Never Sell What You Do
UX design services became a commodity.
It wasn’t that obvious at first, but now, looking back, the signs were all over.
I caught a brief sliver of time when UX was all the rage.
There were enough people doing it. So you can say almost any price as a UX consultant, and if the client has the budget, they will gladly pay. And when anyone questions your work, you can always say, “Because of UX.”
Everyone just went along with it.
Then slowly but surely, things started to change.
Every day, new online UX schools and bootcamps started to pop up. People proudly started sharing on LinkedIn their newly earned JPG, saying that they are now certified UX professionals.
Now, about 747,000 results show up when you search “UX designer.”
I started to lose projects because of my price.
Founders didn’t seem to care about past experience or results. Sometimes, I could even sense some sort of distaste when I started talking about the UX process and all the things we need to do before we start coding.
They saw it as a waste of time.
The market was definitely shifting. It was time for a change.
I was hoping to find my next thing.
I decided to bet on myself and pour a lot of my savings into online learning.
Design sprint, product strategy, brand strategy, business design, CRO, and marketing.
One thing that was clear months later.
All that jargon was only impressing my peers, and no founders cared about fancy-named methods and processes. All they cared about were results.
So what I needed to do was sell them results.
I still use all the UX skills I learned when I started. Now I just don’t sell them separately as a grocery list.
Because when someone wants to lose weight, you don’t try to sell them kale, cucumber, and tomatoes. You sell them a 30-day plan to get back into their old jeans.
Always sell the outcome of what you do, never the skills, processes, and methods.
Methods come and go.
But people always buy results. And your skills are not going to be out of fashion as long as they deliver on your promise.
