Selling Value Instead of Time

Making the transition to a value-based way of pricing and compensation is a process, not an event. It means changing not just your practices, but your mind.  To help gauge where you are, administer this brief internal survey.  Then do it again six months later. 

Ask the key people in your firm to rate each of the following questions on a scale from 1 to 10 with 1 being "Strongly Disagree" and 10 being "Strongly Agree":

After collecting and tabulating the responses, apply the following scale to evaluate the results.

Average rating of 8.5 or above = A grade

Average rating of 6.5 to 8.4 = B

Average rating of 4.5 to 6.4 = C

Average rating of 4.4 or below = D

  1. We price our services based on a set of factors that transcend cost.
  2. We have changed our internal dialogue and language away from cost and time toward value and results.
  3. We understand that our job is to be effective, not efficient, and we work to reinforce this concept with our clients as well.
  4. We now consider a variety of different compensation agreements instead of just defaulting to the concept of selling our time
  5. We have made pricing (not costing) a core competence of the firm.
  6. We have shifted our attention away from internal measurements (time, labor, staffing plans, etc.) to external measurements (marketing outcomes, business results, shifts in consumer attitudes and behavior, etc.).
  7. We regularly precede discussions about scope of work with a discussion about scope of value (expected outcomes).
  8. We have traded the time and energy we used to spend managing time for doing a better job of managing scope.
  9. We learn from our experience in pricing assignments in an effort to do better the next time.
  10. We apply the same kind of creativity to pricing and compensation as we do to solving our clients’ marketing problems.

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