Bundling is a function of fear. How many times have you seen offerings by creative businesses that are a mile long? I have seen far too many photographers, planners, designers (graphic, interior and event) have up to seven, yes seven, different “packages” for their services. Forget that I loathe the word “package” for creative businesses and that they all look, sound and feel the same (read: boring). How is a client to discern what the real value a creative business is offering if it is buried as one item in a series of packages?
An apt analogy: you are asking your potential client to buy a rock with the faith that it has gold in it. You figure the bigger the rock they get, the more likely they will believe that there will be gold inside. And as competition grows, you continue to offer a bigger rock. Then again, so does everybody else. The result is that everyone offers a boulder that, of course, completely obscures whatever gold is in there. No, you are not offering more gold. The gold is the intrinsic value of your art and what it represents to your potential clients. It is not the stuff you do to support that value.
Offering the bigger boulder is also arrogant. You are asking your potential clients to extract the gold for themselves instead of doing the work to make it front and center for them to appreciate (or not). Even more, you ask your potential client to define their gold for you and to presume that their gold and yours are the same. As yours is buried in the boulder of services, you ask them to intuit that you do what they care about. Then, when they do hire you, is it a mystery why they are underwhelmed when you technically do everything you said you would but not focus on what might be most important to them?
But delineating what you believe to be your gold and making that the fabric of your creative business is risky. By definition, it means you are right for some but not for others. You will be excluding those who might have bought the boulder, but not the gold alone. Then again, you assume those clients are free when they are not. There is a huge price you pay for having the wrong client, almost always more than they are paying you. The fear comes in putting yourself out there and having no one respond. To which I would say, that is the price of admission for owning a creative business.
The irony is is that the larger the boulder, the less leverage you have to grow your creative business. Unless you are WalMart, serving everyone serves no one. Better to separate and price each element of what you believe is most valuable about you, your art and your creative business. From there, you can go anywhere.
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Thank you, Sean! It is so easy to fall into that trap, and so frightening to get out, but so worth it! Great post and awesome timing!
I completely agree – The more you make available to your potential clients, the more they can be overwhelemed with paralysis by analysis. Keep things simple and upfront – it’s a lot less to keep track of and vendors love that they only need to decide between A and B.
As always timely & so effective to where my business is going! Thanks Sean!
I think we inspired this post??? 🙂
We are working on it Sean !
I struggle with packages. Clients do not have the tools to navigate them…nor the interest; and what ends up selling is the easiest, most pared down, and therefore most boring/digestable one. It is risky to name your one service and your one price…and it will define you and the decisions you make as a creative business person. It’s so complicated (and fun!!!). Food for thought, as usual. Thanks Sean!
one more thought/question…don’t clients like package options? even high end car dealerships and new fancy homes have options that a client can upgrade??
we have clients asking for packages all the time. i guess what they are looking for is a bottom line price, but even the most flexible package end up changing to suit the customer. it really is better to just focus on what they think is most important and work from there.
Thanks Sean! quality post!
Thank you for the post, Sean. Yes, it’s been terrifying putting ourselves out there and not looking remotely like “the other guy.” But, as you have promised, we are now attracting prospective clients who are an appropriate fit. We are receiving fewer inquiries from those that are not a good fit. This has actually freed up time for us and allowed us to focus more on what it is that makes us different. Uncomfortable at first, but now I understand that there is no other way for us to succeed.
It took us a while to learn this, but yes. We will give a discount on the overall service if a client uses us for more than one service, but bundles not only cheapen your overall product by devaluing the work off the bat, it also means you will probably be so overwhelmed with work that the finished product will suffer as well.
“Serving everyone serves noone” — this resonates with me alot. I have been tempted to offer a bigger set of products but find that we lose our identity as we do it.