Barbara Walters Price

Pricing Wisdom

Consulting Tips from the Million Dollar Consultant: Forty Methods to Increase and/or Protect Fees
 
  By Alan Weiss, PhD, CPAE, CSP, CMC
 
Fees remain a topic of conversation -- especially in a down economy. Here is a compilation of tips and ideas from Alan Weiss. Take a look ...
 

1. Establish value collaboratively with the client.
2. Base fees on value, not on task.
3. Never use time as the basis of your value.
4. Don't stop with what the client wants. Find out what the client needs.
5. Think of the fourth sale first. Fees are cumulative, not situational.
6. Engage the client in the diagnosis. Don't be prescriptive.
7. Never voluntarily offer options to reduce fees.
8. Add a premium if you personally "do it all."
9. If you're forced to consider fee reduction, reduce value first.
10. Provide options every time: the choice of "yeses."
11. Always provide an option that is comprehensive and over-budget.
12. As early as possible, ask the key scope question: "What are your objectives?"
13. Broaden objectives as appropriate to increase value.
14. Ensure that the client is aware of the full range of your services.
15. If something is not on your playing field, subcontract.
16. Always ask yourself, "Why me, why now, why in this manner?"
17. Determine how many options the buyer perceives other than you.
18. Use proposals as confirmations, not explorations.
19. When asked prematurely about fees, reply, "I don't know."
20. If you must lower fees, seek a quid pro quo from the buyer.
21. Do not accept troublesome, unpleasant, or suspicious business.
22. When collaborating or subcontracting, use objective apportionment.
23. Any highly-paid employee must bring in new business, not merely deliver.
24. Seek out new economic buyers laterally during your projects.
25. It is better to do something pro bono than to do it for a low fee.
26. Fees have nothing to do with supply and demand, only with value.
27. If you are unaware of current market fee ranges, you're undercharging.
28. Psychologically, higher fees create higher value in the buyer's mind.
29. Value can include subjective as well as objective measures.
30. Introduce new value to existing clients to raise fees in these accounts.
31. Do not accept referral business on the same basis (e.g., hourly) as the source.
32. When forced into phases, offer partial rebates to guarantee future business.
33. At least every two years, consider jettisoning the bottom 15% of business.
34. Start with payment terms maximally beneficial to you every time.
35. Offer incentives for one-time, full payments.
36. Never accept payment subject to conditions to be met upon completion.
37. Focus on improvement, not problem solving.
38. Provide proactive ideas, bench marking, best practices from experience.
39. Practice stating and explaining your fees.
40. Always be prepared to walk away from business.

New Article, "How to Get Started Speaking," Published

My newest column for NACVA's publication, The Value Examiner, has been published. In it you'll find wisdom from several very prominent business appraisers on how they got started speaking.  I hope you enjoy.  You can download the article from the "Free Downloads" section of the blog.

Feedback on the column, as well as ideas for future columns, are appreciated.

Happy Monday!

All marketing directors and designers should appreciate this:

Via www.PassiveAggressiveNotes.com

The man behind Comic Sans (WSJ) (again, thanks www.passiveaggressivenotes.com)

Ban Comic Sans Blog

Back to the Basics

I recently downloaded Wellesley Hills Group's whitepaper, "Five Drivers of Revenue Growth."  (Download a copy here.)  One morning before the rest of the house got up, I sat down to read it with my morning cup of coffee.

The fourth out of fifth Revenue Growth Driver is Marketing Strength.  While the text of the whitepaper recaps some of what is in their excellent book, Professional Services Marketing, it was a good reminder to me and it came at a good time. 

I had two meetings later that day with two of our firm's service groups.  Our people are among the brightest in our profession and exceedingly good at what they do - business valuation.  What they do is very analytical and they bring that analytical mindset to marketing ideas and they have a lot of them - thankfully.  Our people participate willingly and often enthusiastically in the marketing function.

One of my roles as the marketing director is to help them understand what we should be focused on.  That's how the Marketing Strength section of the whitepaper came in handy because it served as a great reminder of getting back to the basics.  Hopefully the good folks at Wellesley Hills won't mind this short excerpt because I found the reminder helpful:

Many organizations undertake massive, painful efforts to improve marketing and they find, after their efforts and budgets are depleted, that they have not achieved their goals.

Why? ...

In our experience, it's because of two reasons.  First, the organizations don't focus on what business outcomes marketing should produce for the firm.  Second, they don't ask the question, "what will it really take to get the outcomes?"

Good marketing can:

1. Create conversations with potential buyers
2. Increase your odds of winning client engagements
3. Generate higher revenue per engagement and higher fees
4. Increase affinity with actual and potential workforce

That's it.  If marketing doesn't produce these outcomes, it's not good marketing. [emphasis mine]

I hope this "back to the basics" reminder has been as helpful to you as it was to me.  It helped me recenter my thoughts during each of the service group meetings that day and we made progress. You can download your copy here.