How to Strengthen Your Relationships with Clients by Delivering Them Results

Although it can be tempting to say “yes” to every client request, it’s not always a smart move. After all, your agency needs to stay in business and you can’t afford to give away the house in the name of customer service.

Now, don’t get me wrong;...

What Services are Best Offered on a Recurring Basis?

For agencies and freelancers, offering retainer services is the way to go. Unlike one-off projects, you’ll have a consistent workload, and more importantly, consistent revenue. It’s this steady stream of income that makes running a design business...

4 reasons your proposal lost you the work

It's Friday night and you're feeling good. You ended the day by sending a proposal that you think is a solid lock. Come Monday you'll be looking at a new project worth an easy 5 figures and you deserve it after a number of phone calls with the prospect...

How to Turn Your Current Customers into Bigger Clients

We’re all familiar with the fact that it can cost between four to 10 times more to acquire a customer than it does to retain one. So why do most growing agencies looking for a boost in revenue tend to hit the ground running for new clients?

Don’t...

4 Ways to Use Rejection to Your Advantage

You met with a prospective client, hit it off right away, and knew you could deliver spectacular results for their project. So you perform your due diligence and craft the perfect proposal. You send it out knowing you knocked it out of the park and...

4 Things that aren’t the job of a proposal

If you want work, you need to write proposals, and for many people that is not a happy thought. They really want to dive in to their craft and knock out a great design or write elegant code. The proposal is simply a way to get to the execution of that...

How to Handle Unrealistic Client Requests: Learn How to Say No

In the retail sector, many companies place an emphasis on customer service. They push their employees to please their customers no matter what the cost. Unsurprisingly, this is also an industry that teaches that the “customer is always right.”

I mastered...

4 Common Objections to your Proposals and How to Overcome them

In early 2015 I spent a few hours on the phone with a prospect. We had a good time on the call, talking deep (at least I thought so) about their business with a bit of laughter thrown in. It was absolutely my ideal client call.

The result of our conversations...

Should You Switch to Offering Niche Services or Stay Generalized

You’re a growing agency with a steady stream of clients.

You have enough business to keep your employees busy and you’re currently offering a wealth of design services to clients from several different industries.

Deciding to restrict your services...

How to build the perfect sales funnel for your service-based business

Over the years I've worked with a lot of different service-based businesses. I also own a service-based business. In that time I've come to realize that one of the single biggest challenges is finding an automated, systematic way of getting consistent...