I was reading an article recently by Chris Guillebeau where he was talking about how disappointing it is when service providers don’t allow people to buy their services from their website.
And it dawned on me that he’s absolutely right.
So many service providers give descriptions of the services they offer, but in order to buy what they sell, you have to use a contact form to request an estimate.
Unfortunately, in a market where you evaluate and buy most anything online, that way of doing things is a bit antiquated. And that’s not all. Generations X and Y, who both grew up with computers and the Internet and use it heavily as a resource, are filling more and more decision-making roles in companies. Given their familiarity and comfort with buying things online, not allowing them to buy your services online could be costing you sales you didn’t even know existed.
A need to provide estimates is OK, but limiting.
Now running a service-based business myself, I’m fully aware of the need to provide estimates. It’s virtually impossible to predict how much work will be required for each project. There are just too many variables from client to client.
Or is there?
Believe it or not, selling services online is actually easier than it sounds at first. The trick is a clear definition of the project, and plenty of up front communication with the client.
Here’s some ways you can do it:
1. Create pre-defined packages
One of the simplest ways to sell your services online is to create packages you can sell at a set price. And don’t worry about variables that you would normally need to estimate. When you create packages to sell on your site, you get to choose what is, and what’s not, included in the package. Anything outside the scope of work you define is extra and incurs additional cost.
When you’re creating your packages, it’s also a good idea to create three different pricing levels for each package – a low priced one, a high priced one, and one in the middle. You can adjust what’s included to compensate for the pricing differences, but having a few options to pick from allows you to sell to more people with a wider range of budgets. The best way I found to do this is to create a package that has everything I can think of in it, and then take away a little and lower the price a bit for each cheaper package I want to create.
2. Offer consulting-only packages
Another way you can sell your services online is by letting people buy your time by the hour as consulting packages. Easiest way to do this is post a price for one hour of your time that people can buy, and then add a few options for groups of hours at a slightly reduced rate. For example, if they buy one hour, the price is $100, three hours is $270 (10% off), five hours is $375 (25% off), etc.
3. Turn your service into a product
Do you have a service that people seem to request a lot? Do your customers seem to ask the same basic questions over and over again? If so, you have a great opportunity to turn your service into a product you can sell.
There’s many different ways to do this. You could write an eBook that offers a solution to a common problem your clients have. You could create an online "course" that offers training your clients are looking for in the form of videos and/or audio you pre-record, downloadable PDFs, worksheets, etc. If you planned it out right, you could even turn your service into a software program, mobile app, or other such product to sell. These are all just examples, but with some good planning and a little work, you can turn your service into something that sells over and over again.
It all adds up to more sales, more often.
So as you can see, selling your services online isn’t hard to do at all. You can still offer to provide estimates to people who have projects that are outside the scope of your packages. But by offering your services in a way that people can buy them online, you make it easier for customers to do business with you, and set yourself up to be able to accept purchases outside of normal business hours.