The ways to work with me now live in WhatsApp. Openly.
I rebuilt my WhatsApp Business catalog into a seven-item ladder of ways to work together — from a free snapshot to ongoing leadership. Value first, with the budget clarity companies plan by.
More of my business development starts in a messaging thread than anywhere else. Someone gets my number at an event or through a referral, opens WhatsApp, and forms a first impression before they ever see a website. For months, what they found there was two stale catalog items that no longer matched how I work.
Last week I rebuilt it properly: seven items, three collections — each one a concrete way of working together, with the output it delivers and, where it has one, an open price.
The ladder, not the list
The structure matters more than the items. The first collection is start here: a free outside-in snapshot of your marketing, a CHF 299 working session, and a fixed-price marketing health check. The second is ongoing leadership — fractional engagements starting from CHF 3,500 a month. The third is projects and interim, where the honest answer is "it depends," so it says on request.
Two decisions in that ladder are deliberate, and both would have been invisible if I'd just listed services. The entry session is priced below my standard hourly rate on purpose — it's a low-friction way to work together once and see what that's like, not a profit center. And I retired an old mid-priced interim item that sat below my monthly floor, because a muddled middle option makes every rung harder to understand. Ladders invite a next step; menus ask people to guess.
Value first — but budgets are how companies think
I care much less about broadcasting cost than about communicating value: what each engagement produces, what changes for the client, what impact it has. But here's the practical reality — companies plan in budgets. Somewhere in every client organization, someone has to map "working with Remco" to a budget line for a project or a topic. If the entry points are visible, with outcomes attached and honest numbers next to them, that mapping takes minutes instead of three exploratory calls. That saves their time as much as mine.
It's the same logic I use in proposals — every hour in the quote, visible. McKinsey's work on B2B buying keeps landing on the same three things buyers reward — speed, transparency, and expertise — and finds most buyers now comfortable making serious decisions through remote and self-serve channels. An open, browsable set of ways to work together, inside the chat app the conversation already lives in, is exactly that.
Being easy to budget for is part of being easy to work with.
A catalog is a conversation starter, not a checkout
One reality check for anyone copying this in Switzerland: WhatsApp has no payments here, so prices are display-only. That turns out to be fine. Meta's catalog feature puts a browsable overview inside the chat — tens of millions of people browse business catalogs on WhatsApp every month — but for a services business the job isn't checkout. Nobody buys leadership from a product tile, and they shouldn't. The job is that the "message business" button sits directly under a clearly described offer, so the conversation starts with shared expectations instead of a guessing game.
This also fits how I think about selling the risk away rather than the dream: a free snapshot, a small paid session, a fixed-price check — each rung earns the next. Nobody jumps from a first hello to a monthly engagement, and the catalog stops pretending they do. If you're wondering how the ongoing numbers themselves get set, I've written about budgeting for fractional leadership separately.
Where the AI came in, and where it didn't
The build itself was AI-assisted end to end: the assistant drove the browser, created all seven items, built the collections, and generated the thumbnails. The judgement calls were mine, and there were more than I expected. I rejected the entire first visual style — dark, corporate-looking tiles that read as an agency, not a person — and two clichéd images after that. I set the entry price, chose what to retire, and decided that the network of senior specialists I work with appears as a capability, not a separate product line. The machine did the hours; the leverage was knowing what a senior services brand should feel like in a two-inch thumbnail.
Total elapsed time, including two full style rejections: one working session. Now, when someone new opens that chat, the question that actually matters — how could we work together, and what would it take? — is already answered, openly.
It's not a shop. It's an open door, with the ways in clearly marked.
Sources & further reading
External:
McKinsey — B2B sales: Omnichannel everywhere, every time
Meta for Business — WhatsApp Catalog
Related posts:
I put every hour in the quote. Clients argue less when they can see the working.
No traffic numbers? Sell the risk away instead.
How do I budget for fractional leadership?
The death of generic AI