If you’re a small business owner, it’s likely you have a package or a series of packages you offer to your prospective clients. At With Grace and Gold, for example, we offer just one package — one Experience — to our prospective clients. 

Summed up, our Experience includes both brand design and web design — and over the years, we’ve used our knowledge and expertise to determine which details are worth including in our Experience. 

It’s likely you’ve done the same with your packages — your years of experience and expertise have helped you to determine the precise details and deliverables best designed to help your clients succeed.

This week, we’re going to share the risk of breaking apart your packages — removing certain aspects of your package or process — when a prospective client has asked you to do so. Our approach may sound unconventional, so we’re excited to share more about why we believe your packages should remain the way you’ve so carefully and so thoughtfully designed them to be.

The Risk of Breaking Apart Your Packages

Like many episodes, I always like to say: Every small business is unique and will have a unique approach to the scenario I share about today. Over the course of our 8+ years in business, we’ve simply found the following approach better guarantees our clients’ success… which is why today’s topic is so meaningful to us! 

The scenario goes something like this: A prospective client inquires with you about your signature Experience — your most-booked, most popular package. Like all of your packages, your signature Experience has been designed with a great deal of care. It reflects your expertise, your knowledge, and your experience — creating an elevated, comprehensive, and seamless process for your clients. You know how meaningful each and every detail of your Experience is, from the way you on-board your clients, to the service you provide along the way, to the way you set your clients up for success at the end of their Experience. Every detail matters, equips you for success while you serve your clients, and also ensures your clients will be set up for success, too!

Rather than pursuing every detail of your Experience as designed, your prospective client shares that they’d like just a few deliverables from your Experience rather than all of the deliverables from your Experience. Maybe they don’t see value in having an on-boarding meeting, maybe they don’t want all of the deliverables you provide, or maybe they want your process to be completed sooner than designed.

At With Grace and Gold, we choose to offer our Experience only as it has been designed — because we know how much each step and each deliverable matters for our clients’ overall success. We believe, breaking down or breaking apart your Experience can be really risky, and here are 3 important reasons why:

1. Breaking down your package can make quoting more challenging. Maybe your package is one Investment only. Rather than breaking down the Investment for each detail of your package, you’ve created one complete, comprehensive package, at one price. As an example, if your package includes a questionnaire, meeting, and service, it’s likely you don’t have an individual Investment in mind for the questionnaire, an Investment for the meeting, and an Investment for the service. Therefore, being asked to break down your package can make quoting more challenging to do.
2. Removing details from your package may have a domino effect and change your process overall. If you run a design business, as an example, it’s likely your step by step process has been tried and tested. Say, for example, a few elements of your design process were to be removed — such as the Brand Strategy portion of your process. Removing even one element from your package would change your process overall — perhaps impacting all of the steps to follow. 
3. Removing details from your package may not guarantee your clients’ success the way your package would as designed. As the owner of your business and an expert in your field, you know how essential each component of your packages are — and how they all add up to equip your clients for success. If details of your package were to be removed, you simply wouldn’t be able to guarantee your clients success in the same way you would have, had you been able to include every essential detail of your package.

Again, every small business is unique. Perhaps your packages or your signature Experience has more room to vary from client to client. Perhaps you offer a more tailored approach to your package design. In the end, we’re hopeful today’s episode serves as a helpful reminder to remain confident in your expertise and in the way you’ve so thoughtfully designed your packages. Or, if you’re a prospective client, we hope today’s episode encourages you to trust the experts you inquire with; it’s likely each detail of their Experience has been designed with care and purpose. 

About Brand It, Build It Podcast, Hosted by Kelly Zugay

Hosted by Kelly Zugay, co-founder of With Grace and Gold, The Brand It, Build It Podcast is a leading small business marketing podcast for small business owners, creatives, and founders. Weekly, brief, actionable episodes will equip you to build a successful, sustainable small business.