Uncovering Budget

1Session at a glance

2Open (0:00, 4 minutes)

• Write the three investments on the board now and leave them up: money, time, resources. The concept block fills them in.
• Say what it buys on Monday: the next time a client asks what something costs, you have a question to ask back instead of a number to guess at.

3Concept (0:04, 22 minutes)

Why budget comes after pain (4 min)

• Restate what the order depends on: sessions 04 and 05 established pain, which here means the specific thing a problem is costing a client and their reason to act on it. This session assumes that work is done.
• Worked example first. Ask about money ten minutes into a first meeting and you get "that depends what you are proposing", or a figure so low it is a defense. Ask after the client has described four outages, two missed deadlines and a staff member losing a day a week to IT, and it is a different question, because now it is about something they want fixed.
• Name the rule: the budget step opens by summarizing the pain back to the client and getting their agreement to talk about money. Before that summary you are asking a stranger to price an unnamed thing, and a defensive answer is the correct answer to that question.
• Answer the objection before it is raised. Somebody will say it feels rude to ask about money. It is ruder to spend two weeks of their time and ours on work they were never able to buy.

Money, time and resources (5 min)

• State the three plainly: a client has to be willing and able to invest money, time and resources. Willing and able are two tests. An owner who wants the work and cannot fund it, and an owner who can fund it and will not free anyone up, end in the same place.
• Define the two that get skipped. Time means their calendar: hours their people spend in discovery, in a cutover window, signing off changes, and in the recurring account meeting we call a BTR, a business technology review. Resources means their people and their access: somebody who knows where the passwords live, who should have what, and which applications are still in use.
• Say why it matters here. An onboarding runs on their people as much as ours. We cannot document what we are not told and we cannot stabilize what we are not given access to.
• Make it concrete with a model figure, marked as a model: a documentation and stabilization phase needing their office manager four hours a week across six weeks is 4 multiplied by 6, which is 24 hours of one person's time. That belongs in the budget conversation, not in the kickoff meeting.
• Land it: an engagement can fail on time or on resources with the money fully in place, and those two are the ones that usually go unasked.

The two roadblocks (4 min)

• Keep them separate, because the fixes differ. The technical roadblock is not knowing which question to ask, how to phrase it, or when. That is training, and the rest of this session is the fix.
• The conceptual roadblock is your own beliefs about money: a person who would never spend that much of their own money cannot ask a client for it without apologizing in their tone, softening the number, or answering the question before the client does.
• Give the tell, so people catch it in themselves. You hear yourself say "I know that's a lot" before the client has reacted at all. That sentence is yours, not theirs.
• Correct it without the pep talk. It is not your money and it is not your business. A figure that is a serious decision in a household budget is an ordinary annual line for a practice with forty staff. Find out what it is for them, which means asking and then being quiet.

The three steps of the budget conversation (6 min)

• Put the three on the board in order. One, summarize and review what pain established and get agreement to talk about money. Two, find out whether money is available and where it would come from. Three, find out how much.
• Step one is a sentence and a question: here is what you told me the downtime is costing you, here is what you said about the insurance questionnaire, have I got that right, can we talk about funding it. If they will not agree to talk about money, you have that in one minute rather than two weeks.
• Step two asks whether and where. Where tells you whether this is an operating line that already exists, a capital purchase that needs a board, or money that does not exist yet. Demonstrate both phrasings: "have you put a number aside for this", and "when we work with a practice this size there is usually an IT line already, I do not know whether that is true here".
• Step three asks how much, and this is where people either demand a figure or flinch. Two tools: a round number, put in the air for them to correct, and a bracket, a range you ask them to place themselves inside.
• Walk the model example on the board with the arithmetic out loud, marked as a model. Forty users at a model 125 dollars per user per month is 40 multiplied by 125, which is 5,000 dollars a month. Across twelve months that is 5,000 multiplied by 12, which is 60,000 dollars. A one-time onboarding project at a model 10,000 dollars makes the first year 60,000 plus 10,000, which is 70,000 dollars. The bracket you put in the air is 40,000 to 90,000 for a first year at this size.
• Give the follow-up and make them write it down: what if that is not enough, where would the rest come from. A client who says 45,000 and can name a capital line has told you more than one who says 45,000 and goes blank.
• Cover the three answers briefly, because the Show demonstrates them. A yes, "we finalized the figure last week". A no, "nothing is set". A maybe, arriving either as a stall, "I cannot tell you that", or as a put-off, "money is no object". Say the part the room will not expect: the put-offs sound like the best answer and are the least useful, because no number has been named and nothing has been agreed.

The monkey's paw (3 min)

• Define it before the story: a monkey's paw is splitting a large engagement into a small first phase and a second phase, with an agreement written down before phase one starts about what happens next. The name is Sandler's, from the light line a crew throws to the dock so the dockhands can haul the heavy mooring rope across.
• Give it our shape. Phase one is a network assessment, or a documentation and stabilization project: asset inventory in Hudu, every endpoint on Huntress, backups verified, a priced remediation list. Phase two is the managed services agreement.
• Do the arithmetic on the board. Against the model first year of 70,000, a client with 45,000 is 70,000 minus 45,000, a gap of 25,000. Phase one at a model 10,000 leaves 45,000 minus 10,000, which is 35,000, and at 5,000 a month that is 35,000 divided by 5,000, which is seven months of the agreement in the same budget year. The other five fall into their next one.
• Answer the objection immediately. This is not a discount. The price did not change and every hour is billed at what it is worth. A discount lowers the price of the same scope. This changes the scope and the sequence.
• Be firm about what makes it work: the phase two agreement is written down before phase one starts and it names the results that trigger it. Without that, phase one is a small project and we have taught a prospect we will do the first part cheaply.

4Show (0:26, 10 minutes)

1. Set the scene in one line. A medical practice with forty staff, two locations, four outages last quarter and an insurance questionnaire they cannot answer. Pain is established. This is the next conversation.
2. Run step one live. Summarize the pain back, ask whether you have it right, and ask for agreement to talk about funding. Do not move on until the volunteer says yes out loud.
3. Run step two. Ask whether money is set aside and where it would come from. The volunteer stalls: "tell me what it costs first." Handle it without answering with a number.
4. Run step three with a bracket. Put 40,000 to 90,000 for a first year in the air and ask where in it they sit. Then stop talking, long enough that the room notices the silence.
5. Ask the follow-up. What if that is not enough, where would the rest come from. Put the answer on the board.
6. Offer the phasing. Split the engagement in front of the room, naming what phase one delivers and what result triggers phase two.
7. Debrief against the three steps. Which step was each part, where did you nearly give a price, and what did the volunteer do when you went quiet.

5Do (0:36, 13 minutes)

1. Pairs, with a live opportunity each. Nobody sits this out. A technician or coordinator uses a client who has asked them about a replacement or a price.
2. Write the summary first. Two sentences of pain in the client's own words, ending in "have I got that right". Read it to your partner.
3. Run steps two and three out loud. Whether money is available and where from, then a round number or a bracket, then the follow-up: what if that is not enough, where would the rest come from. The partner plays the client and must stall on the first answer.
4. Swap. Six minutes each way. The presenter calls it.
5. Write the sheet and keep it. For your own opportunity: the pain summary, the question you will use, the bracket you will put in the air, the money answer if you have one, the time and resources you need from their people, and a one-line phase one if the number is short. Put the money answer in the Nutshell lead record before the end of the day.

6Check (0:49, 7 minutes)

1. A prospect says "money is no object, we will spend whatever it takes". Is that a yes, a no or a maybe, and what do you ask next?

   Answer

   A maybe, in its put-off form. No figure has been named, no source of funds identified and nothing agreed. Ask next with a bracket or a round number, then the source: where would that come from, and what if it turns out to be more.

   The obvious answer is that it is a yes, and it is worth naming why that is wrong. It is the most encouraging sentence on the list, which is what makes it dangerous, because it ends the budget conversation early and feels like permission to write a proposal. A client who has genuinely cleared the money can tell you where it sits.

2. A client signs a managed services agreement and the onboarding stalls for two months. The invoices were paid on time. Which of the three investments was missing, and what question in the budget step would have found it?

   Answer

   Time, resources, or both. Money was there and the other two were not. Nobody on their side was freed up to answer the documentation questions, hand over access, or confirm which applications are still in use.

   The question that finds it is asked at the same time as the money question: who on your team will we be working with during onboarding, roughly how many hours a week can they give this, and who has the authority to tell us an application is no longer used.

3. You ask about budget ten minutes into a first meeting and get "that depends on what you are proposing". What went wrong in the sequence, and what has to happen before you ask again?

   Answer

   The question came before pain was established, so the client was asked to value an unnamed thing, and a defensive answer is the reasonable answer to that. What has to happen first is the work of sessions 04 and 05: find out what the problem is costing them in outages, hours, missed deadlines or risk. Then summarize it back, get them to agree it is right, and get their agreement to talk about funding before asking again.

4. A prospect says "I cannot tell you that, it is company policy". What kind of answer is that, and what are two ways to keep the conversation moving without asking for the figure again?

   Answer

   A maybe, in its stall form, and stalls are defensive rather than final. Two ways forward: put a bracket in the air and ask whether the right number is inside it, above it or below it, which lets them answer without disclosing a figure. Or ask where the money would come from instead, which is often easier to answer than how much.

5. Using the model figures from this session, a first year comes to 70,000 dollars and the client has 45,000 available. Explain how a monkey's paw differs from taking 25,000 dollars off the price, and what has to be written down before phase one begins.

   Answer

   The gap is 70,000 minus 45,000, which is 25,000. A discount closes that gap by charging less for the same scope, so the work is delivered at a rate below what it costs to deliver and the client learns our price is negotiable. A monkey's paw closes it by changing what is bought first: a model 10,000 dollar documentation and stabilization phase, which leaves 45,000 minus 10,000, which is 35,000, and at 5,000 dollars a month that is 35,000 divided by 5,000, which is seven months of the agreement in this budget year, with the rest falling into the next one. Every hour is billed at full value.

   What has to be written down before phase one starts is the agreement about phase two: the specific results phase one has to produce, and the commitment that phase two proceeds when they are met. Without that in writing, phase one is a small project and nothing follows it.

6. Why is your own opinion about what counts as expensive a problem in this step, and what does it look like when it shows up in a meeting?

   Answer

   Because you are not spending your money, and a figure that is a serious decision in a household is an ordinary line item for an organization with forty staff. If you privately believe the number is too high, you cannot ask for it cleanly.

   What it looks like: apologizing for the number before the client reacts, softening it out loud, offering a cheaper option nobody asked for, or changing the subject as soon as money comes up. All four answer the client's question for them, and they all happen before the client has said a word.

7Close (0:56, 4 minutes)

Work before the next session

• The practice steps in section 9 of the Learner Guide: one live opportunity with the pain summary written, the budget question written in the words you will use, and the bracket you would put in the air.
• The money, time and resources answers for that opportunity entered in the Nutshell lead record, or marked unknown if they are.
• Chapter 6 of the Sandler Foundations workbook, in the reference folder, for anyone who wants the source.

Next session

07 - The Decision Process. Who actually decides, what they decide against, what else they are looking at, and how to get the process agreed in advance so a decision does not come apart in a room we are not in.

Open items to settle

• Whether the money, time and resources answers get named fields in the Nutshell lead record, so a proposal is never written without them being visible.
• What our standard phase one looks like as a product with a fixed scope, and whether it lives as a PandaDoc template so it can be sent the same day the conversation happens.
• Whether the phase one to phase two agreement wording belongs in a Notion SOP alongside the proposal process, so it is not rewritten from scratch each time.

8Sources

• Sandler Systems, Sandler Foundations, chapter 6, Uncovering the Prospect's Budget: chapter PDF.
• Sandler Systems, Sandler Foundations: full workbook PDF.

The budget step, the three investments, the technical and conceptual roadblocks, the stall and put-off answers, bracketing and the term monkey's paw are Sandler's. The model figures, the phase one and phase two shape, and everything about how this applies at Hermetic are ours.

9After the session