Stop Invoicing As A Videographer (And What To Do Instead) // Master Filmmaker
Eric Deeran argues videographers should ditch itemized invoices because they invite clients to haggle over costs. Instead, use package pricing tied to outcomes like leads, with tiered options showing video deliverables rather than production tasks.
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What's going on, guys? In this video, I'm going to be talking about why you need to stop itemizing out your invoices and how that could actually be hurting you and causing you to lose money in your video business when you are quoting and pitching pricing and what to do instead. Now, if you don't know me, my name is Eric. I am the founder of Master Filmmaker, and to date we've helped over 400 plus video business owners scale their business, implement new marketing systems and grow their businesses. I want to help you do the Same here on YouTube by giving you our best tips, tips, tricks and things that you can use to start implementing into your video business to get results immediately. So without further ado, let's dive into it now. Why should you actually stop itemizing out your invoices? A lot of people and a lot of video business owners are simply just itemizing out invoice. And what I mean by that is they'll have like a deliverable, a price, a deliverable, a price, A deliverable, a price, a deliverable, a price. And then the prospect over here is looking at this and they're basically saying, okay, cool, like this is 5000, this is 2000, this is 1000, 1000, this is 3000. Here's obviously an example of that. But what do you think the prospect is thinking here when they're seeing all these different prices? Well, the first thing that they're thinking is they're saying, hey, why is it so expensive for this? Why is it so expensive for this? Why is it so expensive for this? And why am I, you know, why am I paying this much for these things? So if it's like pre production, post production, drone footage production, they're going to look at this and they're going to say, well, you know, Eric, can I take this out? Like, could we not do this? Hey, could I take drone footage out? Could we not do this? Because I want to, I want to save some money. I just want to do this and this. Can we just take these two things out? Now what happens here is you start to get the prospect into what we call cost based thinking instead of results based thinking. And so when you're itemizing your deliverables and your different steps out like this, you're actually shooting yourself in the foot because you're actually giving the prospect the budget. Objection. Because they're looking at all these things and they're making the decision saying, hey, I don't think I need this, I don't think I need this. Can we just Take this stuff out entirely. I don't want to deal with any of that. When in reality all of this is packaged up in one format to help them get the best results possible with your content. And you can't really take those things out. And so that's why you're shooting yourself in the foot. When you're doing invoices like this and you're doing itemized out deliverables. Now, like I said, what does the client think? Well, they're thinking about how they can get this for a cheaper price and you're triggering that by offering them an itemized out invoice. So this is really the difference between cost based thinking and results based thinking. And so when it comes down to cost based thinking, this is where the prospect is thinking about how much everything costs, how they can get the cheapest price possible. And what they're doing is they're driving you down to the lowest price possible and they're looking at everyone else in the market to see, hey, maybe this person can do it for cheaper. Hey, maybe this person can do it cheaper. And, and they start to look around for different options and different cheaper prices so they can get the best deal because they're in cost based thinking. What you really need to get them into is you need to get them into results based thinking. This is where we talk about what the result or the outcome of the content is and what it will be and how it can help them achieve whatever goal or outcome they're looking to achieve with their business. And this is where a lot of videographers get it wrong, is they're just thinking about selling the deliverables where instead you need to sell the outcome that the client wants out of those deliverables. So you might be thinking, well, Eric, what should I do instead of this? Like, how should I pitch my pricing? How should I do my invoices? Like what should I do? I don't understand. And really what you need to be doing is more package based pricing where you have, you know, number one, number two, number three package, and then you're just simply listing what actual deliverables they're going to be getting within each package. So like maybe this one is like five reels, one long form video, one testimonial video, and then whatever else you're going to put in there. So you're going to have these different deliverables and these different things within there. But all of those deliverables should be focused on the outcome of what the prospect said they wanted. If I'm talking To a construction company, I'm saying, hey, what is the outcome you're looking for? What do you want to get out of this content? Well, they may say, well, what we want is we want to get more leads. Okay, cool. So if you want to get more leads, we need to do, you know, X amount of reels, X amount of long form videos. And then in order to nurture those leads, once they get in, we need to do X amount of testimonial videos. And so each package has a different amount of deliverables there where you have package one that has the least amount, package two has a middle amount, and package three has the most amount. And then you're just simply saying, hey, here are the videos you're going to be getting instead of saying, hey, here's our pre production, our production, our post production, and our drone footage. And like all the things that are going to go in there, the prospect realistically does not care. Like your video clients don't know what pre production is, they don't know what production is, they don't know what post production is. I mean, they know probably what drones are, but you just, you get them into nickel and diming you when you start telling them all those things. Instead, just simply tell them the outcomes and the actual videos that you're going to be giving them and how that's going to translate into the outcome that they said they wanted. So like I said, base this on the outcomes, not the deliverables, and I promise you, you're going to see a huge difference in your sales conversations and you're going to have clients who don't walk you down in price as much because you're simply just showing them the videos they're going to be instead of itemizing out the invoices and then having them nickel and dime you on the sales call. Now, if you want to learn more about what we actually do to get these clients, how to get them closed, how to structure the packages, I'm going to link a free video below this video. I'd love for you to check it out and just let us know if you have any questions and we will see you on the other side.
