When Advice Is The Product

Some things to think about when advice is part of your productized service

Let me relate a recent communication between a consultant and her prospective client (names removed).

Prospect: I was planning on focusing on leveraging affiliates for launch as it would offer an opportunity to get some runs on the board without requiring capital. What are your thoughts? How would you approach this?

Consultant: That’s a great question for me, thanks for asking! I advise on this kind of thing. Here’s how I approach that advice and how much it costs [link to productized services page]

In other words, thank you for asking and recognizing that I might be capable of giving you answer buut I won’t answer for free.

Why not? Because that advice is the product

Some additional thoughts:

  • other services besides the provisioning of advice can be productized
  • you can also package those other things together with advice; this is usually the right approach
  • or you can give advice away, just like you might give away a free product sample; one does this deliberately
  • by being direct about this in a kind way, you’re doing the prospect a favor

My best
Rowan