More on Value Retainer – and another big launch coming next week
Thanks for your interest in Value Retainer last week. We’ve answered a lot of fun questions about it, and watched a few people join us, which rules.
One of the biggest questions that’s come up as we negotiate new Value Retainer projects is: what do we do? We provide a list of what what we do at base on the aforelinked, but that’s still a fair question, since I think people want to get a clearer understanding of their specific outcomes and they want to know if we’ll, like, design anything.
Let’s talk about the latter first. The seam between “fits into Value Retainer” and “would be a separate quote of new work” is fuzzy. This is by design. One knows a big project when they see it. And I don’t think I’ll be letting people in the door who boiling-frog us into working outside of alignment.
That’s because the rest of our paid activities are well-defined. Want interviews? There’s a paid offering for that. Usability tests? Same same. Generally speaking, if you’re on retainer with us and you want us to do something that’s ever been on our proverbial rate card, you’ll pay extra – with a 10% discount, of course, because we like you.
It’s a well-known fact that we never put our work on sale. We believe in the economic value of our work, we believe that standing behind the value of our work is a survival matter in the design industry, and so we actively resist priming customers to expect less from us. But the 10% discount with Value Retainer clients is different, because 1) we already have a clear sense of the issues facing your business, which allows us to hit the ground running more effectively; 2) we already know it’ll be a positive working relationship, since you’re on retainer; and 3) frankly, you’re already paying us.
On the former point, outcomes are always co-created. That is the fundamental nature of any consultative relationship. I say “I don’t know” on Value Retainer’s marketing page because any outcomes we decide upon will be contingent on what your whole deal is. We’ll figure that out together, agree on a plan, and execute. Who knows what that’ll look like. That’s tremendously exciting to us!
Next week, we’ll be doing another launch of something that’s been in the works for over a year. (I know, right?) In the meantime, if you have any other questions about whether Value Retainer might be a good fit for you, hit reply to this email and let me know. I’d be honored to figure something out together!
This week, for paid members
- This week’s paid lesson talks about what you’ll need to practice value-based experimentation through the holidays in 2024. Every year is different; every year is exactly the same.
- Our design of the week shows an established company… crowdfunding? What?
- And our fortnightly teardown is for omnivorous stationery website JetPens. Finally, am I right?
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Links
- Design is a form of leveraged power.
- Turns out that machine learning massively hampers creativity, which is something that every single designer who’s ever gone through a critique could tell you. Or any musician, for that matter. Any creative person at all, maybe?
- When we speak of the primary function of the value-based consultative designer being spaceholding, this, roughly, is what we’re referring to.
- It’s 2024 and someone is claiming, again, that we solved vertical centering in CSS.
- Icons, but make them 3D.
- I’m pretty sure 3/4 of my career is spent logging into things, so anything you can do to handle this better would be muchly appreciated. That being said, isn’t materially the entire problem a matter of managing the feral expectations of security people?