How To Successfully Run An Unlimited Subscription Solo Consultant Offering
This week a member of Jonthan Stark’s Ditcherville community reached out to me to ask a few questions about my Unlimited Subscription Office Hours offering and I figured I would share my answers with you. Here we go….
Curious Consultant:
Hey thanks for sharing all the stuff about how your business runs! I was wondering about the office hours plan you have, is there a single timeslot per week per customer? Or are those your slots and then they book whenever they want to use them, within those available? I guess I am interested in the terms/rough pricing of your office hours tier
Me:
Karl, Thanks for taking an interest. The way it works now is that each customer gets an assigned slot.
So for example:
Customer A(silver) - Tue 1PM - 3PM Customer B(silver) - Tue 3:30 PM - 5:30 PM Customer C(silver) - Wed 1PM - 3PM.
Now it is slightly trickier than that because of the 3 levels. But it could be something like this
Customer A(Gold) - Tue 1PM - 3PM Customer B(silver) - Tue 3:30 PM - 5:30 PM Customer C(Bronze) - Alternating Wed 1PM - 3PM. Customer A(Gold) - Thur 1PM - 3PM
Outside of the office hours there are no assigned slots. They can just reach out whenever and I will get to it as soon as possible. That is the real key part of the "Overflow" time. That is where I tend to address customer requests outside of office hours(at least the big ones. Little requests are easy enough to address in-between other obligations). The goal is never to be booked 40 hours per week. If that was the case then I would have not flexibility to address customer requests outside of office hours. Does this all make sense?
Curious Consultant:
That makes sense, thank you! Do you find your customers with office hours always using their dedicated/assigned time slot?
Me:
I have 1 that does occasionally. When that happens I politely let them know that they are using all of the office hours up and some additional time. They often ask if there are overage costs and I explain no there are none but there is a good chance that one of their team members may need my expertise and it is possible that they may need to wait 1 week(they are at silver) for me to answer if I am busy. If they want to mitigate that problem they could consider upgrading to gold.
Curious Consultant:
This is all really helpful, thanks again