Fee Objection Scripts

So, the Fee Objections and you may be wondering where this fits into the 6 Maps system. For those of you who are going to go on and graduate to the 6 Maps, you can see the 3 parts of 6 Maps and the Fee Objections scripts would be useful in step number 6 when you're selling the LCC. Let's go through the fee objection scripts right now. There are 3 parts to it.

I don't mean to make this into an all-encompassing review of fee objection scripts. This will be a pretty quick one, just to give you the ability to answer some questions. But as you can see, there are 3 parts to handling fee objections. You've got to take control of your own mindset, the client's mindset, and then have the scripts.

The scripts on their own aren't enough if you haven't done the internal work to believe in your own value and even in part 2, set the client up to see your value. The scripts on their own are powerful, but when you add part 1 and part 2 to it, they're far more valuable. So let's start with part number 1. And we're going to talk about people here.

Everything about part number 1 is about you adopting certain mindsets which are highly useful for charging high fees. These are the type of mindsets that very high-fee architects would adopt. One of them is looking in the right place for great projects. According to one of our Mastermind members, Adrian Ramsey, if you want to find a great project, find a great client.

That was his tip. I think it's something interesting to think about. So the next question is, who is qualifying whom? Now, here's how I want you to think about this because this is a far more powerful way of thinking about clients and power really.

So let's say inquiries come in. Do they qualify to work with you? Or do you qualify to work with them? The reason I say that is I believe from what I've had in discussions with architects over the last 8 years, that about 50% of the projects that might come to you and want to talk about their project, you shouldn't be working with at least 50%.

There's a lot of projects that either don't have the budget, the project's not a great fit, it's not the type of project you really want to be doing, or the client is not the type of client who would be great to work with. You've had these projects before, you've had many projects I'm sure where you wish you'd actually said no. So I want you to take the mindset that at least 50% and possibly a lot more, at least 50% of the people you come up against should get an immediate no. You know, politely, but you should do it quickly. And then off the remaining 50%, I would say they're really maybes. Right?

Now they may have the right budget, they may have the right project, and they may be the right person. They're someone you could work with. But even of the 50% that are maybes, there's probably only half of them that should be a yes. So 50% of the 50%.

So I guess we're talking about the top 25%. Now that's an interesting way of looking at it. Most architects I start working with don't have this discerning approach to inquiries. They tend to jump on anyone that comes in. Anything. Who's your ideal client? Well, anyone that breathes. The problem with taking on board anyone that breathes is there are a lot of people with bad breath. And you've worked with some of them. So I want you to think about this. Who is qualifying whom?

Is it them qualifying you or is it you going into an inquiry discussion about a project knowing that 50% of them are a definite no, and maybe only half of the maybes is a yes? Wouldn't that be nice? The next thing I want you to think about is power. Who has the power in the situation?

Now I had a couple from Canada, based in Nova Scotia, and they just joined our program and they said, "Can we have a special meeting with you? We've just been asked to present to a university library about winning some work to design the university library, a big project. It would be the biggest one we've ever won. What do we say? How do we go in there? We've never done one of these things before, where we've had to present."

We discussed it for a while and I said, "You know what, I think you guys are taking the wrong approach. You're going in almost sounding desperate." Clients don't respect desperate. So what we did, I said, "Here's what I want you to do."

I want you to go in and say this, "We're really busy. We've got a lot of projects on at the moment. If we were to do your project, we'd have to put other projects to one side. Why should we work on your project?"

They said, "I like where you're going, but I don't know if we could say that. That would be too scary for us. That is not how we as architects operate. We tend to play the role of the humble servant and jump at anything that moves."

You know, anyone with breath is a good client, which we know is not the case. Anyway, they did it. They ended up winning the work. And the thing that they said when we had our second call is that the situation changed.

The situation completely changed when they asked this question. They said it was amazing. The client started to justify to us why we should work with them. So I want you to consider this because I'm deadly serious about saying something like this.

What it does is flip the power switch. You are the sought-after architect. So who has the power? Well, it just depends on how you act and how you operate and how you carry yourself.

In many situations, it could be you and should be you. So now think about what role you play when you're interacting with clients. Do you play the role of the humble servant, the pleaser, someone who will do anything, anytime, jump up, travel across town, do free site visits, give away free advice, do out-of-scope work? It's not a great role to play.

We're all playing different roles in life. At the moment, I'm playing the role of the coach. I'm coaching you. So a little bit of a tough love coach.

Now there's nothing wrong with you being a tough love coach for your clients. If you were taking the role of a tough love coach for a potential client, how would that change how you interacted with the client? How would that change how you related with the client? How would they change if they knew you were taking on the role of the tough love coach?

Or they could sense you were taking on the role of the tough love coach. Bear in mind, the tough love coach is there to get them a great result and tell them what they need to know, not what they want to know or what they want to hear. A tough love coach would say something like, "Do I have your permission to tell you what you need to hear rather than what you want to hear?" And all clients will say yes to that.

Okay, maybe you play the role of the in-demand expert. I guess that's a little bit like that script I gave you earlier for when you're really busy. The role you play changes everything. It changes the way they treat you. It changes the way you treat yourself. Or do you want to play the role of the problem solver? Is that the role you're taking on board?

Do you go into a situation thinking, "I'm the person who solves problems, expensive problems"? That might change your mindset. So any one of these roles are valid roles to play. Some of them just work better than others.

Some of them make you feel stronger within yourself than others. So think about you. I find most architects play the role of the humble servant and it's not a great role to play. It's not a very powerful role.

It doesn't give you much power. So what role are you playing? Think about that. Still in the mindset.

I'm really interested in your mindset. Okay, let's look now at fees. There's a lot to take in, isn't there? Right, fees.

Now let's say you're the green one, and someone else says, "Well, your fees are higher than their fees." What's your mindset when that happens? Do you immediately say, "Oh my goodness, I have to discount. Someone else's fees are less than mine. They're going to lose the project. I have to undercut"? Well, here's another way of thinking about it. This might make you a lot stronger when someone comes at you with fees.

Don't forget your fees are really only a fraction of the total project cost. So that's your fees, that's their fees, but maybe you're an architect who can save them money. So their fees may be less, but when they develop a project, it costs more. You may be able to negotiate with suppliers, you may know suppliers, you may know how to design in a certain way that's more efficient.

Now what client in their right mind would not be happy paying higher fees to get a lower total project cost? If you can do that, that's not the only way. Maybe you can deliver more profit. I guess what I'm saying is you've got to look at the bigger picture.

Here's their project resale value. Let's say you're building a factory or a house for someone and when the project's finished, it's worth that much. Theirs is. Yours is worth that much.

Your fee is irrelevant or the extra fee you charge is irrelevant if you can point to your higher resale value. Can you do that? Probably not at the moment. This is what we talk about a lot in the 6 program is how do you communicate your value.

Maybe your projects rent higher than

someone else's because you just know the market and you know how to design in a certain way which makes them either quick to rent or rent for higher rental fees. Once again, this would be every month they're getting higher rent. If they pay you 12% where someone else could have done the design for 10%, who cares? It's irrelevant when this is the monthly income that they're going to get, which is significantly higher.

Maybe someone else's project is this beautiful and yours is this beautiful. There's all sorts of ways to show value. When you take the bigger picture, if you just fixate on fees and you don't fixate on the complete overall value package that you bring to a project, and I don't know what value you bring to a package. I've got no idea, but you've got to bring something.

You've got to bring something and it's got to be unique. Here's another thing to think about. This is Jim Rohn.

He gave a great quote: "It's not the hours you bring to the table but the value you bring to those hours." This is how you've got to think. What is the value you bring to the hours? What is the outcome that you deliver?

Do you run across town? You can pick my brain after you pick your payment method. Do you work for free? Or do you charge people?

So there we have it. This is part 1 and it's really just an introduction to your mindset because we're going to talk about scripts and we'll get to that later on. But it's important that you get your mindset sorted first. So just a quick review: What role do you play? What process do you take people through? Who has the power in the interaction with you and the client? And do you do free work or not? These are things you need to consider, and we'll move on to part number 2.

Thanks for watching!

Okay, so we're going to be handling fee objection scripts. We haven't even gotten to the scripts, right? We've just covered mindset, but now we're going to cover their mindset. When I say their mindset, I mean the client's mindset, part 2.

You have to make yourself strong. That's part 1. Think about your own value in the right way. Part 2 involves influencing the client's perception of value before you actually meet them or before you get to the point where you need to deliver the fee.

This is almost like cutting them off at the pass. By making yourself strong and by educating the client in advance, which is what we're going to do here, you probably won't even need the scripts. The scripts are kind of the last thing that you will need if you haven't done parts 1 and 2 well.

Let's have a quick look at how we're going to influence their mindset. I call this indoctrination. What we're going to do is show you a series of images that influence and shape the way people think. When you look at some of these images, like this one from Oscar Wilde, "Nowadays people know the price of everything and the value of nothing," you might agree with it because it sounds insightful.

If you see things like this before being given fee proposals, you've already been set up to think this way. I'm going to show you a series of images because they're the easiest and quickest things to show you. But it could be blogs, articles, or anything else.

What I mean is you want to educate your potential clients into your way of thinking, particularly around value and price, before they receive the price. This way, when they do receive the price, they've been suitably indoctrinated to look for value as opposed to the cheapest architectural fees. Does that make sense? Here are some images.

I'm not saying you should use these images specifically, but they make a point quickly. You can adapt any of these. You could send them out as emails. For example, as an architect, isn't it true that clients often ask, "Can you do it cheaper?" You're trying to create a masterpiece, and they keep asking you to cut your fees. This image makes the point quickly.

Your price is a bit high; can you do it cheaper? I would send this type of stuff to potential clients. We have something called the circle of love. We teach our architects to build a list of potential clients who may not be ready just yet. They might be considering a project that is months or even years away. The job of the circle of love is to provide ongoing education and indoctrination about their type of project, including how they should view fees.

Stuff like this is funny and effective. I would include it in emails and education newsletters. I want my clients to realize architecture is design. It's no different from a painting. You can have a design done by a 10-year-old child or by Leonardo da Vinci. They're not the same. You can't say, "But Leonardo da Vinci's quote for the Mona Lisa is 50% higher." Of course, it is. It's the Mona Lisa. It’s going to be more than 50% higher.

Another image says, "If you think it's expensive to hire a professional, wait until you hire an amateur." This is Red Adair. He used to put out fires on oil wells and was hired by oil companies because it was costing them millions every day that the fire wasn't put out. The most expensive thing you could do is hire someone cheap who can't do the job right. It's not much different for you. Hiring a cheaper architect who can't get the job done right, can't get the permit, or can only get four buildings on a site instead of six, is a mis-economy.

You could tell a story about Red Adair in an email, newsletter, or blog article. Another visual says, "You can have good and fast, or you can have good and cheap, or you can have fast and cheap, but you can't have fast, good, and cheap. Not from me anyway." This is a good visual to point a client to and have a discussion.

Or you could write a blog about how you can't have good, fast, and cheap. Pick two out of three. A picture tells a thousand words sometimes. It could also be an article or a blog, but these are useful in a presentation.

If a client tells you, "I know people that charge less," respond, "I've got clients that pay more." This slide might fit better in the scripts section, but it's a good one to whet your appetite for when we get to the scripts. By jumping through and working out the messages I want to convey, I can decide whether to convey it visually or through an article, blog, email, or newsletter. This way, during your circle of love or nurturing period before they are ready to start a project, they are already indoctrinated into your way of thinking.

This makes life easier. If you have 20, 30, 50, or 100 potential clients receiving your weekly indoctrination emails, you can talk about these topics. For example, you could discuss client control. When you hire me as an architect, you can choose where you want to go, but I choose how to get there. Tell a story. For example, when you get on an airplane, you choose the destination, but you don't go into the cockpit to help the pilot fly.

If you have a client who micromanages and likes to get involved, how does that feel? Painful, right? When should you kick them out of the cockpit? Before they even hire you. Be honest about disasters that happen when clients try to get into the cockpit. Discuss why you never let clients into the cockpit. It's easier to do this before they hire you. When they do hire you, they know the rules because you've done this in advance.

These slides introduce you to the concept of indoctrination. Decide what you want, how you want your clients to behave, how you want them to think about you, your value, price, fees, and quality. Create educational material before you deliver a proposal so you don't need scripts around price, fees, and being too expensive.

Educate them in advance. How will you indoctrinate people into your way of thinking? Use blogs, articles, images on your website, emails, and videos. It takes work, but it's worth it. If you attract clients who see things your way, life is easier.

You know how projects get done and how value should be looked at, particularly your value. You will make life easier if you attract clients who see things your way. This was part 2, an introduction to client control and indoctrination. We do a lot more in the sixth program.

You can see I want you in the sixth program. That's where we go deep, and I give you a lot of the material. I'm teasing you a bit. Next, we will move into some of the scripts. Get a cup of tea or coffee, shut the door, take a three-minute break if you need it, and we will get into the scripts in the next video.

So let's get into part number 3, which is the scripts themselves. The scripts are fun. I mean, they really are fun, I think, because if you've ever been stuck, particularly around people challenging your fees, it's really annoying if you don't know what to say. But before I give you some of the scripts, and by the way, I'm only going to give you a sample of them, I want to give you a commentary around some of the scripts that I like.

These are certainly not all of them. There's a lot more, and there's a document that will come with this training. The objection training will give you a lot more. But I want to talk through some of them. Before I start on that, I want to suggest that with any script you decide to use, you practice it in the mirror a lot before you deliver it.

Practice in the mirror. Now, who else would practice in the mirror? Actors would. Why do they practice in the mirror?

Because they want to nail the way they say it. They want to nail their facial expressions, they want to nail the intonation, they want to know it inside out so they can deliver it confidently. I remember when I learned to deliver my fees when I was selling mental skills training. The best piece of advice I ever got was, particularly around delivering your fees, to practice it in the mirror.

I practiced it probably 20 or 30 times, and it made a huge difference to me. I can still remember it now. I don't have to think about it. I can just deliver it reasonably confidently because I practiced it so many times. Because I was able to deliver it confidently, I got to charge quite decent fees for the work I was doing, and I can still remember it now.

"It's $16,000 for 6 people and $1,000 for every person over 6. So if you had 10 people, it would be $20,000." Practice in the mirror. I suggest you might have 3 to 5 responses for each objection that you get regularly.

So don't just have one. You might have a favorite one, but have 3 to 5. Different people will respond to different responses. So you have the ability to be flexible.

You might say, "Well, I hate following scripts." These aren't really scripts; these are phrases. They're one-off short phrases that you might use. You might say, "Well, I hate following phrases." Well, tough. They're great. It's great to have prepared phrases ready to go. You might say, "Well, I don't like following scripts." Think about actors in Hollywood, think about newsreaders. How would they go if they just kind of winged it?

Because they wanted to sound more natural. They don't. Does Brad Pitt wing it? No, he has a script.

And he rehearses that script again and again until it's completely compelling. If you just winged it, it would sound terrible. So you're always going to sound better if you have your scripts and you know how to nail them. Let's have a look at the first one.

"Your fee is too high." Compared to what? What do you mean too high? Compared to someone else?

Compared to what you're expecting? Compared to what your brother-in-law did? Compared to what the builder is quoting you for design? Compared to what? Find out.

Find out what they're thinking, and it'll give you a much better chance to educate them. "Your fee is too high." Not for the caliber of clients I'm used to working with. Now the client on the receiving end of that is like, "Oh, okay. If I say it's too high, then maybe it's saying I'm a poor client." Now you may not like some of these, it doesn't matter. There are lots of options here. Pick the ones you like, master them, or adapt them.

"Your fee is too high." Well, a client who sold one of my houses banked an extra $500,000 and bought me a bottle of expensive champagne because he felt guilty. He'd underpaid me by a lot. Now, you may not have a client who banked half a million dollars and bought you champagne, but you may have another example that you could relate to, that you could adapt. "How much do you charge for a set of plans?" You ever get that one? "Well, nothing, because I never do just a set of plans.

I run a design process which consists of the following: we do 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6." You're asking for step number 3. A set of plans is step number 3 in my process. You're asking for that alone, which is like asking Steve Jobs for just a keyboard. He doesn't sell just keyboards. I don't sell keyboards, but I am happy to learn more about what you want. But if it's just a set of plans, that's not me. That's not what I do.

"Well, what is your process?" Here's my process, and off we go. "How much do you charge for a set of plans?" That's a funny one, right?

I think this is funny. "It's $9 million until I know what you really want. Can we spend a few minutes narrowing that down to help you get a lower price?"

It's kind of cheeky, I know, and you might not like it, but I quite like it. "How much for a set of plans?" $9 million. "Well, what do you mean?"

"Well, I don't know what you want. It depends. If I don't know what you want, my standard rate is $9 million."

"My builder can do the design for free." "Well, he sounds talented. Maybe he could also design a dress for your wife while he's at it." Would you have the courage to let him? Now, you're not going to say that, but you get my point. You could say it if you're a cheeky architect.

Or you could say, "Well, why do you think he doesn't charge for his designs?" The implication being, you get what you pay for. "If a client tells you, 'I know people that charge less,' respond, 'I get clients that pay more.'" Remember that one. "My builder can do the design for free." "How would you feel if your architect was prepared to build your project for free to win the design job?"

"Do you think he could ever charge for his designs and stop hitting nails? If he could, then he probably would because it's a lot less physical. But he can't because he's a builder who wants building jobs, so he gives away the design for free."

I don't know which of these responses you like, but it's good to have different angles. "Someone else can do the design for less." "Well, great design makes you money. Poor design costs you money."

This goes back to those graphs I showed you about value in the previous video. If they're fixated on minor things like the architect's design fees, they're not focused on the big picture, which is what this project is going to be worth or what it is going to cost. What total value am I going to get from this project if it is delivered by you compared to someone else? If you just fixate on the architect's fees, you're stepping over dollars to pick up the pennies. It's not quite right. It's not exactly like that, but you know what I mean. "Someone else can do it for less."

"Look, if you pay me $30,000 for a design that makes your space worth $600,000 and you pay a cheaper designer $20,000 and your completed space is worth $500,000, would you still be happy you saved $10,000?" This is just another way of getting them to look at the big picture. This is how developers think. They're thinking about the big picture, what's it worth?

Now, they might talk about the fees, but if you are in a position to talk about how you add value in some way that you can point to and you can show and give examples, then it makes the fee irrelevant. "Are you after the cheapest designer? Are you after the best value?" This is a great question. So simple.

"Someone else can do the design for less." "Are you after the cheapest or the best value?" If they say, "I'm after the cheapest," your response should be, "Fine. Well, that's not me."

See you later. Most people will say, "Oh no, I'm after the best value." Great. What you've done is you've taken their focus away from the fees and onto the value.

Now you can build a case around you being the best value if you're good enough. But the fees, just because the client may be fixated on the fees doesn't mean you should be. You should move them back to the total value that's going to be delivered.

Stop majoring in minor things. The architecture fee is a trivial amount compared to the overall project value. Yet the architect has so much influence on the total value that someone can receive when they spend the big dollars. You have so much influence, good or bad, that your fee is irrelevant. Don't let them fixate on your fee. Here's another good one: "You don't strike me as being someone who buys the cheapest." Pretty cutting, isn't it? That goes back to that quote we saw from Oscar Wilde.

"Nowadays, people know the price of everything and the value of nothing." If they've seen this, maybe it's been on your blog or they read your newsletter. "Did you read that article I wrote that had that Oscar Wilde quote? Do you understand what value is when it comes to a project?"

"What's value to you? Is it more about getting the cheapest design? Is that the most important thing to you?" Once again, if they say yes, you say

, "Okay, well, that's not me."

"I've never been the cheapest. I'll never be the cheapest. My clients, you know, I'm not trying to be the cheapest."

I mean, this is all you need to say. "Is getting the cheapest design important to you? Are you after the cheapest design or the best value?"

"You can buy a bottle of wine for $5 or $500. They're all just wine. It depends on how much you enjoy wine. The wine's gone in a night, but given you'll be using the space on a daily basis, maybe for the rest of your life."

Most people want to feel great every day, so they invest in better design. "Do you want a $5 bottle of wine design, or do you want really good quality? Something that's going to last, something that you can resell for a high value, something that you can get higher rents for? What are you after? Is it just the cheapest? No." It comes back to these images here. I mean, they're both pictures.

They're both images. But they're not the same. You can pull this out when people are talking about fees. Pull it out.

Is it just the cheapest picture you're after? "Someone else can do the design for less." "Look, the design fee is only around 10% of the overall project cost."

Yet the right person can easily add $100,000 in total value with great design or save you 10% on the total project cost with smarter design and better material purchasing ability. The architect has huge influence on the total cost and the total value of a project. But their fees are only, you know, some are 10%, some are 12%, some are 15%. What does it matter?

It's a small portion of the overall project. Yet they are the conductor of the whole orchestra that delivers and gets this great outcome. Nothing is more expensive than cheap design. Remember, if you think it's expensive to hire a professional, wait until you hire an amateur.

It's about what you deliver. It's about the impact you can make for them. It's about how you can change their life or their finances. It's not about your fees. If you allow them to major in minor things, you're doing them a disservice.

You're certainly going to do yourself a disservice. Think about it: you have two architects who get given the same brief. Do they design the same building? Of course not. The difference in design, even from the same brief, can be completely different. The value of those two buildings can be completely different.

The usability of the two buildings could be completely different. The rent you get could be completely different. Some architects produce amazing spaces, and some architects produce okay spaces. Work out where you add the value and bring that to the fore.

Those are some of the fee objection scripts. You can use these scripts. Some of them are very simple, and some of them are a bit longer. But you do need to practice them. You need to internalize them.

You might need to adapt them for your style. My style is not your style, right? You can change the words, but you need to have them, you need to know them, and you need to be able to deliver them like Brad Pitt or Angelina Jolie or someone really good who has rehearsed them, not like someone who is making it up on the spot or who hasn't practiced it. These scripts are incredibly powerful. They can turn someone around.

You can slightly embarrass people with some of the scripts and embarrass them into actually jumping away from being tight around architect's fees. Or you can just change their perspective on what they should be focusing on. Why are you focusing on the architect's fees? Why aren't you focusing on what the architect can deliver for you? Because they are all going to be different.

Don't major in minor things. There you go, fee objection scripts. You'll also get the document which has a lot more scripts than what I've shown you here. I wanted to give you a middle insight of me going through, giving you some commentary around the scripts.

Because I think you'll have picked up a lot of the mindset and attitude towards someone who delivers these scripts, and that's really important too. You've got to be confident and on solid ground. You have to know your own value and believe in your own value first. All right, so there are some fee objection scripts. Have fun with it.