Packaging, Pricing and the Time Continuum

Packaging, pricing and time…

they all seem to be connected at the proverbial hip.

Have you ever read a product or service description…

a squeeze page…

a sales page…

and wonder…

how do they do that?

Packages, Pricing and Time – Oh My!

How did they come up with their packaging structure?

How’d they come up with their prices without using the billable hour?

Have you struggled setting prices?  Have you wanted to use something other than the billable hour?

But you aren’t quite sure how to go about it.  Where to start and afraid of where you will end up…

The Case of What-Ifs

Just the other day, I was talking to a web designer client of mine and he admitted something a little curious to me.

He admitted that after days, weeks, even months of arguing with me that packaging his services into standardized bundles and having pricing presented on his website has made a difference in his business.

He really fought me on it.  With every WHAT-IF scenario possibly known to man.

What if I scare potential clients away?  What if I price things too high?  or *gasp* too low?  What if this doesn’t work?

Well, none of his fears materialized.

Thank goodness.

(I kinda like being right. *smile*)

What To Do, What To Do

So what do YOU do?  What do you do to get away from the hour… and why should you anyway?

First… stop saying “time is money“.  That’s actually a misquote or rather a quote of Benjamin Franklin’s taken out of context.

What he was really talking about was being a good steward of your time and that one should use their time wisely and efficiently. He was not talking about the actual exchange of time for money but I digress.

Back to packaging, pricing, and the time continuum.

I see a ton of folks doing this.  Charging their clients by the hour and killing themselves using time sheets to later invoice them.

STOP!  Stop it. Stop doing that.  Kill your time sheets.  Once and for all.

You really are doing a disservice to yourself and your business… And your bottom line.

Fix What’s Broken, Kill The Timesheet

Admit it.  You’re using the billable hour and your business is utterly broken.

Your focus is in the wrong place.  Both you and your client are focused on a unit of time instead of the value that you have to offer them.

Are you starting to see why I was so determined to convince my web design pal to package his services and price them accordingly???

How To Fix A Broken Business

So how do you fix that?  You put the focus on something else.

Remember those packages we talked about?

I don’t know if you noticed but I was very careful to not mention time or hours or anything remotely like that.

That was not an accident… that was by design.

Remember my web designer friend?  His packages are project based or results based NOT time based.

So in a nutshell… what I want you to do is to take your eye off the hour and put it squarely on something else.

Put it on the project or the results that you deliver.  Concentrate on what matters, the value and the results your offer.

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Have questions or comments?  Let me hear it in the comments below.

Want to learn more about pricing and packaging your products and services for profit?  Join me in The Blueprint: Your Guide To Profitable Pricing & Packaging.