Tim Williams' Landscaper Story

I hope you enjoy this video I recorded late last year recalling a story I was told by the great Tim Williams of  Ignition Group. Below the video is a slightly edited transcript if you prefer to read it.

The Video

The Story

About a year ago, I heard this great story from a fellow VeraSage Institute colleague, Tim Williams.Tm is a brilliant strategic mind and he shared this story with myself and a group of VeraSage folks and I've been meaning to put this down on video now for quite some time but finally got around to it after a year. (So yes, I have stuff on my to-do list for a year.)But here's the story. Tim owns a rental property and one of the things that is always concerning about a rental property is the maintenance of the yard. It has got a small little yard in front of it – perhaps a goat could really take care of it – but what he wanted was a landscaper and he called up, of course, three people to come out and take a look and give them him an estimate or price on what it was going to take to take care of the property.

I need a landscaper

The first guy comes out and says, “Hey listen, I'm gonna be 50 bucks an hour and will probably take me somewhere between two and three hours a week, sometimes longer, if I've got to do something else that's {not in scope]. That's what I'm going to charge you. Tim was like, “Okay.”The next guy came out and instead of giving an hourly price, he gave a list of things that he was going to do. He’s gonna mow the grass and he was going to take care of the bushes and edging and you know throw down some fertilizer and whatever was needed to take care of the property in yard.  He listed out the services he was going to do and he said, “That's going to be a hundred and fifty dollars a week for me to do that.” Tim said, “Okay.”The third guy came out and he actually asked Tim some questions. “So tell me a little bit about this property?” Tim replied, “Well it's a rental property I'm not here very often just want to make sure that it's nice for people who are coming and staying here.”The guy said, “Here's what I’m going to do. I'm going to make sure that your property here has the best curb appeal in the neighborhood. I'm going to charge two hundred dollars and it includes absolutely everything. You're gonna have the best curb appeal in the neighborhood. If I have to change out the bushes or the flowers. Bush dies, I’ll fix it. Change the flowers seasonally. Best curb appeal in the neighborhood. Two hundred bucks a week.”

Tim's Decision

Which one do you think Tim went with? He had us all waiting with bated breath and most of the folks in the room clearly the third and he said, “Actually I went with the second.”We're like, “Well why is that”He said, “Because the third one doesn't exist. It was what I had hoped for, but nobody would give that to me, so I had to go with somebody who ended up giving me the second one.”When you think about this, what Tim is describing here is three different ways of viewing delivery of stuff to a consumer - in this case someone who's got a rental property. One is by charging for the inputs. The first guy was going to charge for the inputs at 50 bucks an hour. The second was going to charge for the outputs and there was a list of outputs. This is what you're going to get. This is more menu-type pricing. He was charging for a series of outputs. This is the output that you're going to get from whatever it is that I have to do.The third guy, who of course only exists in Tim's mind, was going to charge for an outcome – the best curb appeal in the neighborhood.

The point

I think that is precisely what professional organizations across the board: lawyers, accountants, engineers, architects, media, bookkeepers, all people who offer professional work should be looking to position themselves as selling and providing an outcome.Not outputs, and not certainly not inputs, but an outcome. As a professional you are responsible for delivering an outcome, not outputs. but an outcome and that's what your customers want from you.My advice is charge for the outcome.