Situation four
I can't sell it the same way twice.
Everything is custom to make the deal. Every customer gets a slightly different product, a slightly different price, and a slightly different promise. It works, and it does not scale, and you already know both of those things.
In your words
Is this you?
“To date I have never said no to a feature request, because more development has always been in my best interest.”
“Those yeses pile up, and eventually your product looks like Frankenstein and your roadmap is a wishlist for eight different customers.”
“Basically the first ten people build the actual product, and the next hundred and ninety build one-off customizations.”
“I genuinely don't know how much revenue I lose to scope creep.”
“This client keeps our lights on, we love working with them, and I don't love it enough to lose money on their projects.”
The diagnosis
What's usually going on
Two mechanisms, running at the same time, both rational in the moment:
- Saying yes is always locally correct. Every individual yes wins a deal, keeps a customer, or funds a month. The cost only appears in aggregate, and nothing in your business reports on aggregate.
- You have no test for roadmap-worthy. A real customer asked for a real thing. Without a mechanism, the only available answers are yes and an argument.
Two questions this page has to answer honestly
Do you need a professional services line at all? The bespoke work is already happening and it is currently unpriced. Sometimes the right answer is not to stop doing it, it is to charge for it and staff it.
How does a customer tweak qualify as roadmap-worthy? That mechanism is the thing that stops every deal becoming a fork. It is a page of criteria, not a philosophy.
Scope
What this is not
- Not a pricing model I hand you. It comes out of your own twelve months.
- Not permission to fire your biggest customer. Sometimes that is the answer; it is never the deliverable.
- Not a CRM implementation.
How to buy it
Two ways in
lead option
Rapid Result: Pricing & Packaging
$1,0003–8 hours
What happens
The fastest version: what you actually sell, at what shape, for what number. Most bespoke problems are packaging problems wearing a sales costume.
Report, live review, one move.
The price
A ceiling. Credits in full against Prospecting & Process Results.
full engagement
Prospecting & Process Results
$8,5004 weeks · 8 sessions · 15 hours in the room
What happens
Week 1
The audit of yes
Every custom thing you have agreed to in twelve months, and what each one cost. This is the uncomfortable week.
Week 2
The shape
What the standard thing is. What sits outside it and is priced. What is simply refused.
Week 3
The qualification
The mechanism that decides whether a request is roadmap, paid custom, or no, written down so somebody else can apply it.
Week 4
Run it live
On a real deal in your pipeline, with me in the room.
What I need from you
Contracts, invoices, and the change requests. Especially the ones that never got invoiced.
What you get
What you get, every time, in three parts:
- Everything you need to understand it.
- The models and the methods to see it through without me.
- The other routes, and why they aren't taken, shouldn't be taken, or can't be taken yet.
The Landing
The Landing. Thirty days after we finish, we talk for an hour. At sixty days, thirty minutes. At ninety, thirty minutes. Three dates, booked before we start, inside the price. Then it is over.
This is the landing, not the residency. It exists because the month after an engagement ends is when the thing either takes or doesn't, and that is the worst possible moment for me to be unreachable and the worst possible moment to be selling you something.
If you're not sure
Readiness, $1,000, credits in.
Peter on this page
(coming)
On camera
“Every yes was the right call on the day you made it. It is the pile of them that is the problem, and nothing in your business reports on the pile.”
Start with a call.
Up to ninety minutes on one real problem, and you set the length. If it was worth something, pay what it was worth. If it was not, we shake hands and you owe me nothing.