John Tyreman: 0:19

All right, welcome business developers, firm leaders, marketers, sales professionals of all Stripes to another episode of Breaking Biz Dev. And today we're gonna venture a little bit into some maybe unfamiliar waters for some folks out there. we're gonna explore the whole concept of monthly recurring revenue today.

Mark Wainwright: 0:40

Right. And specifically, you know, there's a lot of organizations out there who kind of built around invoicing and getting paid monthly. What we're gonna talk about today is, you know, really dig deep into what that exactly is and explore sort of this, regular fixed monthly recurring revenue model. So the thing that everyone should keep in mind as we walk through this is, I mean, really you as a consumer, how many things in your life do you pay for on a regular monthly recurring cycle? It's all your subscriptions. It's the New York Times for your puzzling. It's the

John Tyreman: 1:30

chat, GPT.

Mark Wainwright: 1:31

chat, GPT. It's Netflix, it's you know, your AAA membership, whatever, whatever it is. You know your util utilities fluctuate, right? boy, it'd be nice if they were fixed. Actually, utilities do provide sort of a fixed option, right? At some point they can do fixed. Fixed things, but there's just point here is that it's everywhere as consumers in our lives and so many organizations out there in professional services and don't recognize the importance of that, the potential, the opportunity that's involved in taking their wildly fluctuating ups and downs, you know, from a. Monthly revenue standpoint and starting to level that out a little bit with this, this approach. So some folks may say, oh yeah, I do all the time. Others may say, no, Ours is up and down all the time. So,

John Tyreman: 2:26

Yeah, I mean, I see it all the time. I, I call it peaks and valleys. I think others call it, you know, something different. But that's really like the product of when firms run on that project base billing or, you know, let's gimme 50% upfront, 50% upon completion of the project, and we'll get into all of this, in more depth. But that's really the, the problem that. Is facing many firms. And so like what if you could restructure all of that and you could kind of. Become what the SaaS companies are, that software as a service without being a software as a service company. so that's really, we're trying to take that model and apply it to professional services firms. So today we're gonna, talk about why that monthly recurring model makes sense. We'll offer some practical examples, like what does it look like in practice? And then we will explore some barriers and mindset shifts that you'll need to overcome in order to take action, which is the last part of the episode. So that's what we'll cover today. ready to dig in?

Mark Wainwright: 3:28

Yeah. Let's, let's do it. This is a, this is, this is a good one. I really like this.

John Tyreman: 3:33

All right, so why does a monthly recurring revenue model make sense for professional services firms? Mark, I think it would be helpful if we first defined what we mean by monthly recurring revenue.

Mark Wainwright: 3:46

Sure. Yeah. In this context we're talking about a fixed. Amount we are talking about engaging with a client and charging them$5,000 a month,$20,000 a month,$500, whatever the amount is relative to the work. Being done and the outcomes the client is seeking. So it is a fixed amount that, you know, runs for whatever period of time. And the big shift here is that, you know, it's not necessarily completely focused on. Hours and level of effort and all of that stuff. So it's an amount that everybody kind of agrees to. And then you start and you start marching forwards. And sometimes along the way it will vary, you know, a, a little bit, maybe you're at some point where there's a slight bump or dip in something. But generally speaking, we're talking about a, a, a fixed amount. I structure my. Business like that. I believe you do as well, many others do out there. so that's kind of, that's kind of what we're, that's what we're talking about.

John Tyreman: 4:58

Yeah. And so I think for folks thinking, okay, well why should I go this route? Why should I explore a monthly recurring revenue model? I've built my firm this way. We do project billing, we do X number of billing, we do hourly billing. Whatever the whatever you do, why should we consider. This monthly recurring revenue model. So we've got these five different benefits that we've outlined here, not just for the consultants, not just for the firms, but also for the buyers as well.

Mark Wainwright: 5:29

That's super important. Like if this was just self-serving, like this is just gonna serve the consultants, it's not worth it. It has to, you know, the client has to be in on this, the client. This has to have some, some worth and value to the client and lo and behold it does. So, John, what's the, what's, let's walk through'em. What's the first one you got there?

John Tyreman: 5:48

Yeah. Well, I think this is kind of the big umbrella of like the, the main theme that we're gonna talk about with a lot of these benefits is the predictability of monthly recurring revenue, both for the consultant and for the client. So on the consultant side, reduces that feast and famine cycles. you have predictable cash flow on the client side. They've got clarity into how much they're going to spend. They've got clarity into billing, they've got clarity into invoicing. They're not gonna be surprised with any, you know, high fees one month that they weren't expecting.

Mark Wainwright: 6:21

Yeah. that happens all the time to people that I talk to is that, you know, the, client receives some invoice that's this huge outlier and they come back and they say, what is going on here? For the past six months, the, invoices we received have been, you know,$7,000,$10,000, you know, whatever. And then all of a sudden they get one that's 35.

John Tyreman: 6:44

Yep.

Mark Wainwright: 6:45

surprises are wonderful when we're talking about, you know, birthdays, but they're terrible in business, right? They're just terrible. So we don't ever want to surprise our clients, and you can do as much sort of, you know, preparation as you think you need when you're gonna hit the client with this big outlier, but invoice, they're still gonna, there's somebody in the organization who's still gonna be like, what is going on here? Why all this? Why did the invoice just triple. What's did they do three times the work, you know? And then all of a sudden you get into that game, you know? Now it's, oh boy. Now we're in trouble. So,

John Tyreman: 7:18

And then you gotta dig into the details, look into the line items, talk to the consultant, and then all of a sudden you're wasting a lot of time. Right, And so I guess like that's further down the list, but let's talk about that one next. So I. That would be another benefit of all of this for the consultant is the time savings, right? You avoid, being seen as, you know, nickel and dimming the client as well. So there's kind of a positioning angle there too, but you're not having to go back and forth and justify the work that you've done. Everything is clear with monthly recurring model that the client can expect. so on the client side, not having to review every invoice, not having to go through that whole song and dance every month, those time savings, that just kind of like breath of fresh air. You don't need to worry about that, you know?

Mark Wainwright: 8:07

Right, right. Exactly. That is not a part of my world. I would never want to be in that situation where I suddenly, I'm now talking to, you know, the, the, accounting. Team at one of my clients trying to line item my invoice. What a waste of time for everybody. You know, we set this whole sort of consulting engagement up. We're looking at these big results. We're we're working hard, We're working towards those results, and all of a sudden this big, you know, accounting thing kind of comes in. You're like, wait, what? What's happening here? So, and that happens, that happens all too often with organizations that have these wild fluctuations in invoicing because the nature of most of your client organizations is, you know, there's some regularity in sort of the inflows and outflows, right? And if, if they get this big invoice that just drops into their organization. where did this come from? How do we deal with this right

John Tyreman: 9:07

a second.

Mark Wainwright: 9:07

What do we have to move around? so it's just, you know, the regularity thing, you know, this, what I talked about earlier is this, you know, I've got my monthly subscriptions. I kind of know what the inflows and outflows are, that sort of thing. Occasionally we have outliers, but for the most part it's all regular and yeah, the. wild swings are totally disruptive and they present a lot of risk to, everyone. You know, it's just the, the client just says, wait, we can't, we can't deal with this right now. So, yeah.

John Tyreman: 9:34

Well, and that's a great segue into that third. Benefit that we've got listed here is that regular engagement and those normalized communication rhythms. So on the consultant side, you know exactly what to expect. Maybe you've organized this offering and structured it in a way where you do have monthly touchpoint with your client. And so there is that regular rhythm there. on the client side that eases their anxiety, right? they have the ability to be proactive. Within their organization, they know what to expect.

Mark Wainwright: 10:06

This goes hand in glove with, we're talking about this billing, invoicing, regular amounts, everything else, but right alongside of that sets this. regular consistent engagement communication, that this whole concept sort of fosters, right? It's not the, you know, like the example you said before. It's 50% upfront and 50% at the very end. It's okay, we're gonna talk up upfront, get, start the work, then we kind of disappear. There's no regularity in the middle, and all of a sudden the big invoice hits at the end. You know, or the irregularity of, billing and the irregularity of, interaction communication are all problematic. So,

John Tyreman: 10:46

Well, and, and then keeping a normalized communication and, and increasing the frequency of communication just helps you align with your client. More as a consultant, right? So if there's, like you said, if there's that messy middle where there's like, wait a second, are they doing work? Are they not? What are they doing? You know, that introduces that, those questions, that anxiety. But if you've got that regular communication rhythm with them, that can kind of put them at ease a little bit and keep everyone rowing in the same direction.

Mark Wainwright: 11:14

Yeah. Yeah, the next bullet points we've done, we've done a, a few here. The next bullet point that we kind of talked about before was it starts to move these bespoke one-off consulting. Uh. Offerings and engagements, regardless of what expertise you're in, if you're an engineering, architecture, consulting, whatever else it is, it starts to move these bespoke engagements and offerings to something that's a little more productized. that's not saying that everything you do will be systematic and productized, meaning it is, you know, a defined thing that you can offer again and again, and, and, you know, you can build some. Sort of systems and processes around, it's sort of a, a package, that you've developed. Not a hundred percent I things are gonna be like that, but it's this mindset, this approach starts to enable that productization of your services, which leads to greater efficiencies, the ability to deliver it really effectively. And oh, by the way, that leads to better margins. So. That's good. And that's from the consultant perspective, from the client perspective, the client now knows what to expect, right? So it's, it's a, defined effort. there's a beginning, middle, and end. Uh, you've done this before. It's tried and true. You've been there, done that. client gets their predictable results. They're really happy with, what they're bought into. There's a high level of trust, a lot of confidence. So win-win for both. So these two things are different. We're talking about productized services in this monthly recurring revenue thing, but they go together. I. And if you start working that, that muscle of that monthly recurring revenue, you know, approach, then right alongside of it becomes this, oh, I can take certain offerings I have and sort of systematize them and productize them, and start charging a regular amount every single month. And lo and behold, you know, you're in great shape. And you know, John, you and I, we subscribe to this, right?

John Tyreman: 13:13

and all of these kind of stack on top of each other because once you have that. Productized offering that is one of the building blocks to being able to scale and grow your firm. If the, if that's what you want to do, right? or you know, like, like you said, it, you could fine tune it and really dial it in to increase the efficiencies in the margins of that service offering. So you know that that can lead, to, lead you to a couple different ways that it can. Have an impact there, but easier to scale predictability of that service offering. The benefit to the client really is it increases your firm's agility to be able to handle evolving needs. And so if you have more resources within your organization as a result of being able to scale and grow, then you have, the resources to handle the needs of maybe a complex kind of client.

Mark Wainwright: 14:05

Hmm. All right. So benefits for both.

John Tyreman: 14:07

there are benefits for both, but Mark, we're not a SaaS company. How would this even work?

Mark Wainwright: 14:12

heard this, people have said this to me, right? That happens, you know, it's, it's, people look at me and say, oh, mark, but you just do this thing or others, that have this sort of fixed monthly approach. that's not how they work. But you're right, right. We get that question. We're not a SaaS company. We're not a software company. We're not selling widgets. we're selling our expertise. How,, how in the world would that happen? so we've talked about some steps and these are. maybe varying degrees or maybe these are things you can start to test. And sort of the asterisk on maybe this episode in general is that we don't foresee, all organizations out there just throwing everything out and starting with this type of a model. We think there are select opportunities to kind of get going on this. but there's a few, sort of baby steps that you can start to take here. One of them is the, you called it here, the retainer reframe. Sure. Yeah. And that's, if you have worked with your prospective clients find the work to find the outcomes they want to achieve associated a, price to that, let's say it's$120,000 worth of work. It's a significant effort. It's gonna take some time. Rather than, you know, starting to work and then 5,000 the first month,$7,800, the second month,$26,000 that thir, you know, like that. Rather than doing that, just say, okay, cool, we've settled on a price. Let's just do this.$10,000 a month for 12 months. The level of effort could vary. You know, things could change. One month you could be. Spending a ton of time on this. The next month, less so, but all in all, everybody wins because the price is agreed to. It is set at the end of the work. The client achieves what they want to achieve. You get paid, and it was all done on a regular recurring fixed. Fashion so it didn't throw anybody off. So that's a good one that you can kind of start with is just take your price and break it up evenly over the course of the work.

John Tyreman: 16:25

Yeah, and that that is a simple kind of reframe. we've got a couple of other practical examples here. this next one kind of ties well into a common topic that we've touched on on this podcast, which is the three option tables in your proposals. And if you, subscribe to that methodology and you go down that route, you can apply that to a monthly recurring model as well. So you've got three different options with three different tiers of service or support. So for example, you know, option one has just strategy and option two, strategy and execution, and option three, strategy, execution, and reporting. Very, very crude and simple. And you know, obviously you'd want more nuance in that for your own services. But just to give you an example, and they come with three different price points, monthly price points. And so if you understand kind of what goes into that and the level of effort, you can price it accordingly.

Mark Wainwright: 17:20

Yeah. And they have different desired results or different, different outcomes for the, for the clients, but each one of those components is kind of productized. they stack on top of each other. makes total sense. Super clear. Great. Good example. All right. The next one is access models. If you are a consultant, maybe you've done some work with one of your clients where you've, Delivered some work, achieved some, some results. And then, sort of following on that they want to have access to you, for, additional whatever it is, right? Additional work, additional support, you know, as needed, ad hoc sort of needs. you can set a regular monthly amount around that where they have access to you. then don't fall in the trap here. Don't fall in the hourly trap here where they're gonna start buying hours from you. This is just, the door is open. You have access to me for, the month.

John Tyreman: 18:14

I could see this being appealing to lawyers. Right. You know, like legal counsel, you're, you're paying a monthly retainer or whatever, and then you, you've got on-call access. They're not gonna charge you by the hour, but you know, because when you need legal advice, they're there for you.

Mark Wainwright: 18:29

Yeah. or accounting, or, number of, professional services firms or experts out there that are really focused on that hourly thing. Now, the trick here that everyone's gonna get tripped up on the, well, what if the client just abuses. This, right? What if we set this? What if we set this and, there's a, some sort of either explicit or implicit sort of, you know, maximum amount of time, effort, whatever else provided or offered per month and somebody takes advantage of it. I would say that's possible, but I would say. the vast minority of situations will kind of head that way, right? I think the vast majority of situations will end up where, you know, the client pays for this access and they are under, under accessing or the expected amount of time. That's just how people are. People are busy, you know, throughout the course of the week or the month, and, they won't access you. my experience, with this, now, this is kind of built into what I do. So from my own personal perspective, this sort of, you know, the door is open, the light is on, come knock when you need some help. The vast majority of my clients underutilized. That from me. So case in point, you know, when I start working with a client in an engagement, I say, okay, I am, I, I am, I'm available. If I am, you know, not available at a specific moment, I will be very shortly, come, you know, send me a notes, call me, whatever, and most utilize that. so that's kind of, you know, a data point of one from me that says, you know, your fears of someone using and abusing this are valid, but I don't think that they are, enough to prevent you from this type of an offering.

John Tyreman: 20:27

Agreed. I've had similar experiences where I've offered that, you know, unlimited questions via email. If some, if you have something that comes up and you want, you know, my 2 cents on it, my advice on it. I'm happy to do that, and I found that to be the, the same case is most clients don't use that. Some do, and I've also found that the ones that do use that, those questions are really, really great for marketing, right? If this client has a question like that, and chances are that there are others out there with similar questions, so it's a source of ideation from a content perspective. So it, it can have other benefits outside of, just a benefit to the client as

Mark Wainwright: 21:11

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And, and the, you know, the last thing I wanted to say about this is that there's, there's this safety blanket sort of, you know, notion about this idea where you're offering just this availability and the client knows that, okay, you're there. I. You're just there if, if needed, right? So, that's huge. Don't, do not underestimate the power of that, of the client just wanting to buy off on this at some level, at some price, just, you know, to have the insurance policy. I mean, that's, that's really, you know, what you can, what this kind of boils down to. You're listening to breaking biz dev

John Tyreman: 21:48

the podcast that beats up, breaks down, and redefines business development for the professional services firms of tomorrow. Your hosts are John Tyerman, founder of Red Cedar Marketing, the podcast marketing company for experts and professional services firms,

Mark Wainwright: 22:02

And Mark Wainwright, principal consultant and founder of Wainwright Insight, the fractional sales manager and sales consultant to professional services firms.

John Tyreman: 22:12

If you find this podcast helpful, please help us by following the show and leaving a review on Apple podcasts

Mark Wainwright: 22:18

and now back to the show. All right, Cool. We kind of kind of got that one, the last one.

John Tyreman: 22:25

Sorry.

Mark Wainwright: 22:25

the last one. But no, we're good. The last one I really like,'cause I think it really appeals to a lot of the folks that I work with that have highly variable, situations or, or situations where there's a lot of unknowns. And this is a base plus a variable, meaning that you can set some monthly recurring base and then you have a variable. Elements on top of it? most organizations out there are thinking, you know, okay, every single month there's so many unknowns that I'm not gonna have any base. It's just like a hundred percent of the time it's just gonna be unknown. I don't think that's the case. I think most know, you know, at least to some degree, 50%, 70% of the work is predictable and you know what's gonna happen that particular month. So you can set that sort of base scope and fee and, you know, price around that base, and then the variable is stuck on top of it. And what that, what that yield simply is just less variability. the total dollar amount per month may vary, but it's, but the percentage of variation is gonna be much smaller, so that's more, more predictable.

John Tyreman: 23:37

I've got a great example for

Mark Wainwright: 23:38

Oh, yeah,

John Tyreman: 23:39

So, when I was first starting out, I, I tested out an offer of, A, podcast booking service. So I would help consultants get booked on other podcasts. Right. And at first I was, you know, you don't have to pay anything until you get booked a show and you get pay on a per booking basis. Well, that did not work for me. And so,'cause there's a lot of legwork and the conversion rates did not work out as I anticipated. So I adjusted that offer. And now that there is a regular monthly rate. Then there is a per booking fee on top of that. So that's the variable element. It's reduces the risk for the client. It reduces the risk for me because I have a floor on that engagement. and it works for both parties.

Mark Wainwright: 24:22

Yep. Right, right. Yeah. That's the concept here is you're creating some sort of a floor, where it benefits you and the, client, right? Because the client knows, you know, that at least. This amount of money we should be prepared to pay. We're gonna see this on the invoice and if there's some variation on top of that, okay. But it's not gonna be this, you know, wild swings, that we experience sometimes. So, so good. So Those are good ones. And I do have some clients of mine that have a kind of an experiment with that a little bit, and it is successful. It's always nice to have sort of the floor, you know, sort of that, that foundational amount of dollars that you can rely on month in, month out. And then there's some variation on top of that. So that's, that's really good.

John Tyreman: 25:05

so the four that we talked about, those examples, that retainer reframe, just, you know, take that 120 KA year, chop it up into 10 KA month. Second one was tiered service packages. So that's that. Three options at different levels. So. The third was access models. So pay a monthly fee for on-call access or unlimited email access. And then the fourth one we talked about was a base fee plus a variable element. So those are the four different examples of how firms can adopt this monthly recurring revenue model. The.

Mark Wainwright: 25:37

Yeah. And, and they can start giving'em all a try, just test them out. Like we said, this probably isn't a situation where this is gonna be a wholesale change, at least not now when people are getting started. But at some point, hopefully people can, start doing this more and more where this becomes larger percentage of how you, how you operate your business. So, this last little chunk here, I guess, well, the next chunk here is the, the, these mindset shifts, right?

John Tyreman: 25:59

before folks can start putting this into action, there are certain mindset shifts that, that they need to kind of like overcome and wrap their head around,

Mark Wainwright: 26:07

totally.

John Tyreman: 26:07

While we were planning for this episode, mark, we talked about the big number, and I loved your take on this. What, what is the big number and why is that so important?

Mark Wainwright: 26:17

the, the, I think the situation that, that, the example that I put forward was, was my own, but this applies to, to many other organizations. when I am talking to prospective clients, I never talk about the big number and the big number is what's the total amount this is gonna cost to work with me over the period of time that we contract, you know, with, you know, some dollar amount. Per month. I never talk about that big number. The math is not complex. There's, this is not calculus here, this is some, you know, some simple, you know, months and dollars thing. So people can do the math pretty easily, and this isn't kind of, I'm not being tricky. Salesy, whatever else. It's just, I don't, it's not important to talk about the big number. And there's a couple reasons for that. one of the first ones is, is that, you know, the way I structure my engagements, I expect to be working with clients for a period of time, but if at any point it doesn't work out, we just stop. and nobody's held to the big number, right? The other thing is that, you know, the number can change. IE you know, we worked together for a period of time and they want to extend, right? So that number will will change. So the number I'm always focused on is the monthly recurring number, right? And. One of the reasons that I do this beyond the other ones that I, that I just mentioned is, you know, it's just easier for the client to make these smaller decisions than it is to make the big decision. It's a little counterintuitive in that I think a lot of people think, oh no, I want the client just to make one decision once rather than having to. Again, and again and again. But smaller decisions, many smaller decisions are actually much easier for us to make than one big one. So just the way that I frame my work, with my clients is just a series of small decisions that are we, are we, how's it going? Are we, let's keep going, let's keep going. Right? So there's, there's that, rather than the, the big amount, right? So I never really talk about the. I don't really talk about the big amount. So that's a probably a, a significant mindset shift. And again, it's not, we're not, we're not trying to hide anything, but we are just saying, okay, there's a monthly amount that it's gonna take for us to get there. And some listeners out there maybe, maybe thinking, okay, well we have the big project amount and we just chop it up into the monthly amounts. But there's still the big amount. It's still there. Sure. It's not, it's not critical that we. Continue to hammer on that big number

John Tyreman: 28:41

Right. I think that's the, that's the main

Mark Wainwright: 28:43

focus on the monthly numbers.

John Tyreman: 28:45

Make that the focus of the conversations that you're having with clients as opposed to featuring that big number on the screen or on a slide or, yeah. why does this feel so unnatural? to consultants, to firms to operate this way. If the whole world operates this way, if they operate this way in their personal lives, why is there such a disconnect?

Mark Wainwright: 29:07

Yeah. the big one to kind of get over on this is, kind of this, this transactional trading. You know, Time for money

John Tyreman: 29:18

money.

Mark Wainwright: 29:18

kind of thing to this big shift that we've referenced and talked about many times, which is coming alongside your clients to walk with them and help them achieve these big results. Understanding their needs and then to getting them where they want to, to, to go rather than this, this transactional thing, right? There's this consultative, deep. You know, relationship rather this, this transactional one and this whole approach goes, you know, together with that mindset, the mindset of, I'm not. Trading, you know, hours for dollars. I am coming alongside you and we're walking together to achieve these big results that you want to achieve. And, you know, there's a monthly amount associated with that. Uh, so it's, it's a, this is a big one, right? And, and this is probably the big one that's gonna sit in someone's head is like, how do I break free of the trading? Time for dollars, and shift over to this other mindset.

John Tyreman: 30:27

Well in this, the structuring engagements this way is kind of a forcing function to doing that. And because of all the reasons we talked about, having to establish those regular communication rhythms, I. It kind of forces you to to think about the client and what they're going through right now and how you are uniquely positioned to add value to that situation. Maybe it's not what you anticipated early on in the engagement, but maybe you found some way that you can help them maybe directly or indirectly. Relationships that you have, you know, making referrals or, you know, offering your experience working with a certain tool or in an industry, you know, those are different ways that you can add value to a client engagement that might not be, you know, what, what's technically in the scope, but is, is a way to extend that relationship.

Mark Wainwright: 31:20

Absolutely. Yeah. and this, mindset, this approach, this model frees you up. It frees up, ways for you to explore, way you can, you know, be of value, and of service to your, to your clients. So, totally. Yeah.

John Tyreman: 31:35

Okay, so we've talked about some different examples. We've talked about the mindset shift that consultants need to take to overcome that project fee billing. Mindset. And so now it's taking action. And you talked a little bit earlier, mark, about this isn't, you know, this isn't something that firms should really make a wholesale change right away, but this is something that you can start to test out with some the right kinds of clients.

Mark Wainwright: 32:01

Yeah. Yeah. We have to, we have to find an opportunity, uh, to start doing this. And maybe it's just a select one where it's like, oh, okay, so you get your head wrapped around it. You think this, this approach makes sense. It makes sense for you. It makes sense for your perspective client. It needs to be scoped and priced in a way that the value or worth to the client is screamingly obvious. Like, wow, we can achieve that over this period of time with that dollar amount per month. That's fantastic. Wow. That's, yeah. Sign me up. So it needs to, it needs to be really attractive now. Don't read between the lines and that thinking that you need to cut some big discount in order to make this model work. There is the caveat that says when you first start doing this, you're gonna have to test the waters and see what the tolerance is, you know, for your clients. And I think over time that dollar amount can change. so maybe at the beginning it is priced on the lower end of what you would think. You would want to price something and then as time goes on and you get more comfortable and confident, more effective and efficient with it, you can increase that price. But yeah, I think that at least at the outset, when you start experimenting with this, you want your clients to, you know, see some screaming value.

John Tyreman: 33:23

And then you, you talked about this like framing exercise that you can go through to, to like position that monthly investment so like you talked about like this is a$10 million problem and if you're gonna pay$5,000 a month to solve this problem, then that's totally worth it.

Mark Wainwright: 33:43

yeah, yeah. There's a, there's a dollars and cents comparison in here that people go through. I mean, value is. Most times associated with the dollars and cents. You know, people are comparing things, you know, is that worth this? You know, am I gonna, you know, that, that kind of thing. So, so yeah, you wanna frame it properly in that you want to make sure that you and the clients are very clear about the total economic value of sort of the outcomes or the desires they want to achieve. And then you come in with, oh yeah, this is, you know, I can help you get there with this. Modest monthly recurring amount, and they say, wow, that's amazing. Let's do it. You know, so, so that's the, that's the reframe, right? that's how you help them, you know, sort of see, identify, and realize the value in the, the work.

John Tyreman: 34:26

Well, mark, I think we've sufficiently broken down monthly recurring revenue for professional services firms. This has been a, a fantastic conversation. Hopefully folks that are listening found, uh, a lot of value out of this and hopefully they're thinking about maybe a client or maybe an opportunity that they could test this out on.

Mark Wainwright: 34:45

John, we bought off on this a long time ago. I bought off on this. I, set my. business model and my, my work life kind of built around this, I think it's critical. I think any professional services firm out there can start to explore this, implement it, expand it, and really see the benefits that it starts to level things out, not just for them, but for their clients, which is a huge benefit. So, yeah, this has been a great one, John. Until next time.

John Tyreman: 35:14

Until next time.