How To Set Up And Run A Consult Call
In this week’s episode, you’ll learn all about how to set up and run a consult call! Consult calls are usually the first interaction you have with potential clients. If the call goes well, it could result in a long, mutually beneficial relationship with a client…which is just a fancy way of saying you make $$$!
I teach you what to say at the beginning, middle, and end of consult calls, but one important thing to remember is that you want to listen to your potential client!
For example: “My husband wants more variety and I don’t want him to say, ‘Oh no! Not chicken again…’” As you listen, you’ll be able to position yourself as a solution to your potential client’s problems.
You will learn the answers to all of the following questions:
What’s a consult?
How do you know if somebody wants a consult call?
How do you offer a consult call?
What do you discuss on the call?
What information do you give your potential clients so they can make a decision?
If you have no idea what to say in a consult call, don’t worry. I’ve got you. After listening to this episode, you’ll know how to handle consult calls like a pro.
Featured on this Episode:
Ready to book your next summer sizzling client? Click here for my guide on how to get your next 5 clients!
Interested in becoming Fully Booked? Check out my A-Z program on how to market, sell and set up your cooking practice so you can become fully booked - Join the Waitlist HERE. Course is scheduled to open mid-September 2022.
Take a listen to to podcast, and leave a 5-star review on Apple Podcast, take a screenshot of your review and a surprise will be headed your way!
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Hey, chef. Welcome to the podcast. On today's episode, we're going to talk about how to set up and run a consult. This is so important and such a fun way for you to get to know your prospects of clients, to get to know your business and your service better yourself. And it's usually the first interaction you'll have with people that could start on a long reoccurring booking relationship with a client that brings you lots and lots of money. So consults are a must. You have to know how to set them up and run them and that's what we're going to do today. So for today's episode, I'll teach you what exactly is a consult, how to know if somebody wants one, how to offer one. If it's unclear what to actually discuss on the consult, I'll take you through the beginning, middle and end and all the points that you're going to hit on and what information to actually give them so they can make a decision. It's not just about money, in fact, it is rarely about money. And I want to show you what they're going to need to know, hear and understand to make a decision. And you can stop thinking it's just about the money so you're not so nervous to say it or to actually ask for the booking. So I'm going to tell you my favorite way to set up consults. And I'm a little old school, I started my business 13 years ago. Of course there was the internet, but it wasn't like as crazy and as reliant as people are now on it. So when my business set up, I had a website, I had a phone, I actually started with a BlackBerry. My husband would always laugh at me because I didn't have an iPhone, but I thought my BlackBerry was amazing and I didn't even have internet on it first, like outside of the home, so I couldn't even reply to inquiries fast enough. And I would often get home after cooking at the end of the day, five or 06:00, and they went with somebody else. So replying to people on a good timeline is really important. I'll talk to you about that first. But I'm sharing this because business existed for hundreds of years before the internet. We think it's the best, fastest way to run it, but it's not the only way and it may not even be the best way for you. So a consult is a place where a prospect, which is someone who's inquiring about your service, can contact you and find out how you can help them, what you have to offer, how your service works, confirming where you are in the world, making sure you're in the right location for them, and kind of how it all works. All of that can be done on a consult when someone is reaching out to you. All of that same information, most of it is also going to be on your website eventually. But if you don't have a website, it's not a problem. More important than a website is learning how to run these consults. Because so much of what you talk about and explain will be what you're doing in the consult will also be on the website and printed material and on your social posts. So here's what a consult is in the basic form. I kind of just said it, but it is a way for you and your prospect to talk one on one clearly so you can explain what you do. You can find out their specific problem and let them ask any questions they need. And I'm going to do this episode in the frame of a weekly in home cooking consult. It will be very similar for dinner parties or for a fresh serve, which is a daily in home cooking. But this is just the basics of it. That's what a consult is to me. A consult is usually over the phone or in person. When I started 13 years ago, I would actually go to the client's house and do the consult in person. We would set up a time on the phone of when I can come over and meet them and this is how it was traditionally taught. And I would go over there and book an hour in my time slot to go over there with my portfolio, with my sample menus, and meet them in person and talk about the service, how it can help them, make sure I can help them see what they really wanted. And we each get a feel for each other. It's very different when you are DMing people or messaging versus sitting face to face. So I've probably done, I don't know, 100 consults in person and the chance of me walking out of the house without a booking and a credit card was zero every time I was in someone's home and we got to meet and they got to see who I was and how I could help them, it always resulted in a booking. That's the power of being in person. Now, as my company grew, we stopped doing in home consult for certain jobs and moved it all to the phone. And that is what I'll be teaching you today because it is more time and cost effective for you. But I do want to offer you, no matter where you are in your business or career, doing in home consults is a really great practice for you. It gets you out of your comfort zone, it lets you market to someone in person and it's really fun, actually. I mean, yeah, you'll be nervous at first, but people will get to meet you and fall in love with you before they ever try your food. That's when you'll begin to understand that they're not just buying food, they're buying or investing in a relationship with someone who can take care of them, who can save them time who actually listens to their feedback. Food is just the medium on which we do it on. So the in home console is a great way for you to practice. If you're asking for a little challenge, even though you did not, I would do your next five inquiries and offer them an in home console. It's a real amazing way to get so much better at explaining your service and meeting people. OK, so that's what a consult is. I used to do them in person. 100 of them always walks away with a credit card or a check. We then move them to be on the phone unless they requested it in person. And usually we would only do that for big fish. That was mandatory. Okay, so we did them on the phone. So how to know if somebody wants a consult? You're going to meet with people throughout your day, throughout your life on the internet, and they're in general going to ask, hey, what do you do? And you're going to explain to them and they're going to be interested because what we do is fun and interesting. It's not boring, it's something everybody wants or they've fantasized about in their life, having their own personal chef. And imagine all the food was made for you and you never had to clean up. So you probably already know that people love this job when you say it. So they're going to say, what do you do? It doesn't mean they want to purchase, it doesn't mean they want a consult. They just want to know more about you. So how do you know if somebody wants to consult? The first, most obvious way is they're going to ask. And here's how it might sound. I want to talk to you more about this. When can we set up a time to talk? They may ask you directly, they may ask you for pricing, they may ask for your availability. They may say, Can I see your menus? What's your website? All of those are clues that they're interested in learning more. What I suggest, and I teach my students in the fully booked course, is offer a consult. Because just standing there, like at a cocktail party or at a friend's house or when you meet people, like in the real world, if you're shopping or something, especially at a food store, you don't want to just stand there for like 20 minutes and explain what you do and how much you love it and all the things you can make. That's not an offer and that's not a consult. A consult is a specific time and place where you're going to talk with someone about how you can help them through your business and that's what you want to offer. So you could simply say, it seems like you want to learn more. Do you want to set up a phone consult? And if they're like, yeah. Then you go from there if they're like, no, I'm not sure, then you could say, well, here's my card. Let me know when you do. Don't get stuck in long convos in the middle of nowhere talking about nothing. You want to get them to the phone on a real consult. That's how you offer one. You get better and more confident at offering consults when you're doing them, not when you're thinking about them, not when you're waiting for, like, a red carpet to roll out and all these people start asking you. You just start offering it every time you think you can help somebody. And they are open and interested, and they might be like, I'm not interested for me, but can you give me your card? My sister's coming. Or I know someone at my kids school who wants this. They just got a health diagnosis. What's your card? You're not pushing a service on them or a consult on them, but you're leaving it open to give more information. So here's what you're going to discuss on the actual consult. And then we'll walk through the three parts to it. A consult has three main parts the beginning, middle, and end. The beginning is the part where you get to know each other. The middle is giving your assessment, and the end is telling them how you can help them and what will be next. But most importantly, the point of a consult is to give them enough information, enough perspective of feeling and thoughts so they can make a decision. Whether the decision is a yes or a no, it actually doesn't matter. We want to be able to get them enough information and feeling and drive and motivation to really make a decision. And you'll know you're doing that if you're getting to a decision when a lot of chefs stall out right before this or right at the beginning, where they think people are inquiring just on price, and they don't offer enough information or make enough of a connection to make a decision. So what they find how you know you're in this spot, is people will ghost you. They will disappear. They will not get back to you, and they may lie or mislead to you on purpose because they don't want to make a decision, or they don't understand what they heard. That's how you know you're not running the consult the best way it can. There's nothing wrong with getting a no. I've had hundreds and hundreds of nos in my life, but at least they didn't ghost and were able to make a decision. And if somebody comes back to me and says, hey, that's just too expensive. I'm not paying $150 a person for that dinner party, I love that answer, because then I get to decide, do I want to charge less? Am I on the right track? Was this person not a good fit anyway? Like, then I get to make my thoughts about it so that's the information that you're going to discuss on the consult. You want to establish rapport, which is a connection to who you're speaking to. Remember, you're going to be potentially cooking in their home. They need to be able to see that you're trustworthy, that you're honest, that you follow through, that you are who you say you are. You're going to do all that through the words and the actions that you do. Then you want to have them feel comfortable enough to ask real questions to you. Because we, as the actual cooks and the providers, understand this service differently than they do most people. And when I say most, I mean 85% of the public has no idea what a real personal chef does. They may have an idea, like a little vague idea, like, oh, you're a caterer or you drop off food, or do you do weddings, or you're a private chef and you only cook for really rich people. I mean, we've heard it all. It's your job to explain what you do in a way that they can see themselves interacting with you and using you as a vendor in their lives. That's really important. And then you want to ask for a specific booking offer. You're going to make an offer, and you're going to tell them exactly what happens next. Okay? That's the whole framework of it. We talked about what is a consult, how to know if somebody wants one, how to offer one, what to discuss, and what information you are going to give so they can make a decision. So let's get into the meat of this. Now, I used to teach this in a couple of different ways. When I was training people to work for me, other chefs to work for me, or actually an administrator, like an administrative assistant or my client concierge manager. I would record myself on consult so she could hear me, and we would have a whole script that she would follow. Not chefs, they didn't do this part. They just did the cooking. But you, as the owner operator, answering your phone, doing the bookings, you are going to need to know how to do this. But I used to do this as a script. We would have certain lines that we would always say. We would switch out one or two things, and they would get really good at practicing it. And I would tape myself, and they would listen to me over and over and over. You're going to do something similar, but for yourself, you're going to write your own script. And it doesn't have to be word for word, but it could just be some bullet points that, you know, you hit on each time. I have gone so far as having students record themselves so I can listen to it. Or sometimes in coaching, we do mock calls with each other. Like, I will pretend to call somebody and ask about their service, and I'll have them walk through the whole thing of how they explain it, and then we will troubleshoot and give feedback at the end. But just know that you can do this process on your own. I'm going to tell you exactly what you need to do. So the beginning part is you're going to go over these three or four things. First is you're going to get to know the client. You want to show up in a very friendly open space. If you're driving, rushing around, doing something else, that's not the time to have a consult. Regardless of what the client is doing for the prospect, I would never, and I mean never, I don't even talk on the phone when I drive, ever. But I would never answer the call while I was driving because I knew I was distracted, I was not paying attention, and I would be rushing to get off the phone. Now, do I call prospects and they're driving? Sure, that's up to them. But I know as the owner, I was not going to do that. I urge you to do the same. Don't do this while your kids are screaming in the background or you're busy cooking for somebody else. Consultation time is like, sacred. They want all of your attention and they want to know that you know what you're talking about and know what you're doing. If you're distracted, you guys are going to miss that opportunity to connect. So the first part was getting to know the client is just that. How are you? What made you reach out today? How can I help you? Just leaving the door open and not going into a sales pitch. The reason why you're asking those questions and kind of getting to know them is so you as the expert, can start to identify the problem in your head. You're going to formulate how you can help them in your head. You are not just helping them with food, they're going to present you with many problems. I don't have time to cook. I don't know what to cook. I can barely follow a recipe. My kids hate everything I cook. I'm sick of hearing my husband complain that it's chicken again. I don't want to go to the drive through after school and get McDonald's five days a week anymore. Notice how they're kind of related to food, but not really? You're going to be writing those things down and paying attention to everything they're saying. This is your intake time. This is like you being a doctor. When you walk in the doctor's office and the doctor's like, okay, what's going on? And they're writing down things and asking questions. You're doing the same thing. You're formulating in your head how you can help them. Now, again, you've likely already decided your services ahead of time. So what you're doing on this stage is seeing what service package would be good for them. We're not letting the prospect dictate and say what they want because likely they don't know what they want. They just know they need help. The only way that it would be is if they've had a chef before, and we'll go into that later. But here you're formulating in your head how you can help them. You're doing this by asking more clarifying questions. So you'll have basic questions. And this might be on a checklist that you have printed out. It's basically, what's your location? You have to verify where they are and you service that area. The number of people eating, the days that they're interested in for service, how are they eating right now? What are they doing for their food? Are they getting take out seven days a week? Are they eating packaged meals at home? You want to know what they're doing now. I also like to ask, so why are you reaching out to a chef right now? Let them tell you again in their own words also, have they used a chef before? They might be like, yeah, I use Sunfare, a delivery service, and it was gross. And that's why I want somebody cooking in my home. I don't want deliberate or what do they expect from their chef? What do they really want their chef to help them with? It could be like, I don't want to touch a pot and pan again. Then, you know, you solve that problem. Those are the basic questions. That's the beginning. You're getting to know the client, identifying their problem, formulating in your head how you can help them. You're going to give them the diagnoses later, ask more clarifying questions. These can't just be basic questions. They have to be geared toward your service and how I can help them. So their expectation is really important in the middle. Right after this, you're going to give your assessment and you're going to confirm that you heard them say certain things. So at this point, I like to say, I heard that you don't want to go to the drive through anymore after school with McDonald's. Do you want your dinners fully made at home, ready for you and your kids to eat? That positions them to say, yes, that's what I want, and that's the service I offer. You see how I'm positioning it like that? Also, it could be like I heard you say it's mostly you and your husband and your kids are at college. How many days of the month or the year do you think they'll be at home? And then it might open the door to like, well, actually they come home every week. Or because they might have pitched you that they need a really small service and they don't know. But all these questions you're asking is going to get to know them better. Then you're going to give your assessment. Here's what I heard you say, and here's how I can help you. I usually offer my first time clients with two adults and two children. My four x four package. Here's what you get. You get four entrees, each with a protein, vegetable and a starch. Each of those entrees comes with four portions each. So you get about 16 meals for the week. Does that sound like it interests you? They're going to say yes, tell me more. Then you're going to give them specific examples of what you may cook because their questions are going to be like, well, what's in an entree? How big are the portions? Where do you food shop? Do you bring your own pots and pans? You're going to anticipate all these questions and answer them when they come up. During that whole time, what you're doing with your words and your voice is confirming that you can help them. And I like to throw in a lot of the intangibles. Not just focus it on food, but think about when you're not going to the drive through five days a week and your dinners are ready at home waiting for you. You're going to be saving at least 5 hours. Isn't that amazing? What are you going to do with those 5 hours? And she could be like, I can't wait to go to yoga or I'm just going to read or I'm going to help my kids with their homework. You're confirming you can help them in all sorts of different ways, saving them time. They don't have to clean up. They don't have to go to the grocery store. They don't have to turn on the oven. Everything could be eaten in the microwave or eaten cold in the middle part. While we're still here, you are going to ask again. Do you understand what I'm saying? Do you understand what I mean by a four by four? And they could literally be like, no, tell me again. And you just tell them again. Doesn't mean they're not interested. Doesn't mean you didn't explain it right. Just means you explain it again. Ask in the middle. I actually asked this like three times on the call. Usually if they understand what I'm saying, don't wait till the end where you're like, here's the price. And they have no idea what they're getting. And then they're like, sorry, and they ghost you. You want to ask a couple of times and then ask when they want to get started. And they could be like, I'm just looking around. I have no idea. Most people are going to be like, I want to start now. I want to start next week. That's why they're reaching out. So that's the middle here's the end. And we're going to do more podcasts on this, more teachings on this. This is a really important topic because this is you selling. You have marketed enough to have somebody reach out to you and want to know how you can help them. This is the selling part. We go into this a lot in the course in my course fully books. We have entire modules on this. That's how important it is. So you've finished the middle part, now you're going to come to the end, you're going to make your recommendation again and why. So they might be like, I don't know why you're offering the four x four. Because it's only the two of us. And then you need to answer that. Don't let them dictate your offer. You're the expert, you're the doctor, you get to decide. And there's a reason why, honestly, the people who are two people, but I pitched them the four by four, they always love it and they always want that. People don't realize it until we get in the home and we do the service once or twice. They really eat it for lunches and dinners. It's plenty of food and they're ready for us to come the next week. So go over your recommendation again and why. I always tell them to try it out once and then we can edit the package. So we start everyone on the four x four, everyone, even singles. And then when we get feedback for the next week, if they're like, listen, it's just way too much food, I need to do a four by two, then we do it. And then you're going to say the price. Here's the four by four. It's 350, plus the cost of food. Are you ready to book or would you like to book? I have next Monday available. Does that work for you? Ask specifically for the booking. We want a yes or a no. If they're not ready and they have to talk to somebody else, or they're not sure their schedule or they're calling other places, all of that is fine, but you want to tell them exactly what's going to happen next and you're going to say it very specifically. I'm going to send you a quote for what we just talked about. It will include the meal sizes, what you get, the price and a sample menu. Once you're ready to book, just hit reply, let me know and we'll set up the payment. Once we get payment set up, I can add you to my chef's calendar. You do not have a booking. They do not go on the calendar. They do not get a custom menu until you have payments. After that, they get a food questionnaire that they fill out online to make sure that all their preferences are noted. And then you make the custom menu. Then your cook date is confirmed with your date and time, the shop will come. Here's the time and here's how it all works. And then you go into more details. You may need a second call, you may not. As you get better and better, you're going to know what to include right off the bat. So you handle all of their questions. Then once I do that, I ask them again. Any other questions? What questions did you have for me? Tell me something that didn't make sense to you. I literally asked them this. And as we keep going, as we get to know each other better, they will feel comfortable with asking more detailed questions. How long do you spend in my home? Are you going to bring your pots and pans? What do I have to have ready when you come? Do I need fridge space? What kind of containers do you use? All the questions that brought them to, I want to try this. I want to say yes. You'll know, by their level of questions, if you said, I'll send you a quote and they're like, thanks, bye. Maybe they're interested, maybe they're not. But if people say, like, how much space do I need in my fridge? Can you come in through the garage? Do I leave your name at the gate? Those are specific questions that let you know they are really interested. So then you're just going to follow up when you said you would and you're going to send them the questionnaire. I'm sorry? The quote. By the end of the day, or whenever you said you would, they're looking for you to come through on what you said you would as well. So when you don't send a quote and you are like, oh, I could just send this next week, it's not a big deal. I don't think they'll say yes. They know that the process will pick up on that. So just follow through on your word for you. Follow through because you want to be an amazing business owner. You want to provide really good customer service and they may move forward. They may recommend you to people and never move forward. They may think that was just such a cool experience that I learned what a personal chef does, but I'm not ready now. So that's how we run a consult. There's lots of ways to do it. Take this episode, break it down into little parts and write out your beginning, middle and end. It doesn't have to be long. Sometimes we spend five minutes in the beginning getting to know each other. I spend five to eight minutes in the middle giving my assessment, explaining how it works, and then another five minutes at the end saying, here's why I recommend this. Are you ready to get started? Here's what's going to happen next. It doesn't have to be that long. I've had consults be anywhere from literally seven minutes to an hour. Seven minutes. You can still get a credit card and a full booking an hour. If you find yourself going in circles or they just have a ton of ton of questions and you have other calls booked, then you just send them the quote. But either way, you want to get really good at this because this is how you're going to actually sell your services. I'll circle back from the beginning. I used to. Do these in person. The more connection they have to you, the easier it will be to get the booking. We then move to the phone. What I don't suggest is doing this only over email or over text or over a DM. A lot of this can get lost in the wording and how people perceive things. And there's no immediacy to it and they don't get to see you as a real person. So all consult to me ideally, would be on the phone or in person and it gauges their level of seriousness. If somebody's texting you like, hey, how much is this? Or hey, send me a menu. And you're like, I'm sorry, I don't do it like that. Let's get on the phone and do a consult. And they do not get on the phone with you. You know that they're not serious and you move on. I like to put up that like, little not barrier, but like, way of telling if they are very interested or not. Because people that are very interested will get on the phone within a day or two or the week and just talk about it so you can do it. I'm so excited for the consult that you're going to have. And I'm so excited that I got to share this with you. It's one of my favorite parts of meeting with clients even before I get to cook for them. And I know this will work for you. Alright, I'll see you guys soon. Bye.