That's it. If you just do that one thing, you would it probably I don't know, depending on badge you're starting with, but like that would probably double most people's conversion rates.

Welcome to the Agency Hour podcast where we help web design and digital agency owners create abundance for themselves, their teams, and their communities. This week we were joined by the founder and CEO of Better Proposals, Adam Hempenstahl, and we'll be talking all things proposals. Plus, we get deep and dive into the importance of having a realistic work-life balance and finding something else to work on that may not be your business. I'm Johnny Flash. Stay with us. Hey Adam, how's it going? Good man, how are you? Good man. Uh so great to catch up with you. Um for those of you that for those listening that maybe don't know you, why don't you go ahead and just introduce yourself?

Yeah, sure. So my name's Adam, uh the founder and CEO of Better Proposals. Um we yeah, Better Proposals is a is an online um proposal platform just to make that whole process of sort of sending a proposal, scope of work, contract, whatever you want to call it, whatever you're trying to do, um, just basically make that process as easy as possible to get it signed, but in the process, make you look as good as possible and make yourself just look you elevate your business and make yourself look that much more professional.

Oh, I'm so excited to have you on because I'm a huge fan of better proposals and I just I just love the software. We use it all the time. So uh this is exciting for me to get to chat with you about this. Um, how did you get into I want to hear the backstory on how you got into proposals? Um I I'm guessing it's somewhere along the lines of uh you you were writing proposals yourself and everything out there sucked and you decided you needed to, you know, write some software, but I want to hear how it came about.

Yeah, I mean it's it's kind of funny because um when I was like 13, I was really badly behaved in French and I got dragged out of that class and then taken to some psychiatrist who diagnosed me with Asperges. That apparently means you can't go and talk to people. Look how that's turned out. Um but what it did do was it gave me this kind of weird um idea that I couldn't sell particularly well. So whenever I was selling, um, and I ran an agency for I don't know, eight, nine, ten years, um sort of right of when from I was about 16, I think. And I think one of the things that I always found was that the the in-person stuff wasn't really my strong point. So I needed to lead with something that was really good. So I thought, well, okay, if I've got to speak to them at some stage and I've got to do some work and I've got to do all of these interpersonal bits I'm really not very good at, what's the one thing I can control? And it always came back to the proposal. So I thought, well, if I just like double down on that and just make that as good as I possibly can, that's gonna give me the best chance of success. So for like 10-15 years, all I did was just obsess about how to improve the conversion of proposals, what worked, what didn't, what you should include, what you shouldn't, to the point where I was like, okay, well, I don't I don't actually care about selling large um uh large ticket items. I'd rather do lots of little bits because I'm getting the repetitions of the proposal stuff in. So it just became an obsession for years, and then yeah, exactly as you said, got sick and tired of using Microsoft Word and InDesign and all that sort of stuff. So uh I just in fact, actually, it wasn't necessarily the creation that drove it, it was actually just not knowing if somebody was opening it, looking at the price, and closing it down. That was the bit that drove me nuts. I was like, I put all this effort into this reply at least, yeah.

Yeah, and I love that too, because when I I was one of those had my proposal in Word and would tweak, you know, the pages and stuff, and then like being it when I switched to better proposals, being able to see like who when they opened it, what's how much time they spent on the different sections, like have them digitally sign it, have them make the payment. I'm like, this is awesome, you know. And um, I know even sometimes people would say, like, um, you know, oh, I don't want them to pay with the credit card or whatever because of the fee or whatever. I'm like, yeah, but if you get them to like sign and pay right away and you can start right on the project, and you don't have to hound them and stuff like I mean, that's worth so much more than a few percentage points off of the project or whatever, right? So I just love I just love the tool. Um, so what are some of the things? I know we just covered them, some of them, but what are some of the things that you feel like uh makes a good proposal stand out or or even with the software that kind of elevates the the whole process?

Um I think probably the biggest thing people get wrong, uh it's probably best to start there, is um is not understanding the first like minute that they're gonna interact with this thing. So, first of all, where are they when they're doing this? So are they sitting at their computer with their nice sort of you know 15-inch monitor, everything's all nice and lovely, nice and comfortable in their chair, or are they on a train and on reading it on their phone because it's the only time they've got any a couple of minutes. So if that's the case, how are you gonna appear? How are you gonna come across? You're not always having this thing experienced in this optimum environment. Sometimes people are like opening it on a phone, they're quickly flicking through it. What does this look like? And what you're really trying to do is you're trying to capture that that understanding, like the message you're trying to get across to them as quick as you possibly can is have they understood me? Do they understand my problems? And can they deliver them? And the quicker that you can get that across to them, the more time they'll spend on reading all of the other stuff that you've put in there. So for me, like I just think people don't think about that layer, they don't think about that sort of initial sort of 60 seconds. How does it appear in the email? What happens when they click on the link or open it, whatever it is? How does that experience look for them? And I think most people just get that completely wrong. So we just set out with better proposals to make sure that you quite literally couldn't get it wrong.

Love it, love it. And you probably even have the data. I don't even know if it comes through on the proposal, but you probably have the data on like what users, what what devices are being used the most and and all that stuff, like somewhere back in the analytics, which uh which now that you're bringing up the whole point, I'm like really like just curious about, but that's for another time. Um so how how have you seen things change with proposals um you know, with with the way that they're used, they're created, all of that techniques that have worked now that maybe weren't kind of the way that was done before?

Um so I can answer your the the first part of the the question, which was about um about mobile. So 58% of proposals that are opened, embedded proposals are opened on phones the first time. Wow. Okay. 58%. Which makes sense. We've all got used to the idea that email is opened and whatever, but then when you're sitting there designing this thing in Microsoft Word, which is quite literally an A4 sheet of paper, or letter if you're from the States, but um if you want to make up your own paper sizes and make things awkward for us developers, um but yeah, if you if you're trying to design this thing for a sheet of paper on any size, and then somebody's opening it up on a phone, it isn't gonna work, is it? It's it's designed for a completely different thing. So it doesn't matter how you're designing your proposal, but you've got to at least be understanding that there's a very good to fair chance that someone's gonna open this thing on a phone. So if they're pinching and zooming their way through some sort of PDF, it's not great. It's not great. Um but yeah, so that's that's only going up. And we've done on our you can find it on our website somewhere um in reports, but every year we like take some aggregate data, and we've just noticed that every single year more and more and more proposals are opened um on mobile first first time around. It's it's nuts. Um but yeah, in terms of like things that have changed, I mean, attention is probably the biggest thing. I mean, the amount of time, I mean you'll know this as a as a as a user and as a customer, uh, the amount of time people spend on the proposal just gets less and less. And it's it's just purely down to the fact that we're conditioned now to spend less time paying attention and you know just skipping through things, this kind of like endless scrolling kind of thumb movement that we just all do for hours and hours and hours a day, and we do it with everything, it doesn't matter what it is, whether it's Facebook or whether it's a proposal, you're just used to scrolling through stuff. So a little tip would be just imagine that someone's gonna do that. What can you do to stop them in their tracks? Think in subheadlines. So when you're writing this stuff out, don't put big walls of text in, don't use complicated language. Try to get your head around the idea that most people are just flicking through this stuff looking for something to stop at.

Yeah, and I know one of the other things that you guys talk about too is um uh from your report because I I love the data that you put out. I love the um for those of you listening, we'll have to put a link in the show notes. But if you go to betterproposals.io slash reports, they have all of these amazing findings from so many users using proposals and scopes of works and whatever you want to call it, digital documents, um, that I think is really fascinating. I know one of the things that you guys said uh in the recent one was that if you sending your proposal within 24 hours of meeting the client increases conversion rates by 42%, um, which I know is an increase even from the previous year, which is just amazing. Uh, do you want to add anything to that or or talk about that?

It if if you think about it, it would just make sense, doesn't it? There's not there's not there's no I don't want to say there's like no surprises in there, because it there kind of is, but if you think about them for any number of seconds, you're like, eh, it's pretty much the it make does make sense. But if you go and meet a client, you have a great time, you're talking about it, they're excited about their new thing, you're gonna make them, you know, their new website, the new lead system, whatever it is, and then you go and leave it for a week, and then you go, Oh, hey, yeah, here's this proposal, and you send it over. I mean, what's the what's the chances that their excitement level is gonna be at like oh amazing, let's sign. Probably not, it's probably sort of curved off just a little bit. So if you can get it to them quickly, then that excitement level is nice and high. They're still kind of they can remember the subtleties of the meeting, they remember you, like everything's all fresh and good, and they're much more likely to sign quickly. I mean, obviously, like depending on who it is and and how the deals are structured and stuff, but generally, if it's the type of deal where you're speaking from one business owner to another and you're trying to just sort of sell some agency stuff, generally you want to just get it out there as quick as you possibly can. There's there's no downside to it at all.

Right, right. And I think you bring up a good point too, and that is like okay, they're spending less and less time on the proposal. Like, you don't want to spend hours putting a proposal together that's only going to be looked at for three minutes, you know, when like so and I think the way that you guys have done the templates where you can literally just like spin up a template, you can pull in like reusable sections and stuff, and like you know, if you need to tailor it a little bit or whatever, but like I think I I mean I think I rarely spend more than like 15 minutes on a proposal, even for like a 10, 20, $30,000 project, like because I've already kind of got like the the nuts and bolts of what the client's asking for, I'm literally like copying and pasting a few different sections into my big template, you know, and like it's ready. I might switch one photo or something or whatever, but otherwise it's like it's ready to go. And it's just when I hear like uh people complaining, other agency owners of like, oh, I have to write a proposal is gonna take me three hours, and this, I'm like, what are you doing? Like it that's not it shouldn't take that long, right?

No, it shouldn't. And you know, if you're selling the same thing over and over again, I mean, how many different ways do you need to say the same stuff? You know, at the end of the day, like you're if you're doing I mean, generally the way you want to do it, right? If you've how many things do you sell? Like, if if you're if you're an agency, I mean websites are probably gonna be like top of the list, right? And then there's probably gonna be some marketing bits, and maybe there's some coaching, consulting, and stuff. But that's probably those three categories are pretty much gonna cover more or less everything you're ever gonna do. So just get sick templates done for each one. Um, there's tons of like I mean, you don't have to use better proposals, you can use anything, but like there's so many different templates out there that you can that you can use. Um, but just spending the time and effort just getting those three things sorted, and then when you speak to a client, what are you changing? You know, the the the main thing that that you really need to change, and it's the same regardless of what you sell, you sell steel beams for a house if you want to, but it's the same thing every time. The introduction is the most important thing, bar none. Like if you get that bit right, you can almost screw up everything else, it's that important. But it it's so important if you you can get everything else absolutely spot on, but if you screw that bit up, the whole thing's done, whole thing's done. Because they're just gonna take one look at it and go, uh you know, the first thing I've read is about us. It's like come on, grow up, grow up. Yeah, we're past that. We did that one in like 1999, we we've moved past it. It's all about them. We all know this stuff, we all do sort of some level of copywriting on on some level. It's it's it's about them and their problems. So just write down what they tell you, literally word for word, as close as you can, and just tell them back, like word for word, exactly what they said to you. Explain just wanna tell them what their problems are. They're gonna tell you if you're good at doing discovery, and you know, anybody anybody listening to this will be, and then just tell them exactly what they told you, and then just tell them how you're gonna fix it and sort it out. That's that's it. If you just do that one thing, you would it probably I don't know, depending on badge you're starting with, but like that would probably double most people's conversion rates. Just that.

Yeah, that's great. That's great. Cool. Um talk a little bit about uh automation because I I think one of the things that I've discovered more recently, and and I'm always you know, I I tend to get the minimum plan possible on whatever SaaS tool I'm using and like push it to the ends of the limits, and then like eventually, like okay, now I need some more of those features that like are on a higher plan. And so I know after you and I had talked just a few months ago, and you were you were sidebar though, how many customers did you talk to over like a few week period to get feedback on the tool? Yes, because you recently did that, right?

Yeah, I yeah, I went a bit mad. So basically, I had kind of come to a bit of a conclusion, it's a little bit sort of maybe a bit of an overshare and a bit of honesty here, but like I'd got to a point with the business where uh we had sort of teams in to do everything, um, very much taking a CEO kind of role, very backseat role. Uh the problem was I everyone was looking to me for leadership and direction, and the things that I used to do, which was design features, get feedback, um, speak to customers and do the odd bit of customer support, even if it wasn't day-to-day, I would still be semi-involved in it. Um, and I'd speak to sort of you know customers on the phone, I would do a bit of sales here and there, I'd I'd do that kind of stuff, and I had my um feet on the ground. And over time, it's normal, it happens, but you just stop doing some of that stuff. And I had a moment where somebody on my marketing team asked me something, and it literally I could have flipped a coin, it wouldn't have mattered what I said to them. But they asked me, Do you think we should do it this way or do you think we should do it that way? I no idea, literally had no idea, and I'm a decisive guy, I just make a decision and go with it. I didn't know, and I thought, that's nuts. I still like the first time in about 20 years I can remember literally having no idea. I thought, right, there's only one way to fix this. I need to just go and speak to as many customers as I possibly can. So I went calendarly, opened the thing up from six in the morning, five in the morning until midnight, and I just sent an email to every single customer. I went when the slots are gone, they're gone. That's it. Uh, fill my calendar up. And I just opened it up for two weeks and just went absolutely bananas, and it was nuts. But it was the best thing we've done in probably five, six years.

Incredible. Wow, and that and you talk to what, like a hundred a hundred of your customers within a two-week period or something, right? Yeah. Yeah, that's crazy. That's awesome, though. And I and I love just getting to talk with you. Yeah. Well, and I think probably, and at least I know when you and I were talking, um, it would there was sort of this like I'd be like, oh, it'd be really nice to be able to do this, and be like, oh yeah, we can do that. You just you're not on the plan, or you know, there's some like there was almost some like customer education that happens when you do that, even though that wasn't like the primary goal. You're trying to get feedback and improve the tool and all that. But um I that had to be a byproduct, right?

It yeah, it was, and it's um it's it's one of those things, like immediately afterwards we found quite a few things actually. Like there was there was a few like little niggles that people didn't they're like uh it'd be nice if it did this, or nice if it did that, or sometimes it does this. And we're like, you would never have reported that to support ever, because it's just too small. But you'll tell me now we're on the phone, and now sort of like got it out of you. Right. So we had a really nice list of like niggles to fix, which is really, really cool. So our product team have gone ahead and done that, which is amazing. The other thing we realized, which we are really good at making software and terrible at telling people about it. Um, so we've started a um well, I've started a monthly um email newsletter basically, uh, called Laser Focus, and it's just that. It's literally just telling people about anything new we've made and also educating people about anything that's just old stuff. Like the amount of people that said, Are there any other font options? I'm like, yeah, there's like 10,000 fonts in there, like that's connected to every font service. They're like, Oh, I didn't know. Yeah, did you click on the font thing? But it's our fault, like it's that's our issue. So yeah, so that was really, really nice. It was um it was it was good to do that. But the lesson really is you know, talk to your customers. There's the amount of things that you learn when someone when you're in a kind of a somewhat informal setting and someone's just telling you stuff. It's it's um yeah, it's it's absolutely eye-opening.

Really, really good. That's cool. I love that. I love that you did that. Um, so I wanted to just talk a little bit about automation because I feel like um one of the things that I realized is like, you know, the proposals get signed, they come back to me, sign, but like if I'm on holiday or something, I really don't want to have to like stop and tell the team like, hey, we've got a new project to get going or whatever, right? And so um after after talking with you, it's like, okay, we need to get on the plan with the automation, we need to connect it in. So now like the proposal gets saved and put in Dropbox and the process gets kicked off and the Slack team, you know, team gets notified in Slack and all these different things. Um, and so I can just like be out and it's like gonna get moved along, right? Um, but talk a little bit about like just all the the possibilities and just kind of the power of that.

Yeah, so uh single you guys have been so good to us over the years, I might as well give you guys a bit of an exclusive. So um we've been working on a feature called Journeys for a little while. Um effectively you can think of it as a client onboarding feature, basically. So it's it allows you to do um collect form, uh basically build a form into better proposals, but on the on the back end of it. So once somebody's signed the proposal, you can then collect um data, collect information, um, do the payment, which is something that we've already always had in there, um, allow people to book a call, um, put sort of all sorts of messaging in there, and you can rearrange this and do it however you want to do it. Um, but where some of the automation comes in is we've um it's such a simple little thing, but you can like just CC in where that form goes. So if you've got your onboarding split into a couple of different areas, so maybe you've got like some billing and an account information, then you've got kind of maybe some more product-specific stuff or project-specific stuff, you can have that go to a different person or the same people, whatever. Uh, but just things like that, just start to connect the whole thing together, but then also just distribute the right information to the right people. And I mean it's fairly standard stuff these days, but sometimes it just takes a little while to think, cool, but how does this work for us? How does it work for our customers? How are they gonna use it? You know, that type of stuff. But that's um that's a feature that's gonna be coming out in the next sort of couple of weeks. So uh no pressure product team.

Yeah, that's exciting. That's exciting. I love that. And you know, I think that would even cut down on some of our onboarding like communication that we have, is if we could just turn around right after the proposal sign and get some of those things that we typically always need, then that's just like kind of even quicker to start, which I just love that. Cool. Um if we could, I wanted to uh veer off topic slightly just because I think um there's there's a unique aspect to you running your business, and that is like you with your your life partner um kind of running the business together, which I uh my wife and I work in the same in the business together too, and there's like there's some nuances with working with your you know your loved one um and kind of all that that goes with that. And so talk a little bit about that if you could.

Yeah, sure.

Um so Sabrina's my co-founder. Uh we started the business together. But yeah, no, I've been together sort of 15-16 years and basically just roped her into helping me with random agency stuff, and then I don't know why the girl did this, but she started sort of teaching herself to code. She'd sort of test, I'd write out um like test plans for people for developers. Then I'm like, can you test it? Like, here was the plan. Does it do these things? If you click this button, does it do that? And then in the end, she was like, Oh, it it was just like a piece of text. So I just opened up the code editor and just started editing. It and before you know it, she's coding. So the first ever versions of better proposals, um, Sabrina actually built by herself, which was nuts. I designed it. Wow. And then she coded it. That's cool. Um, got a few um people to sort of help with some of the more tricky parts, but um yeah, there's there's some with a couple of tiny little bits in there that are actually probably still fairly original. Um that's just like minor Sabrina's stuff, which is quite cool. Uh but yeah, the the the it's it's a totally different type of running a business. It's completely different. It's not the same. It's uh you you wake up and you're working towards something, and I think what's quite nice is that your your goals in life usually are connected to the business anyway. So, like, oh I want to you know live in this nice house, I want to have this nice boat, I want to do these types of holidays, whatever it is for you. But you you're doing the business thing so that you can do those things, and all of that so stuff becomes so much easier when the person you're trying to do it with wants the same shit as you, it just makes complete sense. So it in some sense it's it's really really good. Obviously, there's challenges, and you know that that is normal, I mean, of of course, but you're not dealing with somebody that's just like a business partner because they're a business partner or they had a complementary set of skills, you're you're dealing with your life partner, and it's a completely different way of sorting it out, and you're better at it because you do it all the time. You argue about the dishwasher and stuff, you know, so you're like you're better at sorting out problems. Um so I think it's good. I mean, if you've got a stable relationship, that's obviously important, and you've got to have your you know, you've got to have your sort of legal stuff handled, because obviously, you know, you are you are dealing with a bit of a tricky situation if it all goes wrong. Um but yeah, I mean if it works and you can do it, it's it's incredible. But Sabrina's um what's the word? Like consistency is just it's the thing that makes it work. And that mixed with my manic, let's go do like a hundred customer interviews in 14 days and basically stay up for two weeks straight. But then she'll do that too. She she was on the phone as well, like helping me out when I didn't know where the buttons were on the product. So it's yeah, this it's uh I can't speak highly enough of of doing it. If it makes sense for you and you've got doubts about it, don't.

Yeah. Yeah. Well, and talk about because I and like I said, my wife and I are in the similar situation running our agency, and you know, um, there's the pros, like all the things that you just said, and then there's challenges, right? Like my wife and I, we work out three times a week together, we go on a run and and all this. Like, my wife doesn't necessarily like she loves all the work that we're doing and everything, but like she doesn't want to talk about the business like 24-7, right? She wants, if we're on a run, like she wants to talk about stuff that's not work related, and so we have to have like that boundary, right? Where it's like there there's certain times where we're in work mode, and there's certain times where we're like the husband and wife mode or the parent mode or whatever, and we don't need to like always mix you know constantly what hat we're wearing. Um, which is which so there's boundaries there, right? Talk about some of the challenges or maybe boundaries or just things that you found that like make it work better or or kind of keep it in check.

Don't have any. Um yeah, we we just don't. I think one thing that we both are definitely really good at is riding a wave. Um if there's a wave of enthusiasm, you just go, you just do it. And I but then we're we do other projects as well. So like um we bought a house like I don't know, six years ago. 90% of it we've renovated ourselves. Um really good fun to do it, love it, and that is our break. It's that it's still working together, it's just with you know, wood and screws instead of um you know code and business decisions. So that's kind of like our mental break. Um we both work out together three times a week as well. We have a trainer that comes to the house because otherwise there's absolutely no way I'm doing anything. Um but yeah, like you know, we both have our separate bits, like you know, I go and play football like once a week, twice a week, and that gives me a little bit of time to myself, gives Sabrina a little bit of time to herself, and that's kind of like her downtime, and then you know, vice versa. So that kind of helps. Um, but yeah, I mean we we have other things that we do together that aren't work-related, but they're still working together on something. Sure, you know what I mean? It's like it's it's different. I've always really enjoyed the idea of getting off the computer, getting off the phone, and going like smash something up, make something, do something. Yeah. Um, so I don't know, I find that that really helps us to be honest.

Yeah, and I think I think it's good for everyone to hear because I think you know, uh, one of the things that I hear agency owners struggle with is like the work-life balance, right? Because it's easy, especially if you're working at home or your office is nearby or whatever, it's easy to just like grind away and try to make the business work and do all the things and spin all the plates and put out all the fires, and it can just be hard to like step away or take a vacation or whatever. And I think you know, then hearing like, oh, working with your spouse, like I would just be working 24-7, but it's like yes, you work hard and you're working toward the same goal, but you've got to have those other things that you're doing that aren't work-related, right? Or it's you're gonna you're gonna burn out or it's just not gonna be sustainable, right? And I think that's just I think that's good for everyone to hear.

But it's but it's interesting though. Like, I've I mean, it's just a me thing. I I I don't know if it's just connected to being you know, spacky or aspergist or whatever, but like I find that if the more stuff I have to do, the less stressed I get. I find that some people take things off their plate when they get stressed. I think I've got to add more. I don't know whether it's because it forces the issue and forces your brain to go, right, you definitely don't need to do that. And by by having a like a nice level amount of things to do, a safe amount of things to do, that kind of keeps you comfortable, and then by adding too much, that's when you go, right now I've got to make some hard decisions. So I don't know. For me, I find that the the more busy I am, the more effective I am. Like the output is just simply better.

Yeah, yeah. You uh for me too. I I gotta be running at 110% because if I'm running at 90%, it really feels like I'm at about 40%, right? It's just yeah, uh, for whatever it is, it's just it forces you to use your time more effectively, to make the the prioritize the decisions, to hand off more stuff to the team, like you're just kind of running at a higher level. So I I totally get that. Um well thank you for letting me take that little side side uh step there with the with that because I just I just feel like that's uh something unique, and I I know a lot of people are kind of in similar type situations with that. So um just wanted to kind of touch there. Um anything else that you would just uh as we kind of wrap up here and and uh you know people listening to this are running agencies where they're like the only person or they've got a whole team or you know, all kinds of different types of agencies and stuff. But um any any kind of takeaways or final points or just things that you know might help the audience in terms of like closing the sale or or kind of working through this and having their terms written down and all that kind of stuff?

Yeah, I mean having your terms, oh god, just get them done. Like you you can literally get them online. I mean, go if if you really want, just go to betterproposals.com.io, whatever. Uh just go to the templates thing, go find one that makes sense, just copy and paste it, just steal it. I don't care. Um, at the very least, do that. But yeah, get that stuff sorted. That's just basics, it's business basics. Like you've got to have that sort of stuff sorted. It gives you peace of mind, it gives the client the feeling that they've signed something, and sometimes just that alone can get them to like behave when they might not have done. So just stuff like that's good. Um, I think getting a scope of work for a complicated project with a lot, there's a lot of bits and bobs involved, I think that's well worth doing. And if you want to split that up and do sort of like a proposal or like a fee agreement separately to that, that's okay. Personally, I just try and just get the whole lot lumped into one. I know some people try and like split contracts off here, do fees over here. Why could why complicate it? Just get it like if it's like I don't know, here's our rule of thumb. If it's under 20 grand, just lump it all into one document. There's no reason to split it up. If you've got us to deal with a separate legal department, fine, you've got you're just gonna have to bite the bullet. But keep things simple. Remember that your client is opening something on a phone, probably. So if it looks rubbish, um they're gonna think that you're a rubbish company, probably, because that's just how we judge things. People do judge a book by its cover, it is true. Spend the time asking your client what they're trying to achieve and what the problems are that they're facing. If you know those two things, you can almost do anything with that information. Like if you know exactly what problems they're facing, and you just keep asking them why to the point where it almost feels uncomfortable. Like if you start to think like just keep digging. Like, how does you know how does that affect that? How does that affect that? And what do you think is gonna happen if that keeps happening? Just keep digging and make it conversational, that's the playful bit. But if you get those two things, those two bits of information, you everything else is easy. It's when you don't do that, and then you sit down four days later and you go, right, I've got and do that proposal for Dave, and you realize you haven't got a bloody clue what Dave's problems are, you've got no idea what Dave wants, and now you've completely forgotten everything you spoke about in the meeting, and you're gonna do this how? Yeah, never gonna get it.

So yeah, yeah. And with AI, there's so much you can do now, right? I mean, you can record your call with the client using otter.ai or pick any tool, right? And then you can transcribe it, you can put it in chat GBT. What were the problems that the client had? I mean, you can I mean this is like this we're living in an age when this has like never been easier between like AI and and tools like better proposals where the templates, I mean, there's just so much that you can do in such a little time. It's amazing, right?

I definitely think using AI tools to do what you previously use an assistant for, I think, is is absolutely genius. But I'm glad you brought Chat GPT up because I've got a bit of an issue with it. Oh yes, please, go for it. I'll tell I'll tell you this quickly before we wrap up. We've um it's it's only the only reason I'm mentioning it is because I we're I wrote an article this morning um about our commitment to be a human-only company. And uh we've basically made a commitment to not use ChatGPT or any kind of AI tools to write content on our mark with our marketing, and especially not with our customer support team. So we support 11,000 customers in 150 countries 24 hours a day. We reply in less than like 90 seconds, everyone's trained on everything, and we do it with three people. You do not need AI, you do not need bots, you just don't. Um train people properly, make sure that people know the product or whatever they're selling, you don't need that stuff. But to me, I can't think of anything worse than having a bot or a some language pattern program try to do customer support when you're trying to help someone out. Just so I don't care if it costs me more money, I don't care if it's less profitable. Um I don't even care if it puts up a business one day. As far as I'm concerned, I'm not that's a commitment, that one. And I'll take it with me. I don't care. Love it, love it.

Um final question here, and um I'm I'm making this loaded on purpose, loaded on purpose, but um are proposals dead? Are are proposals like going by the wayside?

No, because you've always got to get something signed somehow, otherwise, well, that is dumb. Like if you're gonna try and sell things and not get anyone to sign anything, that's crazy. Um you don't need me to tell you that. Um what you call it is up to you, but at some point in time you're gonna have to get them to agree to a fee, agree to some terms, and some sort of specification or what you're gonna do. At some point in time, doesn't matter what you call it, how you dress it up, how you present it, at some point in time you're gonna have to take that, shove it in a document, and guess I'm gonna sign it. Um, you could do it with a tool like ours, you can patch it together and do it with Word if you want, you can use any number of different things. But uh, we've made it nice and easy to do that. Um and it's pretty cheap.

So love it. Love it. Adam, thank you so much. This has been so great. I could chat with you all day and and we could talk about features and all the different things. Um, but thank you for what you've done to make it easier for agency owners like me um to do our job and to get get the signature. Um, I think my account passed the one million mark uh in better proposals in terms of like that's just that's just the work that uh we've done through the proposals. I think we're like right around the one million mark, which is pretty awesome. Congratulations, man. That's clever. Thank you for all that you've done. Love that one. Brilliant. Cool. Thanks for listening to the Agency Hour Podcast and a massive thanks to Adam for joining us. I love everything that you and your team are doing over at Better Proposals, and we'll definitely have to get you back on the podcast in the near future. Okay, folks, please don't forget to subscribe and please share this with anyone who you think may need to hear it. I'm Johnny Flash. Let's get to work.