Trapped in the sad world of hourly billing, spec work, and scope creep? Productized consulting is the perfect way to level up your design practice.
It enables you to finally set your own rules for client work, eliminate proposals, and increase your monthly revenue.
We invited Jane Portman, the UI/UX designer behind UI Breakfast, to talk about how—and why—productized consulting works, and 6 steps to follow when setting up your first product.
Watch Jane’s full talk below, or read on for our short recap.
Step 1: Understand the benefits of productized consulting
Jane began by asking us to put ourselves in our client’s shoes and discussed the reasons why clients might be fearful of hiring designers. They might be unsure of the cost. They might be afraid that the project’s scope will spin out of control. They might be unsure of whether you know what you’re doing.
So, as empathetic designers, it’s important to design your productized consulting offers with that in mind. Set up a fixed price and specific scope of your work. Describe the benefits of your product, and enforce those with social proof by including quotes from past clients. Get into detail describing the process and your deliverables.
“Productized consulting enables you to finally set your own rules for client work.”
Those are the benefits of productized consulting for your clients, but what are the benefits for you? First, it makes you easy to hire. It also completely eliminates the need for you to create proposals. Setting these rules shifts the power of balance from you being just a freelancer/hired hand to you becoming a consultant bringing value to the business.
For Jane’s 5 other steps to set up your first product, watch the video above!
Margaret Kelsey leads content marketing at Appcues. Before Appcues, she built content programs for InVision’s design community for 3.5 years and has roots in painting and PR. She’s a big fan of puns, Blackbird Donuts, and Oxford commas—probably in that order.
