#013 - Your Trojan Horse

Productize your road mapping process as a new revenue stream and onramp for new clients.

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As freelancers, consultants, and independent contractors, we do a ton of work upfront.

PR pros might have to build a pitch menu before starting outreach.

Content marketers might have to perform a content audit.

Digital marketers may conduct a technical audit.

Those upfront steps are core to setting up a successful engagement outcome.

But because they’re inputs to your process, clients often devalue them.

Here’s a strategy to get paid for that important work up front and close clients faster.

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Step back and look at the process you follow to deliver your core services.

Are there steps at the onset of the engagement that you repeat each time?

What if you spin that out and sell it as a standalone product?

Your road mapping product is your trojan horse for getting into new accounts, your marketing engine, and a new source of revenue.

Here’s an example:

A few years ago, a business needed help with an outsourced marketing program.

But they didn’t know where to start.

Instead of proposing a full engagement, we recommended a ‘marketing capabilities assessment’.

For a relatively small investment, we would audit their brand (positioning, messaging, identity), website, and other elements of their existing go-to-market (PR, content marketing, thought leadership).

The deliverable would be a scorecard that graded each marketing capability and presented observations and recommendations for the next steps.

They signed off on the proposal in 4 days.

20 days later, they had the report in hand.

But what happened next was amazing.

Their Board of Directors returned and asked for help executing the recommendations.

Within 15 days, they had signed on for a monthly engagement at 3X the investment of the initial capabilities assessment.

18 months later, that account had generated billings 54X the amount they invested in the initial assessment.

We sold them the roadmap to be successful, and then they hired us to help them execute it.

Selling your road mapping phase as a product helps because:

1. You get to test out working together.
2. The roadmap project will allow you to understand whether you’re aligned on values and work style.
3. You get in the door by getting them saying ‘yes’.
4. Smaller dollar value investments can often be made quickly and with fewer levels of approval.
5. Selling your roadmap gets you into the account so you can begin to demonstrate value.
6. You get paid for your upfront work
7. Often, the upfront work you know is an important input to your process gets undervalued.
8. By productizing that step, you can get paid in advance for work that has value in its own right.

Limiting Beliefs

Before productizing and selling my roadmap, I had doubts and limiting beliefs.

Limiting Belief 1:

What if they take the roadmap and work with someone else to deliver it?

This is your process. No one can execute on your process the way you can.

You’re best positioned to execute the plan because you already understand their business and the recommendations.

Limiting Belief 2:

What if they take the roadmap and do it themselves?

Some may, but often clients don’t have the confidence, skills, resources or time to do it themselves.

If they do execute it successfully, it shows you know your stuff. They'll be back!

Limiting Belief 3:

Aren’t I giving tons of value away by charging less for this?

While there’s value in the roadmap, it doesn’t give them the expertise to execute the plan.

Your full value - your core - is in helping them execute the roadmap.

Keys to productizing your roadmapping phase.

1. Identify the repeatable process that precedes your core engagement
2. Give it a name
3. Sell it as a project with a set deliverable, no changes or customizations

Now, here’s the pro-move.

Your road mapping product can become the core of your education marketing strategy.

The best marketing teaches prospective clients how to win before they even work with you.

Brake your road mapping process down into its steps, and teach the steps – for free.

“But if I teach it for free, why would they buy it?”

You’re not going to teach the steps in order.

And you’re not teaching the ‘how’ to complete the steps. That’s your secret sauce.

Focus on sharing your approach, philosophy, language, and system.

You’re providing them with your know-how without the how.

Productizing your road mapping phase creates a trojan horse for your services that you can sell with lower friction and deliver repeatably.

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- Jeff

Freelance Marketing Alliance

p.s. If you're in the KW area, don't forget to sign up for our event on Dec 19th.

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