Weekly Bookmarks (2/5/12)
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A List Apart: Articles: Pricing Strategy for Creatives
Although this is geared towards web developers rather than instructional designers, this could apply to our field as well.
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Beginning relationships with customers at a high price makes the statement: “we’re good at what we do and we know it.” Fighting with a competitor over a low price says “I’m uncertain about my abilities, so I’ll take what I can get.”
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Price by the service, not by the hour.
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Slow down your sales process. Slow down how, when, and who you take on as clients. You need time to determine a client’s needs before you price their projects. You must know what outcomes they desire.
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Inject value into your client’s experience with your service.
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Establish a client intake process
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Here are three things you can do now to get started on your journey toward strategic pricing:
- Develop your new client intake process, similar to the example above. Add the various steps that you feel are valuable and walk your clients through it BEFORE you begin your work.
- Begin offering three options to all of your work. And always include things in your options the client did NOT ask for. When you start selling things your client didn’t ask for, you will be surprised at how many clients choose the higher options. You will make more money and the client will get more of what they want.
- Test your pricing, but don’t benchmark! To know what your market will bear, begin pricing higher than you have been in the past just to test your market. And avoid benchmarking—which is the process of looking at what your market or direct competitors price their services at. Remember, your competition may be pricing non-strategically as well. Don’t follow the blind. Strategic pricers don’t follow, they lead!
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The problem with virtual training: instructional design, not distance — Online Collaboration
Interview with Janet Clarey responding to an article claiming you shouldn’t even bother trying to do new hire orientation training virtually. As expected, Janet provides a thoughtful rebuttal, explaining that the problem with bad virtual training is that it’s poorly designed, not that the technology is failing.
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Rubrics for assessing assignments, including wiki, blog, twitter, online discussions, and more. From UW-Stout by Karen Franker and others