King of the LCC (James Sizer Success Story)

Richard:                Hey we're in hotel Del Coronado in San Diego. I've got the king of the LCC here. Hopefully my finger's not on the microphone. We've just been at the mastermind workshop. This is the final ... Well, not final day, but it's a day off today. We decided to get a taxi out here to what is reasonable a rather nice hotel here.

James:                  Beautiful.

Richard:                Pretty good weather, what is it? About 80 or 90?

James:                  90 Maybe?

Richard:                90, probably 90. The king of LCC, it's probably worth having a chat to him if you're on the program and you've ... I don't know. Some people have done the LCC and other's haven't. For a lot of people it's the one thing that they can do very quickly that makes it a big difference to them. The king here has attempted an LCC on ... He's based in England but he's had 36 attempts at the LCC.

James:                  36.

Richard:                36? And he's got 33 year victories, so 33 people have fronted up with the money, whereas in the past, what would you have done with those 36 people?

James:                  The 36 people would have got my services and time or free. I'd have gone, been desperate to go to their house and give out all of my knowledge to them in the vain hope that that was going to appeal to their ... the way that ... The criteria for them wanting to employ me and I would have wasted my time on 50% or more of those jobs and that would have resulted in a financial loss for me. The great beauty of the LCC, as far as I saw it and I latched on to immediately, was that it was a way of getting paid for the work that I did for nothing. When you actually add up the hours that's involved in that it turns into to be a substantial dollar or pound figure.

Richard:                You did a napkin calculation of what you might have saved by not giving away your work for free? What was that?

James:                  49000 pounds it came out to, between 48 and 49000 pounds, which is about 60000 US. I just saw the immediate opportunity to just add that money back onto the bottom line rather than giving that work away for free, which is obviously a far greater benefit for us than to-

Richard:                The client.

James:                  To the client who was getting our work for free. It's an honor to come to a beautiful place like this and sit here with Richard and enjoy a cocktail and we're very grateful for that and also grow out business, add to our profit margin by substantial figure, well over 100% up on last year, profit wise. It really ... Just do this program. If you're watching this with a view to, whether or not you want to engage with architects marketing institute, I would highly recommend it.

Richard:                What else should we say? Everyone wants to know what are people charge their LCC. What do you typically charge.

James:                  My charge is 895 pounds UK. We have to charge tax on top of that, which surprises Americans I know, but we have to charge 20% tax. That works out to about 1100 pounds, which is, [inaudible 00:03:40] 13-1400 dollars I guess, by the time the tax is included.

Richard:                The next question most people want to know is, what do you include with the LCC? What do you include?

James:                  I have a standard form, but I listen to the customer and I include what ... I target my LCC to their needs, so if they say to me, "James, I am looking to build a new house on a plot of land I have." I'll say, "Great, so what we can do for you is to tell you whether you can build a new house on that plot of land and how much it will cost." Then embellish is slightly, so I'll say you know, also what we can do is tell you how long it's going to take and probably likelihood to get that through the pre-construction and then the design and then the construction phase so we can present people with quite a comprehensive document, which it needs to be for that kind of figure.

James:                  A lot of it is standardized so the more you do the easier it is to product that same document that is of high value document that looks as though it's worth the money you're charging. We've had no one disappointed with the LCC that we've provided so far. Some have been more difficult to do and others, they've been easier but the difference in the cash sort of works itself out. The easier ones are a big win and the harder ones practically we don't make as much money on but the two balance each other out. It leads to the job at the end if you do a good job on the LCC, people are more inclined to want to employ you, and less inclined to look around.

Richard:                The final question is probably, how do you sell the LCC? What's the secret ... 33 out of 36, some people get very nervous because they're used to giving away their time and sketches even, for free, hoping they'll force some sort of obligation with the client, but how do you deal with ... What do you do, what do you say, and how do you deal when people say ... An architect will often say, [inaudible 00:05:45] in the are will do it for free.

James:                  Yeah, well I used [inaudible 00:05:51] my script for one thing. Although sometimes you have to think on your feet and try and assess the individual needs of the client in terms of selling it to them. The process of selling it to them is just a case of listening to what they want and then repeating it back to them is what I generally tend to do, say this is what we can do for you, which is sort of exactly what you've asked for.

Richard:                How does that sound?

James:                  How does that sound to you? How does that sound to you? Most customers say great, that's exactly what I'm looking for. Well I know it is, but the conversation has probably has moved on significantly since then and will have digressed and gone to some other part. Talk about something else and then I come back to it later, so it's like right now this is what we can do for you and they kind of forget that they've already told me what they want so it just makes it that very easy to sell to people. It's not a trick, at the end of the day it's a valuable service, professional advice that people have got from you and it's important to remember that in few walks of life would you give that away?

Richard:                No.

James:                  Right, so it's a valuable thing for the customer. Selling is the thing that I find easy, personally. It's just a question of listening to the people, making sure you understand what their requirements are and then offering them back what they've asked for. Once you get standardized, feasibility study together, it's really easy to just leave sections out or add sections in and a lot of the content can be generic but still valuable, so things about general plan information or zoning as you guys call it here. All that stuff is pretty much going to be ... You can repeat a lot of what the actual rules are, without having to be too general or too specific. They get a nice fat document that looks as though it's worth the money and there's a lot of good advice in it.

Richard:                Good, makes sense and remember a lot of the clients that you're dealing with ... I mean it might be doctors, lawyers, accountants. You ask a lawyer to analyze your situation in great depth and give you feed back, they wouldn't be doing that for free. You wouldn't be getting a spec of them, for that type of work so that's good. Thanks very much.

James:                  You're welcome Richard.