phone - I didn't even have to sell them!”
I love all of that.
That's really the point of the Lead Product - it’s to get rid of the discomfort of selling.
That is the first thing we do, because once you get that process down, everything becomes so much easier, because that is such a big sticking point for so many small creative businesses.
So many branding agencies, and people who are designers and creatives often get really stuck on this sales conversation and have this discomfort with sales, They’re scared to come off as salesy or slimy.
To me, this process eliminates all of that, and that's why it's so special.
And it all starts with the Fit Call.
So I bet you didn't know that the ‘free consultation’ and ‘free strategy session’ was actually setting you up to be a salesy person. But it is.
So here’s a couple of things you can do.
I highly recommend you go to our No BS Agency Owners Facebook Group, if you're not already in it. Go to the section about Lead Products and go watch them.
And go to nobsagencies.com/apply to tell us about your business and let's see if you're a good fit to join Mastery soon.
Mastery is for one to two person branding agencies who are looking to scale up to $30k/month and beyond without building a team, without hiring employees, working with fewer clients and higher prices in an intensive manner.
How do we do this? How do we get more profitable, fewer clients and higher prices?
It's a bunch of little things and each little step that you install makes everything easier. The Fit Call is just one of many things that you can easily plug into your business that's going to make your life so much easier.
Here’s what you need to get…
You may think that a ‘free’ strategy session or consultation is the best way to get clients, because who wouldn’t want to hire you after you’ve given them so much for free, right?
But the truth is that it sets you up to be that ‘salesy’ person that you find really uncomfortable, and gets in the way of closing clients.
If you reframe these as Fit Calls, everyone is on the same page, and closing clients becomes so much easier, and never feels salesy.
P.S. You can always jump on a call with my team if you want to fast-track your sales, and learn all my other tools and strategies to scale up your agency - just go here to get started!