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