S03 Episode 5: Building Trust Through Roadmapping with Lionel Martin

Double Your Freelancing Podcast

When you shop for anything, check with the business owners and ask, “How’s business going?” They will be happy to share their thoughts. Roadmapping involves interviewing and understanding a client to identify their needs and craft a solution for them. Take care of and protect your clients to develop successful and reliable results.

My guest today is Lionel Martin, a software and DevOps engineer who helps technology startups improve how they build using the Cloud. As a freelancer, he experienced the income and project roller coaster, which was very stressful. Lately, he has been doing high-value consulting. Lionel shares tips he has implemented that may benefit your company. Tactics he uses that are game changers to make a good impression on clients and get them to pay him more include being more descriptive rather than prescriptive and not having a portfolio.

Today’s topics include:

• Organizing your business and personal life: Schedule, time, and
  bandwidth
• Making mindset changes by setting up hands-on consulting and
  roadmapping to be able to implement strategic or tactical changes
• 4 Phases of Engagement: Diagnosis (identify problems), Prescription
  (recommended solution), Implementation, and Reapplication
• Expressing empathy during diagnosis and prescription to understand
  why client is willing to spend money on you; walk in their shoes
  before going directly to your comfort zone
• Having hesitations and being confident enough to talk with any client
  in any industry and deliver value
• Having curiosity, willingness to help, and asking questions - talk
  business with people
• Getting qualified leads and clients involves content marketing and
  focusing on strategic conversations for productizing (3 months for
  productizing to packaging)
• Building trust and positively changing your relationship with clients
  through roadmapping; others deliver biased advice geared toward their
  services Waterfall vs. Agile Development: Where do you need to get
  to, where are you now, why is now bad, why is there better, and how
  can you help them get there? Assess risks
• Hear It Before They See It: Investing time to talk to client,
  offering proposal, and getting them to buy an option

Resources and links:

• Lionel Martin
• Lionel Martin Email