Why You Should Be Offering Guarantees
Hello and welcome to Ditching Hourly. I'm Jonathan Stark. Today I'm going to talk about offering guarantees. One of the tactics I advocate for increasing your fees is to offer some sort of guarantee. This typically horrifies developers. They immediately have visions of an unreasonable client demanding a 100% refund after six months of work or something like that. Still, I think you should consider offering guarantees. And here's the thing. You probably already guarantee your work. Ask yourself this. Have you ever eaten an hour to satisfy a disgruntled client? Or have you ever done some work for free because you screwed something up? Or have you ever issued a refund because you ended up being a bad fit for a client? If you answered yes to any of these, then you already are guaranteeing your work, you're just not explicitly stating it upfront. So why not make the guarantee explicit instead of implicit if you're already doing it? How and when to offer guarantees for the kinds of work that software developers typically do is a touchy subject. Over the years, I've offered different sorts of guarantees for different sorts of products and services. The type I choose in a given situation depends on a few different factors. Things like the type of product or service, the level of risk involved in delivering the product or service, and the overall scope of work, usually measured in a timeline, like days, weeks, months. So I'll give you a few examples. Software projects are something I take case by case, but usually my guarantee is along the lines of, I'll keep working until we've reached the stated goals, or if at any point in the next 12 months a bug crops up, I'll fix it for free, those sorts of things. Rather than something like, I'll refund your money for the entire project if you're unsatisfied for any reason. That would be ridiculous, of course. Now something like a monthly retainer, where a client is paying you every month for access to your expertise and advice, for something like that, I offer a full refund at any time during the first month, just to make sure we're a good fit, but after that, no refunds. For something like a private speaking gig, I do not offer refunds, even if the client cancels before the event, but they are allowed to reschedule at no charge. And something like training classes, that might be something you offer, I don't give refunds for those, but I do allow students to retake them for free. For something like a productized service, which is a fixed scope piece of work that I can do pretty quickly, I'd offer a 100% money-back guarantee on the sales page for it. So for something like a half day of SQL performance tuning, I'd offer a 100% money-back guarantee if the client was unhappy with the outcome. I see this as kind of analogous to, you know, this example as analogous to bringing my car into a mechanic to have it tuned up. You know, if I'm driving home and the car is still running rough, I'd expect them to either redo the work or give me my money back. Seems totally reasonable when you're the buyer, but when you flip it around and you're the seller, it can be a little scary. But that's the key point about guarantees. Explicitly stating upfront how you'll make things right, if they go wrong, will differentiate you from the vast majority of your competitors. And remember, if you can't differentiate yourself from your competitors, you'll end up competing on price, because that'll be the only thing that the clients will understand about what's different between you and, you know, your competitor. That's it for today. I'm Jonathan Stark, and this is Ditching Hourly. Thanks for listening. The next time somebody asks you for your hourly rate, tell them you don't have one. To learn what to say next, visit valuepricingbootcamp.com to sign up for my free email course. Again, that website is valuepricingbootcamp.com. 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.
Creators and Guests
