Brennan Dunn started as a freelancer and grew his business into a 10+ person agency. He then decided to create software for himself, rather than others with Planscope.io. Additionally, he has created a variety of teaching tools for pricing and lead generation at DoubleYourFreelancing.com.
Podcast: Download
Positioning With Care
- What is the most important thing you can share about pricing?
- It's not about you. It's about the customer.
- When it comes to pricing yourself, most people tend to think about what we need by converting salary into an hourly rate.
- We underestimate the surplus of value we bring to our customers.
- People look at themselves as a commoditized provider.
- What is the first thing you must address to increase prices?
- Rewire what you think you provide.
- Why are people paying you in the first place?
- Until you understand what your clients want, you cannot escape the pull of commoditizing your service.
- Dig deeper to understand how to provide the best product and not limit yourself.
- What is wrong with using the word “freelancer” to describe yourself?
- Freelancer describes a negative working relationship.
- You are describing the legal form of your business.
- There is no description of what someone is getting.
- Why should you be hired if you are providing the same thing?
- Describe and position yourself with care.
Why vs. What
- Why is it hard for a professional to talk about “why” instead of “what”?
- Imposter syndrome: We are comfortable with what we do. Going beyond that can be stepping into unknown areas.
- Personal vanity: We are very prideful of how good we are at what we do.
- Sell in terms of what the customer wants instead of what you provide.
- How can you take the first step to talk about “why” instead of “what”?
- The initial conversation is where you start.
- Don't dive into the requirements of what is needed; find out what the customer really wants.
- Listen to what the customer wants, but then find out what prompted the customer to decide on that.
- “Why are you firing your website?”
- Strip away the layers of the surface assumptions to get down to solving the business problem.
- Determine what tomorrow looks like to the customer.
- What is one of your favorite questions to ask during a value conversation?
- How financially painful is the situation?
- Present non-disclosure agreement to customer early in the process to prevent objections.
- Only work on projects where you can deliver a return on investment.
Minimizing Risk
- Do you encounter resistance to signing a master services agreement early?
- The master services agreement doesn't mean they are paying anything yet.
- It mentions that neither party can poach employees.
- Payment information is included, but the non-disclosure portion is really what is about.
- Allows the provider to lead the sales process.
- Offering a niche service, provides you a higher likelihood of winning the project since you are lowering risk.
- Is it risky to ask questions that go deep in the value conversation?
- Taking an active interest in the customer's business is not objectionable.
- When you understand the why behind the project, what you create will be more focused.
- Client means “to protect”, so look at it as though you are protecting them.
- Why is it important to discuss the financial outcome of the project?
- You are guessing in the dark if you don't know.
- Projections are still part of it, but the confidence of direction helps you hit the target.
- Understand how the needs intersect the technology.
- What did you mean when you said, “I am not a huge fan of value pricing”?
- Providing the exact cost to the customer is a challenge when trying to predict where a customer will be 6 months.
- Brennan figures out the value of the project and the anchors the value of the customer's tomorrow vs. cost.
- It is lower risk for him to have a weekly rate, higher than market rates, but it is anchored vs. cost.
- Weigh tomorrow against the costs of today as a way to win the project.
Offering Options
- Why are options a good tool to use in a proposal for a customer?
- You compete against yourself.
- When you understand what tomorrow needs to look like for the customer, you can determine pathways that get you part of the way there, half way there or all the way there.
- Let the customer self-select.
- Comparative price anchoring.
- What is one of your favorite ways to offer options?
- Provide what they asked for (rewrite existing solution).
- Fix the workflow of the existing solution (long-term value).
- Increase productivity equal to a full-time employee (higher return).
- How do you respond when a customer objects to paying for discovery?
- Provide a deliverable at the end of the discovery process. (Wire frames, written report, etc.)
- The report is portable to another provider if desired.
- The report is the proposal.
- By the time the proposal is presented, they are already a customer.
- Giving away the road mapping or discovery hurts your positioning.
- What is one of your best stories about creating value for a customer?
- Helped company optimize by not doing only what they were told.
- Offering an option to fix the workflow gave the customer exponentially better results.
- You have to understand the value you bring to your customers.
- They got better results because they paid Brennan more money.
About Brennan Dunn
- Software developer and former agency owner
- Creator of Planscope.io, project management software
- Author of free pricing course – DoubleYourFreelancing.com/ChargeMore
- Twitter: @BrennanDunn
Leave a Reply