Ditching Hourly

Hello and welcome to Ditching Hourly. I'm Jonathan Stark. Today I've got an audio excerpt from an answer I provided on my YouTube channel. You can check it out at thejonathanstarkshow.com and it'll redirect you to YouTube if you're into watching videos. Otherwise, you can just listen to the audio here on the podcast. Enjoy. Hey, Jonathan here. I've got a question from Ashwin who asks, sort of a long one, I'm going to read just the key part. If I'm doing a productized service of food photography and I'm not promising a scope-related output, aka number of images, what kind of business output can I reliably promise to a client? Is there a way one can calculate the business outcome of a creative service like food photography? I'm currently doing fixed pricing after watching your videos and have definitely seen an increase in my profits, but one thing I still struggle with is the client's opinion about pictures and I currently don't have a way of delivering a business outcome through photography, so I can't handle it the way you seem to for software projects where you price the business outcome. All right, so there's a lot going on here. A couple things. The first thing I can think of is when you do a productized service, which is a fixed scope service that you sell at a fixed price on your website. So for Ashwin's super-duper premium food photography service, it's $1,000, let's say, and people who visit your site or are recommended to your site or however they land on your site, they can take it or leave it. And what's going on there is value is completely subjective. How much is this pen worth to you? It's worth something different to you than it is to me. It's worth a lot to me. So I am gonna pay more for that pen than anybody watching this is probably gonna pay for this pen. It's totally subjective. So if someone gets to the site and they see $1,000 for premium food service photography or platinum or whatever I said, they're gonna decide, is that worth it or not? And that's gonna depend on how they value food photography. It's also gonna be based on how famous you are, how well-known you are, how trusted you are, how much of an authority you are in the space. So maybe that comes from looking at your portfolio. Maybe it's because you've got award-winning work or maybe you've done work for a business that is way ahead of the person who's on your website. So in other words, it's a mom and pop pizza place and you did all the shots for, I don't know, Domino's is my example, but I don't know if they have good food photography. But let's just say that some mom and pop pizza place is thinking about getting professional, they're deciding to finally take the plunge, update their website, they want it to look good, they want the food to look delicious, and you've got this amazing list of clients who they wish they were like. They'd like to see their logo included with this list of other big pizza places or pizza places that they respect, Pizzeria Uno or whatever they're called. So in the case of a productized service, you don't have to talk about the value of the service. They either get it or they don't. That's the beauty of a productized service. It makes the sales process really easy. If you can drive the right kinds of people to the website through word of mouth or an email list or pay-per-click ads or whatever it is, if you, going to in-person meetups or doing trade association speaking gigs or something, and you can get in front of those people, the right people, they're gonna say, a thousand bucks, that's a deal. For photos that look like this or photos that have worked for these big brands that I envy or aspire to be, yeah, we're ready to spend the best. We're making a leap with our business. We're gonna go from one person place to a regional chain or we're gonna go from a regional chain and do a national push. And the last thing we wanna do is skimp on the food photography. So if you find somebody who's in that situation, they look at that price, they're gonna say, wow, it's a no-brainer, no problem. So you don't have to worry about value pricing or necessarily articulating a business outcome from your photography in a case of a productized service. Another way that you can communicate the value in a credible way is to have testimonials from happy customers. So if you've done food photography for somebody else, another pizza place, let's say, and they give you a testimonial like Ashwin's photography transformed our business, we did a site redesign, and we believe that the photography had a huge impact on the increase in online ordering, something like that. Our upsells at checkout doubled as soon as we put the new photos on. So let your customers tell you, your past customers, tell you what they valued, how much they value, what effect, what was the business outcome of the photos. They wouldn't be paying you if they didn't think there was some outcome. There must be something. It's fine if it's totally subjective and totally intangible. That's what most things are. But if they're seeing it in their own words, it becomes persuasive. If you're just saying it and you're writing...

It's a lot less persuasive. So what I'm saying is, another way to increase potentially the value, the perceived value of this particular offering to new prospects or new clients is to have other clients go get testimonials from past clients and say, well, I've got a list of testimonial questions you can ask. The first one is, what doubts did you have about this service in the first place? What reservations did you have about hiring Ashwin? And they can say, well, we were afraid it was going to have no effect. We were afraid we were going to spend a lot of money for a bunch of pictures that did nothing for us. Like, oh, okay, that's a good answer. And then the next question is like, what was the benefit of having this service? And you're working in a very intangible place. It's a very creative place, very sort of art, almost into the art realm. And they will be able to articulate why it mattered to them if they're satisfied. If they're satisfied customers, they will be able to articulate in some weird, squishy way why it mattered to them. And then when new prospects come along and they read that, it's going to resonate or it's not. Okay. Don't have a way of delivering a business outcome through photography. So, okay, so I think I kind of answered both. Look, this stuff is super subjective. But if you've got people who are just super satisfied, if you've got clients who are incredibly satisfied with the output that you've delivered, ask them why. Why was that? Why are you happy? Well, because it has transformed your business. Really, you feel like it transformed the business? Like, what if you just shot these photos yourself? Oh, that's what we did on our last website. And people just like, you know, getting nauseous, just browsing the checkout. So they will be able to tie it together. If they gave you money and they are happy, it means that they got an outcome that was worth more to them than the money they gave you. It's not rocket science. If they gave you $1,000 and they are super happy with the outcome, they will be able to, if you ask them the right questions, they'll be able to articulate why. And that why is going to matter to other people, certain other people who are kind of like that buyer. So you don't have to think hard about it and figure it out. Just ask and they'll be able to tell you. Okay, hope that helped. I am Jonathan Stark. And if you have a question for me, you can hashtag AskJonathan on YouTube, LinkedIn, or Twitter, and we will add it to the queue. See ya. Hey, Jonathan again. The next time someone asks for your hourly rate, I want you to stop what you're doing and go to valuepricingbootcamp.com to sign up for my free value pricing email course. That URL again is valuepricingbootcamp.com. Hope to see you there. Hey, Jonathan again. Do you have questions about how to improve your business? Things like value pricing your work instead of billing for your time, or positioning yourself as the go-to person in your space. Or maybe 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 you 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 jonathanstark.com slash call, C-A-L-L. That URL again is jonathanstark.com slash call. Hope to see you there.