Why It Makes Sense To Package Your Services In Your Branding Agency
How should you price and package your services when your services are often custom and bespoke and specific to the client you're working with?
Should you even package them when every project is different?
We just had a very lively conversation about packaging and pricing inside the No BS Agencies Mastery Program, and most of my students left saying that they were so excited to package their services and to raise their prices.
Today I’m sharing the same ideas with you in hopes that it will inspire you to package your services and raise your prices.
I’ll go through how custom pricing based on deliverables works against you in two major ways, and how package pricing lets you charge based on your experience, not your time.
I’ll also talk about why package pricing creates an environment where you can do your best work, and how to determine a profitable package price and standard deliverables.
How pricing and packaging works for branding agencies
Let's talk about why packaging services, especially in the branding agency world is so challenging.
First of all, every project probably seems a little different.
Maybe it's the list of deliverables, maybe it's the scope of each deliverable. Every website isn't going to be exactly the same size, and every brand doesn't need exactly the same amount of work.
So it’s really impossible to package that all up into some flat rate pricing, right?
And yet, I would argue that if you are writing custom proposals with custom packages for every single client, not only are you making your life so much more difficult, but you're also not positioning your work in the best light.
What’s the usual way of pricing our services in a proposal?
We make a list of deliverables, then we estimate how long it's going to take and probably multiply that by some sort of hourly rate.
And that's how we end up with the package price at the end, assuming you're not going to just charge hourly.
And then what do the clients do?
Well, if they don't like that number, they start to look at your list of deliverables and they start picking it apart.
They start asking “What if we took this part out? Or what if we didn't need this thing over here?”
And what they usually take out are things that they definitely need - things that they need more than they know.
And things that, if you take them out, you're probably going to end up doing them anyway.
Not only that, but when you estimate the price of your services based on this list of deliverables, you're essentially tying the price that you're charging to the time that it's going to take you to deliver it, which is just another way of charging by the hour.
And when you are charging by the hour, it means that you will always have to work more to make more.
So what do we want? Instead, we want to charge based on value.
There's a famous story they say about Picasso (and you’ve probably heard me share this before.)
One day he was sitting in a cafe with his friend, and a woman came up to him and said, “Oh, my goodness, you're Picasso. Can I have your autograph?” And he said, “I'll do you one better.” And he took out a napkin and a pen. And he did a little doodle. And he handed it to her. And she said, “Oh my goodness, this is amazing.” And he said, “Yes, that'll be $3,000.” And she said, “$3,000? You just doodled that in 10 seconds.” And he said “It took 10 seconds to doodle it. But it took a lifetime to know how and actually become Picasso.”
I want you to remember that, every time you try to tie your work to the time that it's going to take you.
Think about it - what is the experience of learning something? When you first start to do something and you're a novice, it's going to be hard.
And it's going to take you a long time. And as you get better and better at it, you're going to do better work in less time.
So does it make any sense at all, that you would get paid less, the better you became at your craft?
Do you deserve more money or less money?
If an amazing logo takes you 60 hours or one hour - 60 hours because you're new, and one hour because you've done this so many times - then the idea that the price that you would charge is related to how long something's going to take for you to execute is ludicrous.
Especially if you want to be hired as an expert and you want to be seen as an authority on what you do.
Price based on value, not time
So how did we get around this?
We stopped tying our pricing to how long something's going to take.
In fact, we stopped tying our pricing to the list of deliverables and the estimated hours completely.
And one great way to do this is to have packages already set to have standardised pricing.
Why? Because when we have packages, and I like to put those packages on my website, clients can already see how much this is going to cost.
So there's no sticker shock when it actually comes time to pitch them this process in a Lead Product, which is how I like to do it.
Now, you’re right in that every client project is going to be a little bit different, and there's two ways to combat this.
The first is to niche down. The reason I think it's so important to niche is not just because you're going to become an authority on a specific niche and be able to repeat working with that kind of client over and over and over again.
You’ll learn the nuances and the specific things that kind of client is going to need.
And you eventually start to be able to anticipate those client's needs, and that's what makes you such a valuable expert to hire.
But it's also because when you work with a similar kind of client over and over again, and especially a similar size client, the projects are going to be roughly the same size.
Sure, there are going to be details within each project that will be a little different here or there.
In my agency, especially for example, when we do brands and websites, sometimes a client needs more hand done artistic work, and sometimes they need less. Of course, hand done illustrations take more time.
So when you price your packages ahead of time, it doesn't matter if one client will take a little bit longer than another.
It’s OK because you're not pricing your services based on the time - you're pricing it based on the value.
Pricing for profit
When you’re pricing your packages, you’re doing that based on the results and the outcome that the client gets.
As long as those packages are priced such that the project and the client that takes the most time is still profitable for you, then it doesn't matter.
Let me give you an example.
Say I have a main package at $10k that I offer most of my clients.
Perhaps Client A ends up taking 50 hours to complete, and Client B takes 60 hours to complete.
As long as that 60 hour client is still profitable for me, and as long as I feel good about spending 60 hours on a project for $10,000, then that client is profitable. And so is the 50 hour client.
In fact, the 50 hour client is more profitable.
And what it does is it frees me up as the expert to be able to just show up and do my best work, instead of worrying about tit for tat - is this going to take 10 extra hours or not.
As long as the pricing is enough that it covers whatever I'm going to do, it allows me as the creative to just do my best work.
And isn't that what you want?
Do you really want to be doing creative work and worry about the time or worrying about going over or having to charge more or having to have that conversion about charging more for all the revisions?
No, of course not.
We don't want to be thinking about that.
We just want to be freed up to do our best work and deliver our best results.
When you charge based on value, you create that environment for yourself.
But you have to be okay with the fact that you're going to charge a premium price for your services, and that some clients are just going to be more profitable, some clients just aren't going to need all the things.
And that's okay, because your job was not to work a certain number of hours for them. Your job was to deliver an outcome. And if it took you less time, so be it. That is the premium profit that you get, because you are an expert at what you do.
So if you're thinking about packaging your services, and you're wondering how it’s possible to take all these custom services that you deliver and put them into just a couple of flat rates - I want you to think about this.
What does the average project look like?
And what's the high-end and low-end in terms of time that you're going to spend to come up with a price point that covers all of those different variations?
And imagine if you just sold that package, and you sold it whether they needed 10 pages or 12 pages on their site.
You sold it whether they needed a couple of extra, design graphics or not.
Wouldn't that simplify your life? The reason this is so critical for us 1-2 person agencies is because we don't have a lot of bandwidth.
We don't have the time to customise every single pitch.
We are so much better off using that time that you're probably currently wasting, trying to get really specific in the details.
Let's be honest, you never nail it anyway, even when you're very specific about the deliverables and the estimated hours.
It always goes off the rails, if not through the creative work, then through the client management and the back and forth.
So imagine if instead of spending all that time doing all that administrative work, you invested that time in just being seen more as an authority.
So you could attract those clients who are just going to pay $10,000.
And it's not because it's 10 pages, or 12 pages, it's because they want you to deliver the work.
That's it. You're just simplifying the buying process for them, and you're simplifying the administrative part for yourself.
You get paid more, the client has a more seamless and easy experience and everybody wins.
But you have to be confident in yourself to deliver that value, as opposed to being stuck in this mindset of trading dollars for hours.
Because that’s exactly what it is, when you are writing proposals custom to every single client based on deliverables and estimated hours.
It just means you're really, really tied to this idea that they are paying you for your time.
And until you unlock that mindset, you will always be a slave to clients, and to your business because you will always have to work more to get more money.
This is not an easy shift to make, believe me, because we have this conversation inside No BS Agency Mastery regularly.
Even when I share this and you get an aha moment from it, it doesn't necessarily mean that it's sunk in and it changes your habits instantly.
It's the benefit of being part of a community of people who are all working on their mindset and working on their feelings about charging more and more for actually spending less and less time doing the work.
We work on this and so much more when it comes to packaging and pricing your services for freedom inside No BS Agency Mastery.
If that is something that is on your radar, go to nobsagencies.com/program, share a little bit of information about your branding agency and hop on a call with my team and let's see if now is the time for you to level up your game in your agency.
Here’s what you need to get…
Packaging your branding agency services just makes sense. You get to generate profits, cut out all the BS administrative work of customising each and every proposal, and make more money. And it makes your services easy to buy, so it’s a win all around!
P.S. You can always jump on a call with my team if you want to fast-track setting up your packages, and learn all my other tools and strategies to scale up your agency - just go here to get started!