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Coming at you today with a quick, counterintuitive way to get your clients or prospects to pay you before the end of year.

I’ll get to that briefly but I wanted to remind you of two free events I’m leading.

How to Build Your Personal Brand and Revenue 11/15 at 1pm EDT

Learn how to attract high-paying clients without constantly chasing leads.

Smart Passive Income 2024 Refocus Challenge 11/29 at 1pm EDT

Prepare to make 2024 your best year yet by saying goodbye to old priorities, outdated habits, toxic mindsets, and more.

Ok, so now let’s talk about how to get paid.

Situation:

You have clients or prospects that are considering your services but it’s taking much longer than you would like to close the deal.

Complication:

Thanksgiving is less than two weeks away, and many decision makers will mentally check out even before that date.

After that, a slew of other holidays will keep them distracted for the rest of the year. This could result in your deal being put on the back burner until 2024, or never closing at all.

Question:

How can you lock in these deals for 2023 instead of waiting – and hoping – they close in 2024?

Tool:

Divergent & Convergent Thinking

I’ll define both of these approaches and then share how it will help you close deals.

Divergent Thinking

A creative process that involves considering several answers for problems.

Convergent Thinking

A logical process that involves narrowing down multiple ideas into a single solution.

Now, here’s how this can be applied to winning deals before the year closes.

It all starts with that question “How can I get these clients or prospects to pay faster?”

Diverge:

Have a Black Friday sale – This could work but then I’m caught up in the noise of everyone else offering a discount. Plus, I’ll make less money in the long run and it may set a bad precedent.

Send my clients holiday gifts – I guess this could work too, but the probability is low and it doesn’t really fit my personality either.

Announce a price increase – This sounds really weird but I like the boldness. Instead of offering a discount or sending some random gift, I’ll let them know my prices are going up next year but they can still lock in the current year’s rates if they put a deposit down this year.

Converge:

Announce a price increase.

Answer:

I’m going to email all my clients and prospects this week to announce a price increase. Sure, this won’t cause everyone to sign quicker, but it feels like a good way to bring in cash without sounding desperate.

Plus, I’ve been meaning to raise my standards and my prices for a while.

Key Takeaway:

I know it sounds unreasonable to announce a price increase. In fact, if you’re selling digital products, a Black Friday sale isn’t a bad idea at all.

But if you’re selling services, and want to be able to enjoy the holidays without stressing over contracts closing, I’d strongly consider announcing a price increase.

I’ll share one of my favorite quotes to drive home that point.

“Reasonable people adapt themselves to the world. Unreasonable people attempt to adapt the world to themselves. All progress, therefore, depends on unreasonable people” – George Bernard Shaw

So be unreasonable with the requests you make of others, and of yourself.

Your turn:

Don’t just apply divergent and convergent thinking to closing out Q4 strong, think of how you could apply it to other aspects of your business – and life – as well.

And if you want more help being unreasonable, I invite you to join me in the 2024 Refocus Challenge.

Have a great weekend!