Creating and selling packages with Prerna Malik

Presented live on Tuesday, May 28, 2019

In this live Tutorial we dive deep into a topic nearly every freelance copywriter on the planet has struggled with.

We’re talking:

Selling. Copy. Packages.

This is advanced productized service stuff, which is why we’ve brought in Prerna Malik to teach it.

Prerna runs a badass copy business and sells tens of thousands in copy packages. She’s sold ’em to the likes of Pat Flynn and to course creators galore. And she’s going to walk us through:

Resistance! Why a world of copywriters and consultants foolishly hate on copy packages
How she’s stacked up business-stabilizing influxes of cash with smart copy packages clients rush to buy
The mistakes you might be making today with your packaged services (she sees service businesses make these all the time)
A framework for creating your own packages… so you can avoid costly mistakes

Wanna get started in creating and selling packages? Check out the full Tutorial below. And grab your Profit-Rich Package Creation Worksheet from Prerna right here: https://contentbistro.com/tutorialtuesday/

After Prerna’s tutorial, you should watch this tutorial too: The 4 productized services to sell now as a freelance copywriter.

TRANSCRIPT

Joanna: We’re talking today about packages, so if you are a freelance copywriter and you have struggles with selling your services or putting proposal after proposal together, Prerna is here to chat with you about how she uses packages.

Prerna, what do you got to share with us today? How are you?

Prerna: I am very good. I have a full presentation. I’ll be diving deep into a lot of things, and I hope it isn’t a lot of information.

Joanna: It will be; I’m sure of it.

Prerna: It’s a topic that you know I’m borderline obsessed about.

Joanna: You’re pretty passionate on it which is great, right? You wouldn’t be if you didn’t get awesome results.

Prerna: Let me know when it’s good to share because I’m actually …

Joanna: Let’s dig in. We’ve only got 27 minutes left for everything.

Prerna: All right, so, sharing screen. You should be able to share my screen and

Do you see my presentation?

Joanna: Yes, perfect!

Prerna: Okay, good. Let’s go into play mode. I was watching one of your Tutorial Tuesdays where you mention that your screen froze at like the first slide, so if you see that happening with me …

Joanna: I’ll let you know.

Prerna: Okay, Great! So, How to create profit-rich packages that easy to sell using the Image Framework. That’s what I’m going to talk about, but before we do that, let’s look at why should we create packages.

Joanna: Okay

Prerna: Why show a picture of my beautiful family on vacation in Dubai on a slide that should actually be talking about why shouldn’t we create packages? Cause this is why. If you want to get your time back, if you want to take vacations, like four vacations in a year, which is what we do, and still work with clients who are amazing and incredible like [inaudible 00:02:19] then you should create packages, but honestly, creating packages is the easiest way for you to be more profitable, more productive, and make every piece of research that you’re already doing for clients like work hard for you, and just do more for you, I don’t see why anyone wouldn’t want that.

So for those of you who don’t know me and why did Joanna invite me here, I’m the co-founder of Content Bistro, which is a boutique copywriting agency where we work with some great clients and certified [inaudible 00:02:54]copyrighted but more importANTLY, I’m someone whose used packages to [inaudible 00:03:03] without launching a single course, without going into debt, without being burned out. I’ve really enjoyed time with my family, enjoying time off, and taking time out, and doing great work. Last year, we did $210K, and this year will be closer to $230K. It’s been pretty awesome, in fact, last year alone, we sold over $90,000 worth of packages alone, so like 50% of our revenue is from packages, which makes it such a simple decision. Again when it comes to creating a package, Yes, I have a wish list, of different packages, which means that I don’t really need to do any marketing, I just need to tap into the wait list, and I need

[inaudible 00:03:54]

into the business. That’s why you should do packages, and our goal from this Tutorial Tuesday is for you to walk away knowing that you can create a package that is super profitable and productive for you because you want to create a package that’s not just a good money-maker but also that’s also a breeze to run.

Let’s talk about the fact that all packages are not created equal. Packages, in my opinion, are like personalities. They have multiple layers to them, which is why they are so beautiful because even if you created a package that is exactly the same as the package that I have, in our case for instance, [inaudible 00:04:42] has been imitated I don’t know how many times in a month, I’m flattered by that, I love seeing other copywriters launch it because I know that at the end of the day their copy package and my copy package are going to be very, very different, and that is the beauty of packages is that all packages are not created equal, especially when you create a package in this framework, it just helps you stand out in a crowd.

But before we dive into framework, what I really want to look at are the reasons why people don’t sometimes do packages or why packages get a bad name, and that’s because of the 3 no-good, very bad mistakes most copywriters make with their packages, and this is something that I’ve seen over the last so many years, and I’ve like spoken to copywriters and tried creating packages and they’re either not sold or if they’re sold, they had a miserable time delivering it, feeling like they’re being under-paid and you know, over-worked. So, these are 3 mistakes that we found people making over and over again.

Mistake #1: Be a muggle. For those of you again who don’t know me, huge Harry Potter fan. I find it very difficult to write any piece of copy for my own brand or any presentations like this without a Harry Potter reference. So, in Potter world, a muggle is someone with no magical powers; a muggle is a normal, everyday person, and as copywriters, you’re not a muggle. You have so many magical powers; you have the power of persuasion, you have the powers of conversion, you have the power of psychology, you have the power of emotion, you have the power of personality, and you use all these powers to write great copy, to do great marketing, so why not bring these powers and use this magic to create a package? Don’t be a muggle who gets lost in a sea of muggles.

Mistake #2: Be Hermione. Hermione is a super strong role model for so many girls, and I love her, but she has the tendency to be a people pleaser; she has the tendency to raise her hand and want to do everything even though she knows it’s going to overwhelm her, burn her out, she has the best interest at heart, but she ends up really exhausting herself. And if you create a package where you end up raising your hand and being everything and doing everything for a client who actually signed up for a small package, you end up hating packages for the rest of your life; you have nothing, worse possible use of your time, you don’t want to be a Hermione.

Mistake #3: Be Ron. Ron Weasley is Harry Potter’s best friend, and he is a solid rock; great guy to have in your corner; however, Ron suffers from lack of confidence, especially in the early books. He lacks confidence in his own abilities and some of his friends, and as copywriters, if you find that you’ve created packages, and you’re questioning your own self-worth, you’re questioning whether you should charge say 5 figures for a package, that’s where your confidence comes into play. And you don’t want to be an under-confident Ron when tacking on a 5 figure price tag because you want to show up with confidence, not only in pricing and packages but also in running those packages, and how do you do that? You create a winning package.

A winning package that is based on an image framework, and the test for a winning package is the 3E formula. The package should be easy to create, easier to sell, easiest to deliver. Creating a package shouldn’t feel like you’re walking on nails, sitting in a dentist chair, it shouldn’t feel painful. It should feel fun; it should feel exciting; it should feel like you’re giving something really great to the world and you created …

Using again, what we’ve been talking about, the item 5 part of the image framework, you’ll find that it’s so much fun to put a package together. So, easy to create, easier to sell. When you create packages, that take your client’s needs into account, that take your skills into consideration, that take your experience and expertise in account, you’ll find that it becomes so much easier to sell the package; selling the package does not have to be challenging. Those of you who don’t know this, when we first launched, I had just used social media updates, I didn’t have a sales pitch, I didn’t have emails, I used social media updates and a free form for people to fill in and buy a package. Over the years, the package has gone several iterations; we then moved to a sales page. [inaudible 00:09:42] It was a good problem and it led to a problem where we had too many people buying the package, so we replaced the [inaudible 00:09:50] and people started signing up for the papers, again a really good problem to have. Today, the latest illustration we have an application process so we can really filter out whose signing up and be very selective about who we work with. Bottom line, it doesn’t have to be difficult to sell your package; it can be super easy. The idea is it should be very easy for your prospects to understand what the package involves and to understand how they can get their hands on it. Don’t over-complicate it; don’t over-think it.

Finally, most importantly, your package has to be easiest for you to deliver. That is the goal, right? You don’t want your package to be beyond stressed, burnt out, or exhausted. You want delivery of package confidence, have fund doing it, show up and just have a real blast with it. So, all of this is what goes into creating a winning package.

Let’s talk about the image framework. The image framework is what we reverse-engineered, my husband and I, we worked together. We reverse-engineered when we were considering looking at what made some of our packages really, really successful and why some of them probably didn’t get the attention they deserved. Not 100% of my packages haven’t been wildly successes; I’ve had quite a few that have been a fair amount of [inaudible 00:11:31]. So we realize that the five things that made the biggest difference were these which have lined up nicely as the image framework, fairly straightforward: Identify, mindset, audience, get clear, and engage. In the interest of time, I’m gong to dive really deep into identify because that is the foundational step when it comes to creating your package and also touch on everything else so that you know what to keep in mind when you’re working on your profit-rich package creation worksheet that I shared with you after this tutorial. Before I go further, Joanna, is there anything you want me to cover, talk, or should I just go through?

Joanna: No, this is good, I think the only thing is just a little bit of setting expectations for some people who are like, “Can you just give an example of what’s in a package?”, so they’re starting to… just help them visualize what they’re working toward.

Prerna: I’ll talk about what goes into different packages. Then I’ll look at the three approaches we can take when creating a package and then what we can do is, I can come back to questions and answer specific questions about package creations.[inaudible 00:12:43]

So, identify is what is it that you will create and why are you the best person to create it? This is the first foundational step and this is what we’ll be diving deep into to answer. I’ll give you a couple of examples of what could be included in the package.

Mindset is brain fuel for everybody. It’s not write a hundred affirmations kind of mindset, but mindset is what helps you show up with confidence when you’re pricing a package as well as help you show up with confidence when it comes to running your packages or delivering them for that matter, so mindset for me is three-fold. It’s self-talk, which is the internal dialogue in my head, self-stationing, which is how I choose to position myself and how I show up online, and self-care, which in this case is all about boundaries. How are we going to make boundaries [inaudible 00:13:45] into your packages? [inaudible 00:13:53] How responsible you’ll be, who will you be interacting with, you have all that factored in, it becomes very easy for you to have boundaries in place and enforce those boundaries. For self-talk dialogues, it’s super helpful for you to review your wins, review your expertise, review your experience, the results you’ve gotten, that just helps you tune into why you’re charging what you’re charging, why is it worth that much to the client, what is the [inaudible 00:14:19] the client is going to get from the package.

Audience, your audience is your strongest ally. It’s your biggest asset, and knowledge of your audience as copywriters and marketers, you know that knowing your audience is super important. We know that it’s key for us to know who our audience is, and it’s no different when you’re creating a package. It’s so important that you should know their pains, their struggles, their secret hopes and desires, what is it that they really want, they may say one thing, but they really want another, so you know all their business … Use all that knowledge off of your audience, in this case your prospects and your clients, and use that when you’re creating your package. Once you know all of that, it’s time for you to get clear.

Clarity is the bed-rock of profitability. Clarity is where everything comes together and honestly, I learned this from Joe, when I was learning to write better copy, because Joe said it’s better to be clearer than be clever or cute, and I realized it’s the same thing when it comes to writing copy. You want to be super clear who is this package for? What’s included? What’s not included? Who should not go for this package? Who would not be the right fit? Why are you the best person to teach this? Once you are clear with all of this, it becomes very easy for you to sell which is engaged.

I look at sales as engagement and empowerment because it’s so much easier when you’re empowering your audience and helping them move forward, take action, and when you come from a place of engaging your audience, pricing and positioning becomes super, super easy. When you have all this in place: When you know who you’re offering it to, why you’re offering it, when you know you have the confidence to charge whatever you feel is right and what makes the most logical sense to a client as well, when you know your audience inside out, it becomes so much easier with you to sell that package and position it the right way.

With that done, let’s dive into identify and what it means. Joe, how are we doing on time? I want to leave time for questions.

Joanna: You’ve got a max of 10 minutes left. Good Luck.

Prerna: All right, so let me just go through this, [inaudible 00:16:51] I can see questions pop up on the screen and stuff.

So, identify is really straight forward; you know, what is it you will be offering and why are you the best person to offer it, what makes you credible in terms of skills, expertise, and other results you’ve gotten, and again it’s not always, you can always use a package to actually pivot into a new service, and I’ll talk about that in just a minute, but it’s very important that you get what will you offer. The reason you want to focus on this is because when you are clear on identifying what is it you’re offering and why are you the best person to offer this, it helps you avoid the 3 no-good mistakes but more importantly, it helps you create and lay the foundation for a 3E package, a package that’s easy to create, easier to sell, and easiest to deliver.

When you’re identifying what is it that you should create and why you’re the best person to create it, you can take 3 approaches with this. You can go narrow, wide, or deep. When you go narrow, you focus on one service, and you look at elements of that service, and you use that to create a package. For example, say you have a website design business, or maybe a website copywriting business. A website audit is one part of that, so you can pull that audit out and offer that as a package or a privatized service with the pre-work elements and post-work elements included. So you don’t just say, I’m going to give you a website audit, you walk them through exactly how you’re going to do that. You make that process super clear, you build the package up so the pre-work could include the questionnaire; you could include a call in it, depends on the level, if you want it to just be like an automated thing, maybe you don’t want to call, but [inaudible 00:18:50] offer an audit package where a … call before the audit and after the audit as well, so you break that audit down into different elements and offer just that, so you go narrow. Similarly, if you’re a designer it could be a new offer branding services, your package could just be part of the branding services, you could put out a brand pallet and logo clipboard and things like that, so you give them that and show them how that’s going to help them with their branding. You help them take one small step forward. Creating a narrow package makes a lot of sense if you want a starter package if you want a package for prospects that have never worked with you before and you want a really easy in for them to get to know you, get to know what it is that you can do for them. So a narrow package would work really well. You can go wide and you can go deep.

Deep is where you focus on one core outcome. For instance, in our case, like with the fully loaded launch thing, a stress-free launch was the core outcome that we were focused on. We wanted to help our clients experience a launch where they weren’t scrambling around for either social media, a blog post, or whatever, so we gave them everything they needed. That’s not how the package is structured right now, but that’s how it was in the early days. We wanted it to be a totally stress-free launch and we structured the package to focus on that core outcome, so you focus on one core outcome and look at the services that will help your client accomplish that outcome, and then you create a package with those services put together.

Finally, you can go wide. So, in wide, you focus on one piece of a big picture. I tend to look at it as being a marketer, as the marketing puzzle, I look at it as one piece of the marketing puzzle. I pull services from different parts and see how I can help my client knock that piece of the puzzle out, or throw that piece of the puzzle out, so for instance, we have a content marketing strategy package that we used to offer back in the day when we were doing business launching and social media. So in this case, what we would do, is we took a strategy session, which by itself could be a package actually on its own, service on its own, but we added a strategy session into a blog editorial calendar which again can be a stand-along service but we’re going wide, we’re helping them tackle one piece of the marketing puzzle. And we added four blog posts, so it was wide package that covered their content marketing needs, and we could keep them wider, social media updates, as an optional add-on to promote those blog posts, we could include images to include in those blog posts so again, you just keep going wide.

That’s narrow, wide, and deep, and that’s how you would create packages like how you would tackle thinking about creating a package or starting to think about what is it that you should include. You can go either narrow, you can go wide, and can go deep, depending on what your goals are from package creation.

[inaudible 00:22:26] Package worksheet that walks you through Image Framework and all the other aspects as well. Has questions so you can answer and create your own package.

Joanna: Awesome, Okay, well then let us wrap this up. Prerna, Thank you for that great overview of selling with packages and everybody else be sure to go over to that link, get the download, hear what Prerna’s got to say; it’s all good. Prerna, Thank you so much.

Prerna: Thank you.

Joanna: Thanks everybody for attending. Thank you Perry for supporting. Awesome, we’ll see you. We’re off for the month of June. I’m getting hitched, so I’m taking June, not off from work, but like a couple days off. We’ll see you back here for Tutorial Tuesdays in July. You can see the schedule online, and otherwise, have a great rest of your day, everybody. Bye, Thanks, guys.