Service packages take the flat fee pricing strategy a little further and up the perceived value by combining your service with other relevant services and/or products–usually for a bit of a discount.
Packages also allow you to give prospects several options to choose from instead of just one–which means they’re much more likely to buy because you’ve doubled or tripled the odds of finding one that suits their budget.
Pros of the Service Packages Approach
- Earning more revenue per client, as they pay more than they would have for just the service
- Little to no learning curve with the additional projects in the package, so they should take less time than the same project with a new client
- You become more of an advisor to them, instead of “just” a writer/designer/coach or whatnot
- No debate over minutia like number of hours or hourly rate—just one total number, which is all they ultimately care about anyway
- They’ll get better results by having more of a total solution to their problem, and be more likely to hire you again and recommend you to others
- Potential to set you apart from your competitors, who offer piecemeal solutions
- No surprises at invoice time since both of you know how much they’ll be paying from the start
- If you spend too much time on one project in the package, you may be able to make up for it by spending less on another
- Estimating becomes much faster and easier, especially if you develop a rate sheet for frequent projects
Cons
- It’ll take a little more time initially to develop your packages
- You’ll end up “eating” the extra hours if you underestimate the time it’ll take for all included projects
- You may need to sharpen your skills at defining the scope of the project to make it crystal clear what is and isn’t included, so you avoid the sting of “scope creep”
So what should you include in your packages? Consider any add-on product or service that complements what they’re hiring you for. Especially ones that won’t take much of your time– such as an information product, critiques, access to calls you’re doing anyway and email access to you (which most will rarely take advantage of).
All of these can significantly boost the value of the package to your client without chaining you to your desk for more work.
Another tip…only offer two or three packages per service–any more than that will make them procrastinate about buying. And if you create three options, be sure to put the option you want most people to buy in the middle, because that’s the one prospects naturally gravitate toward.
Now that we’ve discussed service packages as a pricing strategy, we’ll cover two more ways to escape the dollars-for-hours noose.
Photo was taken by MarcinMoga/Lolek and posted on Flickr under a Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic license.
