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packaging

Don't Sell Hours...Package Them! by Larry Chase

I often hear consultants say they're in the business of selling hours. Quite literally, that's true. But prospects may not necessarily be in the market for buying hours. They may be looking for a report or benchmark study that represents a block of time needed to put that package together.

I used to run an ad in my own Web Digest For Marketers newsletter that sold my hours. I had very few takers. Then I packaged the time differently. I offered a private no-holds-barred review of web sites by phone. Now, people have a picture of how they can take advantage of my available hours.

I call this packaging of time "Service-Packaging." Try it for yourself. Being familiar enough with your target audience (large or small) and meeting a realized niche, speaks volumes to that target audience. You've been there and done that for them already and knew they'd need such a packaged service. This realization that you're a thoughtful vendor speaks to your personal branding, which can otherwise be difficult to define in services when compared to the branding of package goods where the "look and feel" of a physical product can be borne out in shapes and colors.

Thoughtfulness is the branding of many intangible services. When it comes to web sites, good ones are predictive about what you would ask or need at any given point. Rarely do you see this thinking incorporated into web site interfaces. While branding isn't going to be your deal-closer, it certainly is one critical factor that helps get you on the short list in the first place.

In order to bundle your hours up into a package, you first have to figure out what problem this package solves. This forces you to define at least a function, if not an exact target audience. The tighter the focus, the better for relevance of product and efficiency of message distribution. Presumably, you've tested that this need does in fact exist. When you launch this product line, you may try getting some coverage in the respective trade press that heralds its launch (only if seen as truly unique) or some value-add to kick off the launch. Of course, you don't want to have a price-off special as that impugns your long-term value. You may offer an extra service, proprietary content, or access to a special area on your web site.

While it's a good idea to give things away to attract interest and desire for your bundled hours (now called Reviews, Business Therapy Sessions, or what have you), it's important not to give the family farm away. That would not honor the value of your intellectual capital. Instead, try giving something small away, like helpful relevant tips that are emailed every other week. Keep them short. I find that people appreciate brevity since it represents focus and a good use of time. More often than not, consultants send voluminous amounts of information in a single blast of email. I don't like that overwhelmed feeling I get when that consultant's email newsletter prints out to twelve pages of wall-to-wall ascii. Rather, I feel set free when I see something is shorter than expected. In most cases, I really believe "they" want less, which is good news, because it takes less of two very valuable commodities to create that newsletter; namely, your time and money.

Larry Chase is a Net marketing consultant, speaker and author of Essential Business Tactics for the Net. He is editor of the Larry Chase's Web Digest For Marketers, an e-mailed newsletter. Larry can be reached by phone at 212-619-4780 or by e-mail at larry@wdfm.com

Copyright 1999 Larry Chase. All rights reserved.