Your service catalog: package what you sell

Every enquiry starts the same way: "What do you offer and how much?" And every time, you write it out again from scratch, forget to mention the ceremony option, quote the DJ set at a different price from last month, and spend 40 minutes producing something the client reads in 2. A band without a catalog is re-inventing its product weekly.

A service catalog is the list of things you sell, each with a name, a description and a price. It is the foundation of every quote and the fastest way to raise your average booking.

Why a catalog changes the numbers

• Quotes take 10 minutes instead of 40 because you are assembling, not writing.
• Prices are consistent, which means the planner who sees 3 of your quotes trusts all of them.
• Clients add on. A named extra with a price gets chosen 30–50% of the time; an extra mentioned in passing gets asked about maybe 1 in 10.
• Members know what the band sells, so the singer at a wedding fair and the leader on email say the same thing.

Bands that move from "a price for the evening" to a catalog with 4–6 extras commonly see the average wedding booking rise by 20–30% without changing the base fee.

The structure

Three layers, and nothing else:

1. Core services: the thing they are booking. One per gig type, priced by line-up and season.

• Evening party band (5-piece): 3 × 45-minute sets, professional PA and lights for up to 150 guests, background playlist between sets. Saturday peak 2,900 EUR; Friday/Sunday 2,600; weekday/off-season 2,200.
• Corporate event band (5-piece): 2 × 60-minute sets, PA and lights, MC announcements on request. From 3,200.
• Acoustic duo: 2 × 45 minutes, small PA. From 900.
• Jazz trio, background: up to 3 hours with breaks. From 1,200.

2. Extras: things added to a core service, each priced on its own.

• Ceremony music (acoustic duo, 30 minutes plus entrance and exit songs): 450
• Drinks reception set (acoustic duo, 60 minutes): 400
• DJ service between sets and until 01:00: 350
• Additional 45-minute set: 600
• Late finish, per 30 minutes after the agreed end: 250
• Second lead vocalist: 400
• Horn section (2 players): 700
• Lighting upgrade (uplighters, dance floor wash): 300
• First dance learned outside the repertoire, in your key: 120
• Early set-up before 15:00 (for ceremonies in the same room): 200
• Travel beyond 50 km: 0.50 EUR per km per vehicle; accommodation beyond 250 km

3. Packages: 2–3 pre-built bundles for the common combinations, priced about 10% below the sum of their parts.

• "Evening": core band. 2,900.
• "Reception and party": core band plus drinks reception set plus DJ service. 3,450 (parts: 3,650).
• "All day": ceremony, drinks reception, core band, DJ service, late finish to 01:00. 4,250 (parts: 4,600).

The middle package is the one most clients choose when 3 are shown. Price it where you want the average booking to land.

Naming that sells

Names do work. Rules that hold up across markets:

• Name the outcome, not the line-up. "Reception and party" beats "Duo + 5-piece + DJ".
• Describe in the client's language. "Music from the moment your guests arrive until the last dance" rather than "continuous coverage".
• Say what is included in one line, with numbers. "3 × 45-minute sets", "up to 150 guests", "until 01:00". Vagueness reads as risk.
• No "basic". Nobody wants to book the basic package for their wedding. "Evening" or "Party" is fine.
• Keep it to 3 packages and 8–12 extras. More than that and the client stops reading.

Pricing the pieces

Price extras by the cost to deliver plus what the moment is worth, not by "a bit more":

• Anything requiring the whole band to arrive earlier (ceremony in a 5-piece band's day) is priced on the hours: 5 people × 2 extra hours plus set-up.
• Anything a subset can do (duo for the reception) is priced as that subset's rate.
• Anything with real emotional value (first dance learned) is priced above its cost and still feels cheap.
• The late-finish rate is above the per-hour average of the base fee, because the marginal hour at midnight is the expensive one.

Check the sum: a client who books everything should pay roughly 45–60% more than the evening alone, for a band that is on site 9–10 hours instead of 6. That is fair to the band and still an obvious value to the client compared with booking a ceremony musician, a reception act and a DJ separately.

For the cost side of these numbers, see how to price your band and band expenses you should track.

Seasonal and line-up variants

Do not create a separate catalog for each. Use variants inside an item: the core band has 3 prices (peak Saturday, Friday/Sunday, weekday/off-season) and 2 line-up options (5-piece, 4-piece without keys, minus one share). That is 6 combinations from one item, and the quote picks one.

Publish the season rule ("peak: Saturdays May to October and December") so the client sees why the Friday is cheaper. It moves price-sensitive bookings to the days you have free.

Keeping it current

The catalog is a living document. Review it twice a year:

• October: next year's prices (see raising your band's prices), new extras you have started offering informally, extras nobody booked (drop or rename them).
• March: after the wedding-fair season, check which packages sold and adjust the middle one.

Every quote uses the catalog version current at the time; quotes already sent keep their numbers. When the horn section leaves the band, the extra is retired the same day, not after the next client asks for it.

Do this today

1. List everything the band has ever been paid for. Most bands find 8–12 items.
2. Sort them into core, extras and packages. Price each with a number, not "from".
3. Write a one-line description for each in client language.
4. Build the three packages and check the middle one is the one you want to sell most.

Where expert.band helps

The quote catalog in expert.band is where this list lives: items with names, descriptions and prices that you assemble into quotes by section, so the ceremony option is never forgotten and the DJ set always costs the same. Update a price once and every new quote uses it. The client receives the quote as a link with the sections laid out, which is where a well-named extra earns its keep.