June 14, 2025

Clients don’t want deliverables

A fellow list member wrote in with a question about AI and how it could potentially devalue their services:

Let’s say I am a freelancer selling SEO services. One of the services I offer is selling SEO-optimized educational blog posts. If the client starts experimenting with AI and notices how easy it is to generate “similar” content, they will assume my costs have decreased and want to renegotiate the price, or attempt to create similar content themselves with the help of AI. So my worry is: This whole AI wave might make it harder to charge the same (current) price for services that do create the same (current) value. How do I approach this?

In the scenario described here, the customer, armed with AI, thinks they can create what they believe to be the same deliverable.

BUT!

The deliverable is not the value.

The effectiveness of the deliverable is where the real value usually lies.

So...

If a prospect asked me:

“Couldn’t I just use AI to do what you do?”

I’d say:

“If you think so, give it a try. I’ll loop back in 3 months and see how effective it was for you.”

Here’s the thing...

Clients don’t want deliverables.

Clients want results.

If they can get results with AI, then yes, you are in trouble.

If they can’t, you aren’t.

Yours,

—J