Ditching Hourly 023: Converting Hourly Clients To Value Pricing

Hello! and Welcome to Ditching Hourly. I'm Jonathan Stark.

Today, I'm going to talk about how to transition your existing hourly clients over to value pricing.

It's wicked hard
- They don't think of you the way you want them to
- It'd kind of like being in the friend zone
- Probably easier to find new clients who don't have you pigeonholed in the wrong place
- BUT if you love the client or whatever, and want to give it a try, here are some tactics for you
Quietly lay the ground work while still billing hourly
- Try to gain more access to business people (e.g., founder, president, ceo, sales director) vs tech people (dev lead, dev manager, project manager, cto, even cio)
- Start probing for business cases behind specific requests
- Politely offer alternative solution when they occur to you
Wait for an opportunity to quote a new chunk of work
- Pull your business contacts into the "scope" meeting
- Have a Why Conversation to get at the desired business outcomes
- Present a proposal with both and hourly estimate and a fixed price
What you SHOULD NOT do:
- Don't barge into their office a say "so, we're going to do value pricing from now on!"
- Don't try to explain what value pricing even is
- How you price is none of their business
- But if they ask, say "based on past experience with this sort of thing"

That's it for today. I'm JS and this is Ditching Hourly. Thanks for listening.

The next time someone asks you for your hourly rate, this is what you should say: "I don't have one." To learn what to say next, visit http://valuepricingbootcamp.com to signup for my free email course. Again, that url is: http://valuepricingbootcamp.com

The next time a client asks you to justify an entry on your timesheet, go to http://valuepricingbootcamp.com to signup for my free email course. Again, that url is: http://valuepricingbootcamp.com

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Do you have questions about how to improve your business?

Things like:

Value pricing your work instead of billing for your time?
Positioning yourself as the go-to person in your space?
Productizing your services so you never have to have another awkward sales call or spend hours writing another custom proposal?

Book a one-on-one coaching call with me and get answers to these questions and others in the time it takes to get ready for work in the morning.

Best of all, you're covered by my 100% satisfaction guarantee. If at the end of the call, you don't feel like it was worth it, just say the word, and I'll refund your purchase in full.

To book your one-on-one coaching call, go to:

https://jonathanstark.com/call

I hope to see you there!

Creators & Guests

Host

Jonathan Stark

The Ditching Hourly Guy • Author of Hourly Billing Is Nuts • Former software developer on a mission to rid the world of hourly building

What is Ditching Hourly?

For experts who want to make more and work less without hiring.