How I Sold My First Premium Package… By Accident
Almost by accident, I created and sold my first £5k package.
When I first started out working for myself six years ago, I was pretty much thrown into it by needing to earn money when my mat leave came to an end – but returning to my charity role wasn’t a financially viable option when the cost of full time childcare was thrown into the mix 🙈
So I sat down and took a long hard look at the best way to bring in income fast – and chose to start offering my services as a freelance consultant, doing what I’d done in my in-house role; fundraising and business development for small charities.
Fresh out of the world of work, I had lots of contacts (hello LinkedIn!) so I let everyone know what I was now doing. Enquiries came in, and most would start the conversation with an email, typically asking “what’s your day rate?”.
Thankfully, I had chosen a decent one at the top-end of the market I was in, purely because a mentor told me to (crazy I know, but that’s all it took for me to double my rates – someone I hugely respected, told me to!).
So within a few months of launching myself into self-employment, I was back up on my feet, matching the salary from my old day-job in just half a dozen days or so of work a month, working from home, able to lean on flexible childcare options when I needed them.
That was all great, for a while. But I was still selling my time for money at this point, and had basically created myself a (pretty cushty) ‘job’.
Reality was: I was still tied to my desk on certain days, and felt compelled to diligently log all my hours for clients. I knew I wanted more flexibility, but wasn’t sure what to do about it.
Then one day, I had a long call with a lovely new contact who wasn’t sure what her organisation needed – so I created a proposal which laid out EVERYTHING I could offer, for them to ‘pick and choose’ from, like a menu of options.
They chose… all of it.
And that was it. My first £5k package was born.
I realised if one contact wanted it, others may too – so I began presenting this package as the standard way I worked with clients (each time tweaked or tailored ever-so-slightly, to fit their needs) and more and more people went for it, or a very close version of it. I had managed to turn my service into a process that I could sell to clients, by focusing on the bigger outcome of what they went away with – rather than the detail of what they were paying me to do, day-by-day.
I had just a small handful of clients, and was making way more than I had been – with much less time spent on marketing and finding new prospects. And no more time-logging or clock-watching, either: as long as I sent over the project deliverables, everyone was happy, regardless of hours spent working.
Even better – word of mouth took off, and referrals started coming in too. Not by magic I might add 😌 as there’s plenty I did to encourage that kind of helpful referral.
This could have been such a different picture, if I had just continued that knee-jerk response of pitching my day rate to prospects, rather than diving into what they really needed.
So now, when people approach by saying “how much do you charge for X?” – my answer would always be, “tell me – what do you need?”.
You never know where that question will lead.
And if you want to be way more proactive about designing your own personal high-value package for clients – that could be as a newbie Coach or Therapist offering 1:1 services to clients, as a Consultant or Expert wanting to pitch to businesses for contracts or as a Creative wanting to stop juggling tonnes of tiny design jobs – my new group programme Profitable Packages will be totally up your street.
Together with a small group of other women in business just like you, we’ll figure out how you can create a high-value solution to offer to your prospects, so you can move from charging by the day or hour to selling premium packages, instead.
If you’re curious how this could look in your business, book in for a free 30-min Profit Potential Consultation Call, and I’ll help you figure out if moving from hourly or day rates to serving clients via packages could work for you.
