Our Creative Director at SpinWeb, Rob Alan, sent me this blog post today that I absolutely loved:

Is there a better way for you to price your product? – (37signals).

I was very happy to see it because it validates something we’ve been doing for the past year – improving the usability of our pricing.

As an interactive agency, we come from a world where most companies like us are used to a sales process that involves lots of planning meetings, big proposals that go back and forth, free consulting to create estimates, and vague pricing based on a mysterious number of hours that it may take to complete a project. From what I’ve seen, this process typically leads to projects that go over budget and time, disagreements over money, and end up with both parties unhappy.

I’m very happy to say that SpinWeb has adopted a much simpler pricing and delivery process that involves three phases: blueprint, design, and deployment. Our pricing is 100% transparent. We don’t talk in terms of “hours” or “estimates”. We break our service down into smaller, logical chunks of work that we can predict and deliver with confidence. We also tell our clients exactly what each chunk will cost. I’ve sometimes met with a prospective client for the first time and then within 45 minutes the paperwork is signed and web site is in production simply because we make our process so easy to understand. In less than an hour, any prospective client can have all the information he or she needs to make a decision. It’s very refreshing.

This model has completely revolutionized our business. Arguments over money have virtually disappeared, we’ve shortened our sales process by about 90%, and our clients are happy. I never would have thought that an agency that creates web sites could “productize” design services like this but I’m amazed at what we’ve done. Additionally, it allows us even more design creativity because we can focus our time and energy on great design rather than on managing inefficient production processes.

Take another look at your business and try to find ways to create repeatable processes and pricing models. It might be easier than you think and it just may help your sales, as well.