Captain’s log, stardate 20190108

Success story from reader Jeff Jenkinson

Sent by Jonathan Stark on January 9th, 2019

List member Jeff Jenkinson sent in this success story about guarantees and value pricing (shared with permission, emphasis mine):

Hi Jonathan,

I thought I would share an experience with you because I think it fits in with what you are talking about. I freelance a bit, not full-time and I have a lot of small retainers and other garbage on my books that would make you sad but I decided to test the waters with a new client and pitch a value based proposal.

I started with a call to the client to figure out what they wanted. It was a simple marketing website: she stressed: “I want it to be fast, and I want it to work properly” ie no bugs plz. Simple, measurable outcomes that I could definitely achieve. After that I sent her 3 options with escalating price and value. I wanted her to take the middle option, so that option included a bug free guarantee and a promise to fix any latent issues on the site for the first 12 months.

To my delight, she went for it. She even confessed that it was 30% over her initial budget. I know for sure that it was the guarantee that sealed the deal. There was a little creep in the initial design stage but since the money was good it didn’t bother me. Also nice to note, the site has been live for 6 months and I have not had a single call to fix a bug yet so the guarantee has yet to cost me anything.

I am acutely aware that this would not have worked on all prospective clients. But isn’t that the point? She was an ideal client for me. We both had a clear understanding of her expectations, I had confidence that I could meet them and as a result the project was a pleasure for both of us. Clients that don’t know what they want or are not willing to pay a bit extra for higher quality are not who I want to work with anyway.

—Jeff

Tons of great stuff here! Thanks for sharing, Jeff.

Yours,

—J