I
create presentations. Really, I create slides for years for different people, various situations, and strange goals sometimes. Each of my projects starts from discussion of one simple thing with a client: where we are now and where and how do they want to come by. And you know what? Almost all of people who request a presentation creation service doesn’t even imagine what do they want to recieve in the end. I’m sure that the situation is similar to many other creative areas like programming, drawing, architecture, construction, design, and so on. People know they need something named product — a picture, a house, an application but absolutely have no idea of how it should look like. “That’s the difference between service and a product, buddy” — you’d say. But hey, client, you need the result anyway, isn’t it? There is some kind of miscommunication when a designer sells logo creation service to a client, while a client actually buys a logo itself. Neither a designer nor a client know in the beginning what result will be created in the end of project.
Nobody actually needs the result itself, we all need trust
I remember the way I bought a new LED TV once. I came to a store and found tens of TV of different sizes, colors, and prices. I’m not a TV expert and all of them looked the same for me except theirs prices. But why do both has a same screen size, but one costs more than another? I called for a salesman to get answers and advice. What was I buying while having a small talk to him? Actually, I bought emotions I would experience in future while watching a new TV. I had no ideas of how to make right choice leading to desired usage experience, and I trusted to a specialist who linked my emotional expectation with required TV qualities. I was choosing a product but actually I chose a salesman to trust to and I bought the guaranteed way to my future usage experience.
Being applied to services, not end products, the power of trust is even stronger. Clients have no any ideas about the result besides the word result. Actually, they buy solution of theirs up level problem or goal. They don’t care about how the result will look like if it works well to solve theirs top-level task. Therefore, the main thing people buy is trust to a person or company that is able to solve a problem in clear way with minimal risks.
Everyone wants to sleep easy
Another point is that any task implies responsibility for its final result. Once I got a reputationally important project from one of my old good clients and made commitments to develop high quality solution for theirs problem. The issue I got is that my team mate who was responsible for the huge part of work on this project got to a hospital for several weeks suddenly and fall out of project. So I got terrible headache about how I can keep my promises, reputation and make a delivery on time. I went to open market and found many people and studios who were ready to help. I even ordered a test project to be done to three of them and you know what? Two disappeared for three days and showed me a piece of shit in the end! The third one was the most expensive and was the only who asked questions, showed concepts, asked for feedbacks three times a day. He learned me well and produced exactly what I need and even more within the same timeframe. Surely, I gave him the rest of project, though his price was enormously big compared to market median. What had I buy? Not a future result surely, but ensurance that exactly this guy understands my goals and my mindset, knows how to solve my problem and how to produce the deliverable I need. I paid for getting me free of unpredictability, and worries about deadlines and business reputation. My business relations with those client were saved thanks to that guy and I slept easy all the time of project flow.
Just trust and responsibility share — these are two main essenses that people actually buy unconsсiously, and what we all sell to each other everytime.
Great content! Super high-quality! Keep it up! 🙂