My Clients Won’t Want Done-With-You
The first excuse I hear from digital agency owners when adding on a “done-with-you” offering is that “my clients won’t want DWY”.
If you think that ALL of your prospects will only EVER want done-for-you services, you need to watch this.
In short video, I’m going to break down why this is 100% NOT True and just an excuse you’re telling yourself to keep doing things the hard and unscalable way.
Transcript / MP3
A big obstacle that agency owners and service providers face when transitioning from done for you work into say, coaching and consulting is they'll say to themselves, my clients don't want done with you. They only want done for you services. And in this video I want to break down why that's actually not the case and how you need to think differently about your services and the result that you provide your clients so that you can actually make this transition successfully and work with more clients and impact more people by actually doing done with you services and programs instead of doing done for you where you usually end up like a glorified freelancer. So first things first, you're probably already doing done with you. And here's how I know that, because every time I talk to an agency owner that says they're done for you, I say, cool. ...
So the second decline gives you money. You can go off to the races and do everything that you need without ever interacting with your client. And they're like, no, of course I need to like get certain stuff from my client. Instantaneously you're done with you. You're just one-on-one done with you and most of your service is done for you, which is fine. That's how most agencies are, are positioned right? If account managers, project managers, what have you, but the reality is when you get started with a client, you're likely going through a process where they're filling out forms. Uh, you're collecting data or assets. Maybe you're working on their avatar, you're collecting graphics, you're gathering resources and assets from them that will allow you to do your job. Most cases in most agencies we've spoken to right out of the Gates on that kickoff call, you're assigning them some homework.
You need to go get some things from them and or you need assets from them in order to do your job successfully. Am I right? If so, you're already doing done with you. Secondly, if to date, you've only ever offer done for you services as a part of your agency or your service. Those are obviously the people that you're attracting, right? You see what you want to see. You're going out there and you're talking to people that want to hire someone to do the work. They either don't have the skillset in house or they, um, you know, they want to hire someone that might be cheaper than the person in house. So they hire someone to do the work, which is has been you historically. And so if you're always looking for clients that want to hire labor and services, that's of course who you're going to attract.
And this reminds me of a story, um, that we essentially face and most of our clients actually face. And you will face if you transition from done for you and to done with you. And the reality is that there's going to be a drag, right? So if you today stopped offering done for you services and instantaneously started promoting a done with you experience, which I'm going to talk a little bit more about in a minute, you're going to have people have been following you or you're going to get referrals from old clients that are going to be brought your way and they're going to expect that you're done for you. Because guess what? The referral came from someone who got done for you. I remember that even till this day really, and this has been, you know, three years now, every once in a while. But I remember the first year we'd still get a handful of referrals each and every month that came from one of our older clients that we did great work for.
And if a client that you did great work for, as I say, done for you, goes and tell someone else about you and that person comes to you, guess what? They're going to want what the other person had, right? Which was done for you. So there's going to be a drag and a lag behind you making this transition and it's up to you to kind of put a stake in the ground and say when you're going to stop doing the done for you, if that's a goal of yours or when you're going to stop doing that version of the done for you service and only sell you're done with you service. So really what it comes down to is client selection. You need to start looking for people and attracting people that are of the mindset that they want to know. How it should be done or they, they have someone in house that uh, you know, will do the work and go along for this process cause you're going to enable them.
And I've found that there are a lot of these people out there, people that might not be able to afford your done for you services and are willing to instead of pay the price for done for you, spend a little bit less, but put their time, energy and effort into it in order to get the job done, which means you get to do less of the labor and you get to be more of a guide and a coach or a consultant to help them get the result that they want. And there's a lot of people out there. I mean if you look at the online education market, it's like a billion dollar industry, you know, going into 2020. So there's tons of opportunity for you to be educating other, other clients on how to do it. And you know, rolling up your sleeves strategically when it, when they need it.
Thus you really don't need to do done for you because you can do done with you and it's really just about what type of clients are you looking for. Now the next piece is done with you. Does not mean no done for you. I'm gonna say that again. Done with you does not mean no done for you. So here's a couple examples. When I say done with you, a lot of times I'm talking about productized services, you know, high ticket coaching and consulting programs and things of that nature. If you've ever been to a workshop, two day workshop or what have you, where you're there, you're working on, you're filling out a workbook and you leave with stuff actually done that's done with you. And there's online courses that are like that. There's, you know, high ticket consulting programs that are like that. There is even agency services that operate in this way.
One of my friends and mentors, they have a service where they will build out custom campaigns for you in infusion soft. But when you pay them, you actually have to go through a, you know, multiple video training, almost like a mini course to learn their methodology, do some homework before you show up at their office for two days in which they actually do the done for you stuff. So the done for you comes after they educate and they have the client do some of the work already. So that's one example. Um, I have another client that are not a client. I have another friend that has a, a group coaching program that has done for you components and they teach people how to generate leads on LinkedIn. And so they take you through a whole training curriculum to gather all the assets, to understand your messaging, to set up your profile, to customize certain messaging scripts.
And then his team goes and takes that and they put it into a machine that Dave created that does the lead generation. And it's a combination of software and service. And so before they ever start getting to the done for you, the client has gone through a done with you experience going through training workshops and homework, submitting that to them for their review so that the done for you element of the service can actually be successful. We're very similar when it comes to the agencies we work with. A lot of the times they want an automated sales system or an automated, you know, systemize fulfillment and onboarding process. The reality is that most agencies don't have that because they don't sell one thing. They sell a variety of services, a service menu. So it gets really difficult to create a system or use automation when the outcome is unique every single time.
So when we work with clients, they go through a series of training to simplify down what their service offering it is to get really clear on who they serve and what they sell and how they're actually going to deliver that. So we can create an automated acquisition and sales machine and then we actually have a lot of that built for them and we make sure that it's assembled correctly for them to do so. They don't need to be tech savvy. So there's elements of our program that is done with you where we're actually doing some of the work for them, but we've worked with them and coach them on getting us all of the pieces that we need in order to then do the done for you component. So just think about it as how do you get a little bit more strategic in the the education piece of getting the assets you need and maybe putting some training before the done for you element and not necessarily removing all of the done for you.
Because in some cases you doing some things for your client will actually allow them to move faster. But when you combine it with the training and the coaching element, you actually create a ton of leverage for yourself. And moving onto the last one, just looking here at my notes. Um, one thing that I've noticed is that, you know, the people that say my clients don't want done with you in most cases they haven't tried to sell to sell it. And this leads me to the like the main point here in that it's not about you getting a prospect and saying, Hey, we do it all for you. Or Hey, we do it together, although that might come up, but you have to make sure that you're selling an outcome. And I remember I was in a, uh, a one day seminar and it was about going from one to one coaching into group coaching.
And the, um, the, the leader of the seminar basically told a story of a prospect that was, you know, very adamant about, I don't want group coaching, which in this scenario could be translated to, I don't want done with you services. And the, the coach went up to this prospect who said, I don't want to do group coaching and said, what's the goal that you want? And say it was a seven figure business as the outcome. You know, I want my business to hit seven figures. And then the coach then put his hand on that prospect shoulder and said, okay, would you like to have 12 one on one coaching calls and then get to $1 million in your business? Or would you rather just have me touch your shoulder and you get to $1 million in your business? And of course the prospect said, well, of course I want you, I'd rather you touch my shoulder than having 12 one-on-one calls.
And so what the coach just did was reorient that prospect around the outcome. Oftentimes when a prospect of yours gets hung up on how you are going to do it and the logistics, it's usually because they got disconnected to the actual outcome. Because if they are truly connected to the outcome and the problem and the result that you can get them right, the, you know, the solution to the problem that they have, they shouldn't really care about the logistics, right? As long as the result is achieved. Because guess what? Say you can actually get that person to the result in three calls. Are they going to ask for a refund for the balance of the calls? Who knows? Right? So it shouldn't be about the number of calls or the number of blank, blank blank. It should be about do you want this result and is that result?
What's important because I can get you to that result. Do you necessarily care how we get there? As long as we get you there in a reasonable amount of time. Cool. If that's the case, then let's carry on this conversation of actually getting you there versus talking about the logistics. Right? And so I think oftentimes when we hear agency owners getting hung up in the sales process, it's because they're really getting, uh, you know, cherry picking all of the different line items of the menu. Whereas if when you get to the done with you component, a big mindset shift is you're not selling, you know, X, Y, Z hours or blocks of hours. It's, I'm selling you an outcome and I have a process to get us there. Will you follow the process? And so I just wanted to share this because I hear time and time again, agency owners and service providers that want to make the shift from done for you to done with you and they make it way more complicated than it has to be because again, the reality is you're likely already doing, done with you in some way, shape or form.
It might just be one on one done with you and you need to evolve into one to many done with you and you're probably getting hung up on all of the logistics and you really just need to start selling the outcome. And again, if you haven't been able to do that, it's likely that you typically just have a service menu and you need to simplify down what that is anyway, so I hope you found this helpful. If you are an agency owner service provider and you're looking to actually make this transition, add on a a more leveraged revenue stream, we got plenty of videos. I'll link them up below as well as a free case study where I'll invite you to check it out. And I'm going to walk you through the three steps that we took to to transition out of done for you agency services into group coaching and three clients that actually did this that are probably just like you so you can see how they made this transformation as well. So check out the case study below and I hope you guys enjoyed this video and we'll talk soon.
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