I prepared an email for long-term clients that we’ve talked about.

Going to be honest, it took me almost 2 hours to figure and calculate everything out, haha.

Oh man, that’s too much time! I totally get how long drafting careful emails takes though. If I have a tough client sometimes it can take me like an hour to draft something careful, so I try timeboxing it to constrain the time!
I’ve made some edits to your email, as I’m looking at it from the outside,  I hope you take this as constructive feedback and discard what you don’t feel comfortable with.

After

Hi XXXX,

It’s YYYYY

We’ve been working together for 2 years, I’m so grateful for the opportunity to work with the whole team,
I feel we’ve now reached the point where I intuitively know and understand your needs for YYYY

Which saves a lot of back and forth on briefs and admin etc.
Over the last 2 years my client roster has grown,
I’ve picked up new skills,
but many of my favourite long-term clients are still on outdated legacy rates.

 

I’m going to be moving away from Upwork, to focus on growing my motion design agency.
I plan to continue improving my output to be better than ever, and even offer more services in future.

This means I will be transitioning to retainer packages,
So I’m reaching out to my favourite long-term clients,
To see if you are interested in continuing to work with me.

The way we work together day to day won’t change,
But working on a retainer will mean I spend less time on admin,
So I can spend more time on delivering even better results and value for you.

My new retainer package is going to be a super simple packaged service which includes….

✅ X of explainers
✅ X no of revisions per project
✅ 24hr response time
🎁 Brand new seamless comms system
🎁 Stress-free project management on Clickup

As a solo agency owner, the number of clients in my roster will be limited to X in 2024.
I am reaching out to existing clients first to offer this package at the flat rate of £X/m, as I would love to keep working with you.

I realise this is a change from our current working patterns,
And I really hope we can continue working together under my new package.
Just let me know if you have any questions,

Otherwise can we schedule a call to discuss setting up our new agreement? 🙂🙂🙂

Kind regards, YYY

The best way to do it is by asking some probing questions during the sales call.

This is why sales calls are so important because you’re gathering data. You’re establishing your authority and you’re selling all on a sales call.

I just need to jump into a call, scope out your project, and figure out where they’re a good fit.

If you’re selling digital marketing, it’s pretty easy because you can ask them what’s their revenue what’s their digital marketing budget   If you can’t do that, you have to ask things like,

where do you picture this business in three years?

How many customers do you have a month?

What are the customers worth to you?

In terms of the rule of thumb, have in your head the minimum amount that you want. Make it a number that you’re comfortable with but always have a minimum rate of what you want for that project.

Usually what I do during the sales calls is to preempt that objection This kind of comes back to authority and operating from a position of surplus but that’s why we do these things.

I’m not the cheapest, but I do provide the best value.

If you want to work with me, it might be expensive, but here’s the results we provide.

Show them and obviously, you’ve got to deliver those results.

Value-based pricing only works if you’re delivering value. That’s why value-based pricing always beats hourly pricing.

In a lifestyle business, as a solo business, you only have a certain number of hours in a day.
And if you are working on an hourly based pricing, there’s a very low ceiling to how much money you can make in the number of hours of the day you have.
You can only put your hourly rate up so much.
Or work more hours is the other option, which no one wants to do.
So really, I would encourage you to move to what’s called value-based pricing.

This means you work out your prices based on the value that you deliver, instead of the hours you work on it,
which means that your price is different depending on every client.

You only have a certain number of hours in a day.
And if you are working on an hourly based pricing,
there’s a very low ceiling to how much money you can make in the number of hours of the day you have.
You can only put your hourly rate up so much or working more hours is the other option,
which no one wants to do.

So really I would encourage you to move to what’s called ‘value-based pricing‘.
So if they make more money from that website, you’re providing more value to that customer.
So why would you not charge more?

So that’s where value-based pricing comes in.

Obviously, every service is different, but basically, you need to be working out a way to charge by the value that you’re offering that customer.

The best way to do this is by packaging your services into an offer that sells.

My basic rule of thumb is:

Will the client make money from it, or save time from it?
Then charge for it.

But l’d also say you have to balance it. If it’s something that takes you little extra time, but adds value for your clients, consider throwing it in.
But as a bonus!

Make sure they know what it would normally cost.
I see a lot of freelancers going the extra mile, And no-one even knows how big a deal it is.
It’s likely this “little thing” actually took you years to learn.

But if you want to offer a high ticket service and charge more than your competition you have to get used to giving away the kind of value for free that others are charging for…