Agency Problems: Is Paid Discovery Still a Struggle in 2025?  ## Metadata - Author: [[Matt Report]] - Full Title: Agency Problems: Is Paid Discovery Still a Struggle in 2025? - Category: #podcasts - URL: https://share.snipd.com/episode/4e59f905-3220-4a22-af18-76c8abd9c89d ## Document Notes ## Highlights - **Expanding Role of WordPress Professionals** - The role of a WordPress professional now extends beyond just building sites to include adapting to new technologies like AI. - WordPress professionals must evolve with fast-paced tech changes while addressing client needs holistically. Transcript: Matt All right, let's talk about something new today. I am on a mission to revamp my approach to supporting and servicing WordPress professionals, probably like yourself. And I do think that that is going to expand, if not already, well beyond WordPress. And this is a shift that we've seen happen, I don't know, probably since Gutenberg first hit the scene a lot of it was because people just didn't want Gutenberg people I guess still some People don't want Gutenberg but that rift really started happening as far back as that as as far as I can remember and it's only gotten worse, that is the pressure on the definition of WordPress professional, maybe even the desire to be a WordPress professional, since that date. Through all the things of, you know, WordPress itself, not iterating fast enough, not innovating fast enough, yet still holding a massive lead on any competition that it faces, still Holding that massive lead, yet a general sense of lethargy, lethargicism, I don't know what the word is on that one, but still being slow to develop, slow to adopt and adapt new technologies In the space, save JavaScript, of course, and React. So we've had a lot of time and a lot of, I guess, critical thinking about, like, what is a WordPress professional? And how do they, how do you continue to thrive alongside WordPress? So all that is to say technology and we just can't escape it. And I'm getting kind of tired of talking about it. Hard to escape this AI thing that's happening. ([Time 0:00:00](https://share.snipd.com/snip/f19b8700-2af3-4ab1-a2bd-9134a60940c6)) - **Matt's Paid Discovery Experience** - Matt shared how he used paid discovery calls to educate clients and diagnose business problems beyond just building websites. - He positioned discovery as a valuable consulting service that helped uncover hidden business needs and justified the cost to clients. Transcript: Matt And he said it was all about that paid discovery. Now, I did this back in my agency quite often. And I'm sure, you know, I'm sure times have changed, right? Like I said before, I haven't been pitching clients on building sites. But before, like when I was doing agency work between 2008 and 2018, like WordPress and technology and the web was still, like people are still scratching their head like i don't even Know what do i do with the website how do i use this website and maybe people still ask that today but there was a lot of hand-holding a lot of information that or a lot of education i guess At the end of the day that you're giving somebody at least that's what I was going through back in that time. Because people just didn't know how these technologies interrupt, and if they were a sizable company, I mean, we're talking about base-level technologies like DNS, web server, email Servers. When you get leads through a website, these should go into a CRM. What's a CRM? This is what a CRM is. Oh my God, we don't have one of those. How are you, how does your sales team keep up with any of this stuff? What's your process from, you know, lead generation to follow up? Oh, we don't do, we don't do any of it. Well, how are you, how are you like multi-million dollar manufacturing company, you know, with a small sales team, two or three people, including the owner? Like, how are you doing this? How, how are you surviving? You know, and this was, you know, 15, 20 years ago. So when I would hit those, um, initial discovery calls, I quickly realized like, wait a minute, no, like my breadth of knowledge isn't just about how to build you a website, but it's about Understanding what that website value is to your business and then how it can work for you, right? It's how I always position websites when I sold them to clients. And I would probably imagine that's still how it is today. Is I would position it as this is a platform that works for you. This isn't just five pages, an about page, a services page, a contact page, a home page, and then a team page. You know, that's not what this is. I mean, it might start that way. That might be how you walk through the door thinking that's what you need. And that's totally fine. You want to start there. Here's the minimum price that we need to build something like that. But, oh, by the way, if you really wanted to expand this thing, which expands your business as well, then this is the path that you should be walking down, right? E-commerce, lead gen forms. You know, I mean, you as the agency owner, you know this. Discussions early on it was quickly realizing i i can't give this knowledge out for free every single time because what happens is when i do that it devalues everything that comes afterwards Right because then there's like this expectation that all of this stuff might happen but oh by the way you just gave me a five-page website. So, and that's just the tip of the iceberg, really. It's just like a lot of other stuff is like you're becoming a consultant and you start solving problems that, let's say their advertising agency was supposed to figure out or their, You know, IT organization was supposed to figure out. I mean, how many times I asked people like, okay, who has control over your domain? And they're look at me cross-eyed like, I don't know, I have no idea. Well, who's your IT guy? I don't know, some guy that shows up once a year. Okay, well, let's talk to him. And you start realizing, wait, I know so much and I'm solving so many pain points that you must pay me for this value. So anyway, it's a long way of getting to, I quickly realized that paid discovery calls after like the initial consultation of like, are we good partners? Like that, that's what we're doing. Explain to me what your problem is that, that, you know, why you're contacting me. Let me tell you about like our process and how we work. And what do you think? Like, do you think, first of all, do I think I can support and service you and your industry? And do you think you can work with me? And here's all the reasons, you know, why you might find us a good fit. And then afterwards, it's, okay, you understand what our budget range is. But before we get there, here's my paid discovery fee. We'll go through this and we'll workshop this together. And it really depends, depended on like that customer. If it was a small business customer, I would frame it like, it depends on like what that range is. I mean, are they a small accountant, small law firm? Okay, so it's $250 for the hour. And let's just workshop this stuff. You pay me for the hour. We'll go through your stuff. It'll sort of be like a little boot camp thing. And we can get a better sense of what's really wrong in your business. Okay? A diagnosis. A diagnosis is what i should say um that just kind of points to different areas to certain hot spots they were a bigger customer and i knew they like whatever that whatever it was that they Were looking for was definitely going to be this more long-term project or, you know, hey, I saw this and I knew this was like a $10,000 project. Then maybe the discovery fee is $1,000, 10% of the project. And if the customer is on the fence of saying, I don't know if I really want to push over into that $10,000 just yet, What can we do in a single day as a team for $1,000 to build out a proper plan, A blueprint before you break ground, before you start building that house? Can we get a proper plan in place? So even though, even if you don't hire us, you've got value here. Looking at whatever surface-level technology we could, assessing their current CMS if they had one, page speed, rankings, user logins, accessibility stuff. If you push into e-commerce, what does that look like in terms of ([Time 0:06:46](https://share.snipd.com/snip/b9a4a30a-9ef0-4f6a-989d-1806e0912b85)) - **Charge for Discovery Planning** - Charge a fee for discovery sessions to thoroughly assess client needs and create a clear blueprint before starting work. - Offer discounted discovery fees when clients commit right away to encourage investment in proper planning. Transcript: Matt Like that, that's what we're doing. Explain to me what your problem is that, that, you know, why you're contacting me. Let me tell you about like our process and how we work. And what do you think? Like, do you think, first of all, do I think I can support and service you and your industry? And do you think you can work with me? And here's all the reasons, you know, why you might find us a good fit. And then afterwards, it's, okay, you understand what our budget range is. But before we get there, here's my paid discovery fee. We'll go through this and we'll workshop this together. And it really depends, depended on like that customer. If it was a small business customer, I would frame it like, it depends on like what that range is. I mean, are they a small accountant, small law firm? Okay, so it's $250 for the hour. And let's just workshop this stuff. You pay me for the hour. We'll go through your stuff. It'll sort of be like a little boot camp thing. And we can get a better sense of what's really wrong in your business. Okay? A diagnosis. A diagnosis is what i should say um that just kind of points to different areas to certain hot spots they were a bigger customer and i knew they like whatever that whatever it was that they Were looking for was definitely going to be this more long-term project or, you know, hey, I saw this and I knew this was like a $10,000 project. Then maybe the discovery fee is $1,000, 10% of the project. And if the customer is on the fence of saying, I don't know if I really want to push over into that $10,000 just yet, What can we do in a single day as a team for $1,000 to build out a proper plan, A blueprint before you break ground, before you start building that house? Can we get a proper plan in place? So even though, even if you don't hire us, you've got value here. Looking at whatever surface-level technology we could, assessing their current CMS if they had one, page speed, rankings, user logins, accessibility stuff. If you push into e-commerce, what does that look like in terms of SKUs, hosting, a whole bunch of different things, right? You know, people would often kick back, ah, that's like too expensive. There's no budget for extra. Like we just want to roll this in. And that's fine. That's what we would do. We would roll it in. But what we wanted say was, we can build this for you now, especially if you're unsure of spending all that money. And we'll discount it. Like if you sign today, we discount that thousand. But if you come back to us in six months, like things could change. But then you could also take this plan to somebody else. ([Time 0:11:11](https://share.snipd.com/snip/95e38f62-822c-4282-a52e-b2cbb9c02ef4)) - **Paid Discovery's Ongoing Challenge** - Despite advances in AI, such as clients bringing AI-generated briefs, paid discovery remains a key unresolved challenge for agencies. - Understanding how paid discovery is evolving in 2025 is crucial for agency success and client communication. Transcript: Matt Paid discovery calls that is? Is that something that you're not doing? You've never heard of it? You've tried it with few success? Little success? Are things different in 2025? Where now maybe your customer's coming to you and said, hey, I asked ChatGPT to roll out a plan to execute on my website. Here's the outline it gave me based on my business needs and my customers. This is the outline I have prepared for you to roll with. How different is it these days when you bring up the topic of paid discovery? And if I can get this gentleman on the podcast, again, I'm sure we'll have that discussion. But until then, yeah, I just want to know, like, if that's a real issue in your success. And if it's not that, then what is it? What else is really holding you back on the agency stuff? And I know you're probably going to say, like, well, more business, more clients. That's always a thing and um maybe that's for another episode uh yeah i don't i i'm in the same boat as you right with sponsorship and more members to the wp minute uh membership is there's No surefire way to get more customers, though I'm sure the real aggressive marketers will tell you paid ads, have something to sell, have an offer, And then push that out on ads makes Total sense. But as you know, like I am not, I'm not an ads guy. I'm not a, I'm not a very strategic guy other than putting out as much content as I possibly can, building up a reputation and brand and building trust through podcasts like this and videos And newsletters everything else that we do is like really just trying to take an honest approach to informing educating and entertaining WordPress professionals that's my secret Sauce that's how I approach it so let me know what the number one issue you have right now with running your agency. ([Time 0:15:10](https://share.snipd.com/snip/0863429f-4506-4769-a2b2-30dab0594cc6))