I’ve got roadmapping on the brain, so it’s roadmapping week here at kai davis dot com. This week, we’ll dive into what exactly roadmapping is and why this simple concept — paid discovery! — can be so impactful.
So, what exactly is roadmapping, anyways?
Roadmapping is a paid discovery and strategy project. It’s a way for you to charge for your time and expertise. And it’s a way for you to get started working with your client in a low-risk fashion.
Selling paid discovery (roadmapping) helps you start your client relationships by collaborating on your client’s goals, understanding their available resources, budget, and timeline, and proposing an actionable plan.
Instead of starting with The Big Project or jumping out of the plane with a parachute and an hourly rate (YOLO Consulting 🪂), you’re starting with discovery and strategy:
- Meeting with the client
- Discussing their unique challenges, constraints, and goals
- Doing some research on the best approach given their constraints
- Putting together your project recommendations (i.e., plan of approach, timeline, resources, budget).
Roadmapping is a way to leverage the knowledge and experience you’ve built up over the years. Plus, it’s a great way to get inside the client’s business:
- You learn more about the client’s challenges
- You get to know what it’s like to work with the client
- You’re getting paid to dig in and learn, instead of doing free work to write a proposal
Instead of writing a proposal for free and making your best guess about scope/timeline/price/budget, you’re saying, “I have a process. We start with a small paid discovery and strategy project. We’ll meet and discuss your situation and goals, I’ll put together a plan, and then, once we agree on the plan, we’ll move into an implementation project.”
And when you deliver your recommendations (your roadmap), you can deliver a proposal alongside it to implement your recommendations.
To a client, that looks amazing and positions you differently from your competitors. Instead of being another pair of hands, you’re a brain and hands, and you’re both selling strategy and doing the implementation. That’s something most of your competitors (selling strategy or implementation) can’t offer.
If you’d like to start selling roadmapping (paid discovery) to your clients, you should check out Quick Start Roadmapping (/products/roadmapping/). Inside Quick Start Roadmapping, you’ll get the tools, templates, guidance, and instruction you need to get started with roadmapping.
Quick Start Roadmapping focuses on giving you an ‘80/20’ approach to roadmapping. You’ll get started with the essential information to market, sell, and deliver roadmapping projects to your clients.
Excelsior!
Kai