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The Story of My Pricing Journey with Carrie Dils

The Story of My Pricing Journey with Carrie Dils – 054

July 21, 2015 by Kirk Bowman Leave a Comment

Carrie Dils is a WordPress developer and business consultant, a recommended Genesis developer by StudioPress, and an author of WordPress training courses at Lynda.com. Personally, she is a lover of rescue dogs and a craft beer connoisseur.

http://traffic.libsyn.com/artofvalue/054-The-Story-of-My-Pricing-Journey.mp3

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Getting Started in Web Development

  • What is the most important thing you can share about pricing?
    • Every time she has raised her rates, she has increased the quality of her customers.
    • By charging higher rates, she attracts a different kind of customer – one who values her as a consultant, not just a technologist.
    • People who are at lower price points tend to not value the business side.
    • They are not looking for a business solution; they are looking for the lowest price to execute a specific task.
  • Can an NDA have a negative impact on the customer relationship?
    • An NDA can start off with an adversarial relationship with the customer.
    • Requiring an NDA demonstrates a lack of trust.
    • You cannot create high value if there is not trust.
    • The spirit behind asking for an upfront NDA is the equivalent to asking for a prenup before you go on a first date.
  • How did you get started as a web developer?
    • After college, she only knew graphic design and a little HTML.
    • She was a freelancer and worked on banner ads for KLTY in the late 90s.
    • Carrie did not like cubicles and left the corporate world behind, thinking she would start her own coffee shop.
    • She learned she did not want to open a coffee shop after working as a barista at Starbucks.
    • From there, she started freelancing as a web developer.

Pricing for the Web Developer

  • How did you price projects when you were getting started?
    • Initially, she was at a loss for how to charge.
    • She threw a number out there – $50/hour.
    • If no one tells you that you are too expensive, then you are not charging enough.
    • She pushed her hourly rate upward until people said she was too expensive.
    • The frustration of running out of time inspired her to search for another possibility rather than billing by the hour.
    • She moved to a flat-fee quote.
    • She is dipping her toes into the area of value pricing.
  • What were the advantages and disadvantages of quoting a fixed price?
    • “Scope” can be a scary word.
    • If you guess what a project will take and quote based on that, without digging into the scope, you can lose.
    • When you scope a project up front (discovery, road mapping, needs analysis), your customer can invest at a lower dollar amount.
    • At the end, the customer gets a document of what the core issues are and what the goals/outcomes need to be.
    • The document is educational and enlightening to the customer.
    • There is a comfort factor by starting that way so that the customer trusts you.
  • What is the difference between recommending a solution vs. technology?
    • If you are talking about what to develop, they will tend to go toward technology.
    • If you are talking about why, they will tend to go toward a solution.
    • Curtis McCale shared his initial prospect email with Carrie, that has three simple questions:
      • Why now?
      • What does success look like?
      • What is your budget?
    • Those three questions allow your customer to think more critically about his project.
    • From a comfort standpoint, it is a benefit to your customer to believe that they are not locked into the entire process with the consultant.
    • Due to purchasing requirements, the customer has to send out an RFP and can use your road mapping document to do so.
    • The IT Smile Curve by Ed Kless demonstrates that road mapping and delivery are where the value of a project is.
  • Where are you succeeding in your value pricing journey?
    • She is doing a good job with consulting:
      • Asking good questions.
      • Engaging in great conversations.
    • She is struggling with connecting the dots between the value from the consulting and the price being charged for the product.
    • She has pushed her numbers on the fixed price, but she is not basing her price on what value the project delivers.
    • She sees her journey as an evolution and appreciates that it does not have to be all-or-nothing.
    • Curtis used a weekly billing rate for a while and Carrie tried it out. It caused unnecessary anxiety for the customer.
    • You have to try things out, experiment and see what works.
    • Ed Gandia was also value pricing and did not realize it.
    • The History of the Billable Hour is an eye-opening episode, to realize from where the practice came.

Adding Value Through Accessibility

  • How did you land your training gig with Lynda.com?
    • When she left Starbucks, her dad bought her a subscription to Lynda.com for her birthday.
    • She learned WordPress from Morten Rand-Hendriksen.
    • In 2013, she was at WordCamp (community event for WordPress “nerds”) and met Morten.
    • Several months later, Morten recommended her to Lynda.com.
  • What is the value of accessibility to a website owner?
    • Web accessibility is the idea that your content is accessible to anyone, regardless of the device being used to access the content.
    • You enable more people to consume your content and provide a greater opportunity to reach the customer.
    • Some people believe that web content should be more accessible because it is the right thing to do.
    • However, the business case for web accessibility is that you have a more cutting-edge website.
    • A website that looks good on a mobile device is given priority over sites that are not on Google.
    • US government sites, as well as other countries, require accessibility.
    • For example, inserting the image ALT tag for screen readers provides an alternate description of the image.
    • Podcasts without transcripts prohibit the deaf from getting your content.
    • The business benefit is that Google likes transcriptions.
  • What is one of your best stories about creating value for a customer?
    • Carrie enjoys maximizing impact by doing something that can be used repetitively to be helpful, like her episodes on Lynda.com.
    • They continue to deliver value to people's lives, despite being a one-time investment on her part.
    • The lasting value has been personally fulfilling to Carrie.

About Carrie Dils

  • Website: CarrieDils.com
  • Podcast: OfficeHours.FM (Thursdays at 2pm EST)
  • Twitter: @cdils

Filed Under: Episodes, Software, Switching, WordPress Tagged With: Freelancing, Web development, WordPress

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