The secret to value pricing for design

Value pricing will only work with some clients because as an industry we have spent far too long selling our services by the hour. We need to accept our legacy clients who have bought design by the hour are going to be hard to shift to a design value pricing model.

That’s why we need to begin by analysing and segmenting our clients to identify where we can sell design value pricing. We then develop a design value proposition for those clients.

Over the past 10 years we have worked with designers to develop hundreds of design value propositions that target clients and lead to value add pitches.

At it’s most basic, most designers want clients to buy from them rather than their competitors. That only happens by understanding why a client buys design in the first place. Not understanding why clients respond is like exploring a new city without a map: results are haphazard, confusing, and inefficient.

That’s where the Design Value Proposition comes in — it’s a roadmap to client wants and needs. It matches those wants and need to your services.

You begin by understanding what value add services you are selling. These are usually based on client outcomes rather than outputs. You then use a client segmentation exercise to examine the clients to see which ones are more likely to buy design value added services.

This video gives an overview of a value proposition. We dive into this in our Business of Design short course where we develop DVPs specifically for your key clients

All of this is done through case studies and interactive sessions in the course. You will go away with an action plan to sell design value.