Grow Without Hiring

[00:00:00] Ken: You ever have a line from a movie that just sticks with you? Mine's this. Nobody works in this town without a retainer, The first time I heard that I laughed. The 10th time I realized that's every consultant's dream and every founder's blind spot.
[00:00:20] Ken: Here's the thing, everybody wants to sell retainers. Nobody actually knows how to close them.
[00:00:26] Ken: Yes, you want to be an advisor. A consultant. You wanna be paid for outcomes, yet, you're still seen as a doer, paid for deliverables. You're paid for more things. You're paid for more meetings.
[00:00:39] Ken: Now if you ever have tried to sell a retainer, you probably also realize the moment you say the word, the moment you tell a prospect you're selling them one, you're not closing that deal.
[00:00:53] Ken: Now, when I work with clients. This is one of the big parts where I get pushback. Like [00:01:00] you, they want to be positioned as an advisor. They want to be paid for their expertise, not for more things,
[00:01:07] Ken: And they also want to fix that lumpy income where they have these mega months followed by. Drips and drabs, especially during summer times and holidays, they don't want to be feeling the stress of no new projects, no revenue coming in during those times where frankly, we wanna just enjoy ourselves more.
[00:01:29] Ken: So yes, you want that predictable revenue, but the minute that you get in front of prospects. Just like my clients, you also start saying things like the deliverables include thinking that the project scope looks like, or how about this one? Sure. Happy to start with an hourly rate,
[00:01:50] Ken: and that is actually the reason why you never give yourself a chance to sell retainers.
[00:01:56] Ken: now, if I didn't personally close millions of dollars [00:02:00] in retainers inside one of the toughest industries for it, I wouldn't feel so passionate and so justified in defending this position and helping people sell more retainers.
[00:02:13] Ken: When I ran my software app agency and previously many other agencies before that, the industry worshiped one thing, billable hours.
[00:02:23] Ken: Everybody wants to know how many hours, what rate, which role, where are they based, so on and so forth. so when I would say we don't sell hours and we don't publish a rate card. You could hear the proverbial record scratch.
[00:02:40] Ken: Now, I'm not gonna say this was easy. I had to position myself as an option that didn't include hours, didn't sell projects or deliverables or what I even call widgets. I did have to teach my prospects a new language, and I promise you that it also didn't include this one word we've been talking about, which is [00:03:00] retainer.
[00:03:00] Ken: Now in episode 11, I had a conversation around what makes one person business way easier,
[00:03:06] Ken: and it really did circle around the fact that when you are seen as a doer,
[00:03:12] Ken: an order taker, and really someone that just does more, better, and faster, that is precisely why. You can't sell retainers.
[00:03:20] Ken: Doers make more when they do more advisors, even if you actually have an output, are paid for the outcome.
[00:03:29] Ken: And prospects in those situations are not gonna ask you about
[00:03:33] Ken: the way that you bill them. I talk about it this way, if you go into a doctor's office, you can't pay in pennies.
[00:03:40] Ken: So when you are positioned properly. When you are someone who's the only option that someone believes can get them to the goal that they have, I call it the big win.
[00:03:52] Ken: Then frankly, they don't really care how you bill them. They just want the thing that they believe that you can do better [00:04:00] than everyone else on the planet.
[00:04:01] Ken: So again, it doesn't matter if you actually are an advisor and only providing advice. Obviously that's the gold standard, but if you simply are positioned as that expert retainers can be sold more easily, but again, not because you're using the word retainer.
[00:04:18] Ken: And part of that change is not just about I wanna get paid more money. I know that through the conversations that you have with me, I'm helping educate you as a founder, as an agency owner, as a consultant. But it's not like I don't care about the customer or the client that you serve.
[00:04:37] Ken: It's not like we're trying to extort people. As in the movie scene that I referenced about retainers.
[00:04:44] Ken: Your goal is to show why the model that you have. Is actually more fair for both sides.
[00:04:52] Ken: You absolutely are going to protect them from open-ended invoices, but you also want protection from endless change [00:05:00] orders and requests and things that are out of scope.
[00:05:02] Ken: So I understand that it's a challenge, especially if you've been doing your business for more than a minute. To shift away from, well, I know if I add all these things, I'm gonna get paid a lot more money. I've talked about this again in other conversations where you have to be willing to stop that we're addicted to getting paid more.
[00:05:22] Ken: You have to walk away from the bad money. Talking with a client a couple weeks ago who just got a really nice retainer. They're getting paid 15 to 20 KA month. But they're also getting stuck in meetings. They're also being seen as embedded within the team. They're also being seen as someone who has to do more things to get paid all of that money.
[00:05:44] Ken: And my advice to them was to walk away from that.
[00:05:47] Ken: And the problem started in the sales process itself. Once those deals are closed, you are stuck in delivery. Hell.
[00:05:55] Ken: so lemme give you an example, and it's really one of my favorite moments in my illustrious [00:06:00] consulting career. I was pitching a scientific data company, had all the heavy hitters in the room.
[00:06:07] Ken: Like many complex deals. We had an internal champion. They believed in us, they wanted us, but some people loved us and others had their own favorites.
[00:06:16] Ken: So a week later, I'm waiting to get an update on how the pitch went. When I get copied on an email, I'm not supposed to see
[00:06:24] Ken: subject line, something to the effect of decision update.
[00:06:28] Ken: And the body had text that went like this. I get why Ken's approach and model aren't something we've seen before, but it makes a lot of sense. Now this was their managing director, not my contact, who is lobbying for us using my talking points.
[00:06:45] Ken: That's when you know that you are not being seen as a doer, even though in that case again, that we actually produced outputs. We were building apps, we were doing designs. We were seen as the go-to option in the market. We were [00:07:00] seen as that advisor and they were ready to pay us in our retainer based model in an industry, again, that never had that as an option.
[00:07:09] Ken: So let's come back to this again. I wanna hit you over the head with it.
[00:07:14] Ken: You don't sell retainers by saying the word retainer. You earn them. By shifting how you sell. And then yes, this goes back into how we have our offers set up, which is informed by who we're going after, which is informed by our differentiation, which is informed by how deep we're targeting them. And if you haven't done all those things, it's really hard to sell a retainer based model where you are building recurring revenue and you're getting paid at a premium compared to everybody else on the market.
[00:07:47] Ken: And you know this, which is why you're listening to these conversations. Projects end, but retainers compound.
[00:07:55] Ken: Every month you stay in project mode, in doer mode, you [00:08:00] reset your revenue to zero.
[00:08:01] Ken: But once you learn how to be retained for outcomes instead of output, you'll understand why. I still think about that movie line and I talk about it here and with my clients, that nobody works in this town without a retainer. Guys. Retainer retainer.
[00:08:22] Ken: I know no one else is doing a conversation and a podcast sign off like that, so I hope you got a laugh on that. I'm leaving it in.
[00:08:30] Ken: But what I don't want you to laugh at is if you still think it is laughable to try to sell and close retainers, and you keep getting stuck in deliverables. I solve this every single week for consultants and founders like you. I've been doing it myself for years, for decades, really.
[00:08:47] Ken: So if you want help with that, send me a DM or a connection request on LinkedIn with the word retainer. and beyond all that, if you are getting value here, if you're getting. A nugget. If you're being [00:09:00] entertained at the same time, do me a favor and leave a rating or review. It is the only way that I know I'm doing a good job. Keeps me motivated and also tells the platform that this is something that you value and something you want others to discover.
[00:09:15] Ken: But that's gonna be where we leave it for today.
[00:09:17] Ken: I appreciate your time and attention, and I can't wait to help you again with how to grow without hiring.