$118k In Contracted Revenue in 30 Days - Here’s How We Did It
For the last seven years, we’ve worked with clients in a variety of capacities. When we first joined forces and started offering services, we were a local branding and marketing boutique. Then we flourished in the online course industry, but over the last year, we’ve been working with a handful of clients outside of our typical education products inside the Incubator. We loved getting back to the 1:1 experience, so we decided to open up a waitlist for our done-for-you services to a wider audience.
Lots of tweaking and repeating took place, but in 30 days we’d contracted $118k at a 60% close rate. Keep reading as we break down how we did it!
The Power of Tweaking and Repeating
We do this every time we try something new, no matter if it’s a grand scale change or a tiny one. The concept of tweaking and repeating means to take a particular action in your business for a set amount of time (at least 30 days), then go back and reflect. Think about how it went, how it made you feel, and if there are any opportunities for you to pivot and improve what you’ve tried.
It’s also perfectly okay to make adjustments in real time as you see fit. You don’t necessarily have to be married to something for the whole 30 days– If feedback is saying you should make a small tweak here or there, then by all means, do that! (Lord knows we did.)
Changes We Made On-the-Go
We have quite a large list and audience, and it took a lot of time to figure out what our offering was going to consist of, how much it was going to cost, and which members of our team would be involved. When we first created our waitlist, we simply asked for the usual contact info, checkboxes for services interested in, whether they preferred a one-time project or retainer, and some pretty wide budget ranges.
Based on the initial responses we received, we decided to adjust our budget ranges and add clarifications around our service offerings. A lot of our potential clients had no idea what to expect to spend, so they were just selecting the first thing on the list, which wasn’t an accurate representation of their willingness or actual budget.
Going from Fully Manual to Automated
The biggest change we made early on was going from a fully manual outreach approach to bringing in some degree of automation to assist with the process. This already was different territory for us; we’d never offered services on such a large scale involving multiple team members. This was nothing like developing the Incubator– for that, we’d already planned and built the tech process and automations before we launched. For our services, on the other hand, we wanted to have the flexibility first to find what worked best manually, and then bring in those elements of automation where they made sense.
The Before and After of Our Process
We can say that, from the jump, we’d at least set up a Slack notification system to let us know when new leads submitted the waitlist so we could grab ‘em while they’re hot. We also had an Asana card created that would have their form responses inside for us to review. From there, though, we were manually reaching out to book discovery calls. Now, our waitlist automatically redirects to our call scheduler. A small change, but it’s made a huge impact on time saved in the outreach process.
DUBSADO WORKFLOWS HAVE SAVED THE DAY
We’re most definitely #TeamPitchDeck over proposals (we had a whole 2-part conversation about this over here). While it’s possible that we may add proposals to the process in the future to summarize our sales calls, for now, we aren’t using them. This means that, from a Dubsado standpoint, we can’t utilize the automatic 1-2-3 process of proposal > contract > invoice all on the same page. With that said, we made sure to compensate by setting up automated Workflows to create something similar.
Now, contracts and invoices are both linked in the same email that’s sent out to clients. As soon as they sign and pay, Dubsado sends out their onboarding guide and communication preference questionnaire (the questionnaire is linked inside of the guide). Over in Asana, tasks are already being created automatically to decide if any additional questionnaires are needed specific to their project. If so, those are edited and prepared to send within the next couple of days.
PROJECT FORM COMPLETION
This was a super small update, but boy has it made a difference. Along with Slack notifications for waitlist submission, as well as when contracts are signed and invoices paid, we also added notifications for when clients submit their project forms. The link to view the completed form is also in the notification, so we can easily view it right then. For project forms that have a deadline for completion, this is especially helpful for us to keep tabs on if a client has submitted yet or not during their time frame.
Our Successful Closing Rate
Within 30 days from us first putting out our waitlist, we closed 60% of the people that came through the sales funnel. This means that we booked more new business through our new sales process than any of our other sales methods. We’re beyond happy with this close rate, especially when compared to the common conversation rate in the online one-to-many business right now, which is barely 1%.
The Biggest Takeaway
Don’t expect perfection because you’ll never be able to think of everything that could go wrong, nor have every system in place that you need before booking a client. Is it sometimes messy? Absolutely, but you have to just dive in. Sometimes it still feels like we’re flying by the seat of our pants, but that’s the beauty in being a business owner. Building the tracks as you go can feel scary, but if you’re doing a good job for your client, they won’t even realize it! Give yourself some grace.
Making More Money without New Clients
You don’t have to keep bringing in new clients to raise your income. In fact, it’s easier, cheaper, and faster to make more money from existing clients and customers than it is to get a new lead. This is something that we talk about often with our Incubator clients. We help them develop scripts around how to raise prices and increase scope for new projects, so they can earn more from their existing clients without having to spend extra time and energy recruiting new ones.
If you want to get in on it, too, just take 10 minutes to complete our short application. Then shoot us a DM on Instagram @bossproject to let us know you applied, so we can get the conversation started ASAP!
