How to Sell Outcomes, not Hours: The Perfect 9-Word Response for Freelance Clients

Freelance Cake

Hourly is by far the most popular freelance pricing model, and freelancers often get asked, "What do you charge?” Or, “What’s your hourly rate?”

But when you think about it, time is never what clients want to buy.

Read that again. Time isn’t really what clients want to buy.

A patient getting heart surgery doesn’t want the surgeon’s time. She wants the surgeon to save her life. Surgeons, pilots, architects, engineers, and accountants—all of their customers buy the same thing: outcomes, not hours.

It's the same with our freelance clients.

They have problems they want to disappear. Our job is to deliver the desired business outcome, not give them our time.

Though clients still ask to pay for time, a lot more is required to truly serve them: our creative skills, our soft skills, expertise, accumulated experience, taste, judgment, personality, and thoughtful decision-making.

If you want to win at this freelancing game, reframe the conversation. Start selling outcomes, not hours.

In this episode, Austin will share real-life situations of why outcome-based selling makes perfect sense for freelancers.

He also shares the perfect 9-word response to use with time-focused clients. Make sure to save it!

Key points

• Intro (00:00)
• What Do Freelance Clients Really Buy From You? (00:37)
• Why NOT Selling Hours Just Makes Sense (01:31)
• What Sets Freelancers Apart From Other Types of Workers (03:37)
• A Coaching Client’s Journey to Selling Outcomes (06:00)
• You Can and Should Sell Outcomes Instead of Hours Too (09:34)

Notable Quotes

“To win at this freelancing game, you need to rethink what it is that you sell, and what it is that clients are really buying from you.”

Resources mentioned in this episode:

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