👋 Hey there!
🚅 This is issue #30 of The Double E Bullet where I share two bullets of things to help you elevate your entrepreneurial journey so you work smart, not hard.
Interesting fact: Did you know that today is OK day? The word was first used in Louisa May Alcott’s Little Women but it was replaced with the word cozy in the 1880 edition of the book. And if you’re wondering which form of the word to use: both are okay to use and there is no difference between their usage!
Now let’s get to the even more fun stuff…
BULLET ONE
💸 Getting Paid on Time 💸
Today we’re talking about something very important in business: getting paid on time.
As business owners, it’s really important to maintain a healthy cash flow. After all, we got in it to take in profits; plus, we have staff and contractors and suppliers that we need to pay.
Getting paid AFTER delivering the product or service is customary for many businesses. Just like when you dine at your favorite restaurant: you order the food, enjoy your meal, and ask for the bill after. Following this model for your service-based business can be tricky because it’s a lot harder to chase clients after delivering work, especially when all transactions are being done digitally.
Running my own digital business, I’ve also had my fair share of these kinds of situations. But what if you could get paid upfront for your services, even before any work is started? Here are some pointers I’ve learned could be helpful:
- Have a clear scope. It’s essential that all parties involved are aware of precisely what will be delivered and what will not be included in the contract. Your customer would especially want to know what sort of transformation they are buying themselves into and you, as the service provider, want to make sure to outline deliverables and avoid scope creep clearly.
- Offer a money-back guarantee. Depending on the type of service that you offer, you might want to consider offering a guarantee of some sort to your customers, to give them a sense of security. Alternatively, you can provide unlimited support for a limited period to let them know that you are serious about the quality of work that you provide.
- Create a payment plan. Some clients may be willing to spend but many of them might not be able to afford to pay for the entire contract upfront. Work out a payment arrangement that could work for both parties. Depending on the price tag and the scope of work, you could ask for a 50% downpayment to get started, 30% midway when reaching a milestone, and then 20% upon turnover of the project.
Doing these should help you avoid frustrating situations where you’re chasing clients for unpaid invoices.
BULLET TWO
📝 Proposify 📝
Now that we’re on the topic of getting payments from clients, I want to share with you the exact process we use over at Cloudscape.
Once we have a prospective client who is showing great interest in our service, we create a very detailed proposal laying out exactly all the details that they need. And we do this using a tool called Proposify.
With Proposify, you can structure your proposals with many different sections: About us, Team, Summary, Proposal, Services and Pricing, and Next steps—all this is totally up to you on how it would fit your business.
Beyond the actual content of the document, we love how it elevates client experience by allowing digital signatures, interactive pricing (perfect if you have different up-sells and add-on services), and a lot of customization options (make it match your brand; change language and currency to suit your client’s).
On the backend, Proposify also allows you to get powerful insights and an audit trail for your proposal. It’s pretty cool when you can see which sections have been viewed most, or if your customers have commented or even signed it. More importantly, you can have a better overview of how your proposals perform for specific teams or document types so you can tweak them and improve conversions for your team.
In addition, it integrates and works well with other platforms so you can automate your sales and onboarding process. At Cloudscape, we also send out these proposals along with a Loom video (I shared this in a previous bullet) so we are able to effectively explain the entire document without the need to hop on a Zoom call.
Pretty cool, no?
🧨 DHIREN’S UPDATES 🧨
Sending out detailed proposals and asking for upfront payment is just really part and parcel of the entire process… but you’d also want to make sure that you are actually attracting the right types of customers so you don’t find yourself chasing them just so you can build and scale revenue.
If you want to learn how to do just that, check out my Youtube video 👇👇👇
And while we’re at it…
Want to learn more about how to design your business in a way that fits you and your lifestyle?
Learn more about the Entrepreneur Basecamp—we’re opening enrollment soon! You also get an exclusive 20% discount if you join the waitlist. 😉
That’s all for this edition! What was your favorite bullet?