How to productize yourself (part 2 of 2)
Putting your unique value into market context with positioning, marketing, pricing
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Hi, I’m Meg and this is my little corner of the internet where I share tales and observations across the tech and parenting “industries.”
I advise and consult with startups as a fractional product marketing leader, primarily for B2B SaaS companies. Want to discuss a startup idea, get go-to-market help, or launch your own fractional consultancy? Book an strategy session with me..
Recap of part 1
Excited to be sharing the second half of my series on the details of becoming a fractional, which is essentially how to think of yourself as a product so you go to market to the the right customers offering the right things.
The first half on How to Productize Yourself focuses on an overall framework for approaching this work, including how to determine what you should sell and identifying and understanding your ideal customer profile (ICP). Today’s post walks through the actual going-to-market bits: positioning, marketing, pricing, and getting feedback about this as you iterate. Let’s hop into it…
How do you position yourself to your ICP?
Activity: Positioning
Output: The unique problem you create and then solve for your ICP
If you’re in marketing/sales/PMM/GTM, you may have a high confidence level in being able to position yourself. But zooming out and seeing how to position your skills (not someone else’s software) can be more difficult than you’d think.
Why? Because:
You’re too close to the product (yourself) to be objective
You’ve been operating in a climate of toxic positivity for so long that everyone’s value seems overinflated and you’ve lost your quality barometer
You feel disenfranchised due to tech bro gaslighting and have less confidence in your market value
There’s an easy fix for this: ask a former colleague of yours who is a superconnector why they’d want to work with you again or how they’d pitch you to others. Ask them what problems you’re uniquely qualified to solve for. Hearing these words from a third party will unlock specific branding that will help position yourself to your ICPs - and you shouldn’t have to wait for your funeral to hear how much others value and appreciate you :)
Convert these compliments into selling points and references - thanks to
for asking about this, as having concrete proof points by specific people (“Meg transformed our sales collateral in 3 months”) are critical. If you haven’t done any engagements yet, utilize former positive feedback given to you in a full-time role (if you don’t keep these in a smile file, please start!). I proactively share these in various formats to remove any questions about if I’m qualified for this type of work.I often include snippets of recommendations from my references, reviews from my Intro.co page, Substack comments, and LinkedIn kudos as proof points:
Having these conversations should give you a hit list of value you can provide. Understanding your ICP’s needs can fuel how you personalize your positioning. Summarize your ICP’s needs and re-articulate those as problems you can specifically solve (and have solved in the past). Parse through these to articulate the functional benefits (what the work will do for your client in a practical sense) and emotional benefits (how the work will make your client feel) attached to this value.
Here are 2 examples of fractional positioning: one for Leslie Forman (UX researcher) and one for me (PMM/GTM):
Nuance is everything here. Certain positioning may work for a Series A startup, but not for seed or Series D-stage companies. Know your audience, as always. I used to pitch B2B SaaS companies on creating foundational messaging frameworks, but I’ve found phrasing it as “market validation” or “win/loss analysis” to “identify the software’s differentiators as you go upmarket” is more effective.
Not sure how to set up your positioning? Here are my favorite starter resources:
Tamara Grominsky’s Personal Positioning Framework
The 3 P’s of Product Messaging (easily applied to yourself) by Allyson Letteri (guest post for MKT1 Newsletter, which is a great follow)
How to grow your side hustle by Nick Lafferty (interviewed by Tamara Grominsky)
Or book a call with me to brainstorm how you can position your ICP’s problems as discreet projects you can solve. I live for this!
A note on packaging: I didn’t create a whole section for this, because I see it as a snapshot or bundling of what you’re offering. Grouping your services into a few themes or buckets, tied back to how your ICP views consuming these, is important.
When I pitch B2B SaaS companies, I bucket my services into 3 Foundational Marketing Layers. This gives prospects an easy way to digest and differentiate my services, and it demonstrates that I understand their needs across the typical stages of their development.
How do you market yourself?
Activity: Marketing
Output: Value proposition and messaging framework, collateral templates
This might be a hot take, but I always find marketing easier than positioning. There are a lot of think pieces (by amazing PMMs ;) about the difference between positioning, messaging, and marketing but as I GTM myself, I consider marketing to be:
Your personal branding and unique value proposition (post coming soon!)
How your network and prospects perceive and react to this
How that’s collateralized
Which are simply different iterations of the positioning work you’ve already done above.
You can get really fancy and create a logo, branding kit, and detailed website for your services but I’ve found that to be overkill. I rely on my LinkedIn page and a free, succinct bio.site to tell my ICPs how I can help them. Most people don’t read, so give them a headline and save the rest for your personalized live pitches and follow up decks.
Here are my collateral basics:
Consistent messaging on LinkedIn across my page, banner, and posts
Example: I framed offering paid sessions on Intro as a way to help others, while still valuing my own time
This post by Justin Welsh on LinkedIn Profile optimization is great
Free bio site highlighting my TL;DR with lots of personality (I am the product!)
3 sentence blurb on who I am and what I offer, for my network to forward
Google slide deck that expands on my blurb
Often includes previous engagements, work samples or case studies, and pricing that can be personalized and used as a “leave-behind” or follow up after a call
Outreach templates
Proof points / quotes from references describing my value add (can paste in anywhere)
My LinkedIn banner:
And here’s my very lightweight tech stack for creating collateral:
Canva for imagery like banners and infographics (a ton used in this ‘Stack today in fact!)
Google slides, docs, sheets
Airtable as basic CRM linking to Evernote for detailed notes on network contacts / prospects (but should I switch to Notion?!)
Figjam for brainstorming with clients or diagramming processes
LinkedIn Premium so I can add custom buttons, send InMails, etc (I usually cycle through paying and then not paying depending on my need for demand gen)
How much do you cost?
Activity: Packaging and pricing
Output: Offerings/services and how to price them
When coaching someone, one of the first questions they ask me is, “how much should I charge?” and my (somewhat) snarky answer is “Whatever the market will bear.”
Here’s the funny truth about working for yourself - the pros and cons are the same:
Pro: there are no public baselines or guidelines for how to price yourself, so you can change your pricing based on what you know about the prospect (example: just raised a Series B and should be flush with cash, try floating a higher rate)
Con: there are no public baselines or guidelines for how to price yourself, which means if you don’t do some research and talk to your peers or ICPs in your network, you’re going in blind
As a PMM, packaging and pricing myself is a deeply meta activity that I approach with a sense of glee. Now that I’m the product, I want a high ticket price (within reason)!
Here’s where you should start:
Realize that your clients will want you to have a strong POV (on everything)
Every time I have a call with a prospective client, they ask me “what are the typical projects you work on?” and “what is a typical engagement?”
At first this may seem intimidating (“why don’t you just tell me the name of the movie you selected?”) but think of this as an opportunity to control your destiny in the form of being clear about what you do best and how you want to work.
Define how you want to work and get paid
Many startups have not worked with consultants, so they expect you to lead the way on how you can work together. As I’ve gained more experience, I confidently tell prospects “this is how I like to work”:
1 client at a time for ~25-30 hours a week per month
3 month minimum retainer
3 months gives me enough time to squarely prove my value
If a client insists on a month trial period, I inform them that the rate will be higher
After that, we can go month to month
With different pricing options if they want 10-15, 20-25, or 30+ hours a week
If they want to be my only client, the rate will be higher
If they want me to start before I’ve said I’m available, the rate will be higher
If they want more hours to start, but plan to taper off… the rate will be higher
Reserve the right to re-evaluate pricing every 6 months
These policies are based on the opportunity costs I’m incurring by being exclusive, on-demand, or on a trial period. These situations leave little opportunity for me to engage with other potential clients.
Get over any awkwardness about talking about money
When I was younger, my vaguely WASP upbringing made it seem distasteful to speak about how much money I made, how much other people made, or how much money I wanted to make. I left those days behind me after the 2008 economic meltdown. Talk turkey, always, my friends.
Most consulting positions aren’t posted on a job board with a salary range, so get over being uncomfortable and start asking people you trust about how much they make.
Talk about pricing with everyone and constantly ask for feedback
Talk to as many in-market, active consultants as you can
Jesse Friedman, a fellow PMM consultant, publishes his pricing on his site for ultimate transparency
Ask people at your level “How do you approach pricing?” if you’re too chicken to ask “Can you share how much you charge?”
Get a sense of what a more senior, and more junior, person makes, and take the average
Look at full-time roles and extrapolate what rate a company might be willing to pay for someone doing 50-75% of those hours
Great resource: Personal Math with Greg & Taylor
Ask example ICPs in your network to react to your pricing
If a prospect declines your proposal vaguely, ask for feedback on why the proposal didn’t land (“can you share your POV on my pitch, including my value prop and pricing?”)
Don’t ever stop talking about this, so your intel stays fresh
A word on feedback: not all of it is created equal. If someone giving you feedback is not your ICP, isn’t selling to your ICP, or deeply understands your ICP, ignore them.
What does the market think?
Activity: Market signals
Outputs: Get feedback from trusted networks
Building on my advice in each of these sections, the most important aspect of selling yourself effectively is to get constant feedback from trusted sources. Here is a framework you can implement now, whether you’re close to taking the leap to fractional or dipping your toes:
Find your hype house and accountability partners
Most likely you’re going to market as a solo consultant, not as an agency. Establish a small circle of people who are rooting for you and can help you by providing feedback, connections, re-shares of your LinkedIn content, and accountability.
My circle is a combination of former colleagues (shout out to my OG Brex PMM group text), fellow consultants (many of whom are in adjacent areas for recommending one another), key superconnectors who I check in with twice yearly to stay on their radar, and a dedicated accountability partner (thank you, Jen).
Strive to be helpful and insightful
The 30 minutes you spend helping someone else almost always pays off down the road. I’ve spent the last ~25 years getting to know others by being curious about how I can help them. The most important traits you can have in a consultative role are being universally helpful (“I just read an article about how AI agents are the top 2025 marketing trend, I’ll share it after this call”) and refreshing (“Why do you think that problem exists in your company today?”)
Start now
Don’t think of being fractional as a totally separate stage from your full-time job. Instead, view it as a continuum you select from, based on what lifestyle you want to have in a certain life phase. Nailing all your Ps will help you regardless of being FT or PT. Every time you ask for feedback from your network, you’re becoming top of mind for them as a potential fractional (even if you haven’t landed your first client). Every time you ask a former colleague to articulate your superpower, you’re gaining confidence that can be applied universally to all kinds of job-seeking.
Most importantly, you can swing between FT and PT work as often as you want or need to. In case you’ve missed it, I don’t believe in arbitrary, outdated rules like “you have to stay at a really *hitty workplace at least a year otherwise recruiters will judge you” or maxims like “the best time to look for a job is when you have a job.”
You start now because knowing your value can never start too early.
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Where do you need the most help?
Positioning
Marketing / branding
Pricing
Getting market signals / getting in front of folks
This is one of the sharpest breakdowns I’ve seen on the realities of going fractional. Positioning yourself objectively is tough because you’re too close to the work. Most people struggle to articulate their value (me included).