If you show up to the party…
…and you ask to get paid first before you’ll do anything.
You may need a mountain of proposals, phone calls, sales presentations, webinars, etc.
Especially if they’ve had bad experiences with asshole marketers and you’re asking for a big monthly retainer.
If you show up to the party…
…and you offer results first and get paid second.
You can close a deal with a sentence or two and a 5-minute text conversation.
But a lot can go wrong in that scenario.
You have to choose the right clients carefully.
Otherwise, you’ll do a lot of work and never get paid.
Retainer deals also have a finite upside.
My first big retainer success, I charged $400/month and they made about $3,000,000 per year.
I could have renegotiated but they were never going to fork out big dollars.
It’s hard to go from $400/month to pay me $40k/month… just because it worked.
That same client would have been happy to pay $300k-$600k if I took on all the risk from the start.
The key is knowing how to manage the risk.
Here are the biggest risks.
1. Do a bunch of work.
2. Never get paid.
3. It doesn’t work.
How might we manage these risks intelligently so we never get screwed? Guesses?
PS
Contracts help. But we’ve found there are better ways than big elaborate agreements.
If you run a digital marketing agency…
…join our free Facebook group where…
…we’re signing $1k-10k/month marketing clients without a phone call using 5-minute Loom videos: http://bit.ly/3rdc6b5