When is it a good idea to explain what you don’t do? Usually it is not a good idea to dwell on what you don’t do. After all you are marketing a positive and going on at great length about your lack of capacity may leave the impression that your services are inadequate.
However, there are times when some awareness of your limitations can be beneficial. If you are aware of them, they can inform your copy in positive ways.
Beneficial Limitations
Sometimes limitations can be beneficial to the client. Indeed, it may be you will choose limitations to attract a type of client. You may be capable of doing X but it is better for your client that you don’t.
For example, Done With You (DWY) website design and construction aims to teach the client the basics so they can grow and develop their site on their own.
You may be capable of a Done For You (DFY) approach but it is an approach that has its own limitations. It is the right solution for some clients. DFY can save time and heartache but for the client who has limited resources, they need to know when it is the best approach for them.
Offer DFY when:
- Time is at a premium
- The client needs to improve the quality of their site
- They need something complex and expert help is more efficient than trying to do it alone.
If you’re offering DWY, you need to explain its advantages and disadvantages to the client and the client needs to know what kind of support they can expect. Even with a DFY solution you may need to explain what you can’t do for the client. It is OK to subcontract to specialists so long as the client understand this may happen.
With DWY, the client experiences building their own site and benefits from understanding how it works and how to develop and maintain it. A DWY offer will usually be cheaper than a DFY offer, which may be an advantage for the client. It is also an advantage for the web designer because the lower price implies they need spend less time working on the site.
The distinction under this heading is the difference between non-directive and expert consultancy. The former starts from the assumption that the client is the expert. So, the client needs to understand they are the expert and will be doing the work. They are firmly in the driving seat and accompanied by a critical friend who assists them in thinking through their work.
Indeed the client may appoint such a consultant to ask searching questions, helping the client think through the professional challenges they face.
Eliminating Confusion
Implied under the last heading is the need to end confusion. So, if you offer a DWY solution, you need to explain somewhere what DWY means! It is not too difficult to explain the advantages of DWY in a positive way, making points such as, You:
- stay in the driving seat throughout the work we do together
- know and understand your organisation and your work better than anyone else and the DWY approach enables you to maximise the benefit of this expertise
- learn as you go, picking up new skills, eg website design
- will have by the end, the skills and the confidence to carry your work forward
- receive positive feedback about your work
And so on …
You will see this list manages expectations in a positive way. Anyone seeking a DFY approach will know your service is not for them.
However, some may want to combine the advantages of a DFY and a DWY service. This is possible and so you might have a second package that combines these approaches and introduces a different set of limitations.
You will note that what you don’t offer may vary from package to package. Your limitations are not always deficiencies in your skill set so much as strategic decisions necessary for the packages you offer.
Working in Partnership
A third area where limitations are important is where you are working in partnership. Here the issue will be delineating the boundaries between each partner’s role. If there are grey areas, where it isn’t clear whose role applies, we need to discuss where the boundaries lie.
It may be easier where partners have very distinct areas of work. So, a health package might include an expert in nutrition and an expert in physical exercise. Whilst there may be some overlap, it will normally be obvious when one encroaches on the other’s work. Of course they will need to discuss a client’s needs and agree a plan but once agreed they will work in their own domain.
It may be less clear with, say, a partnership between a web consultant and a web developer. There may be many details where they must agree about issues on the boundaries. Their skill in this case may be to say to the client, “look, we’ve shown you 2 ways to do this, it’s your decision which you follow”. This may turn the overlap to advantage but it is important to beware of confusing the client.
This post concludes the sequence about the second element of the circuit questionnaire, products services and causes.