What’s that fact?
Knowledge services are built to get better:
To become more knowledgeable to deliver more significant differences to clients.
- Why do you take CEUs?
- Or attend masterclassses?
- Read books?
- Go to conferences?
To increase your ability to make a difference to clients.
Why then would you feel obligated to something people call “price consistency”?
Price conisstency has come up recently in conversations and posts about raising prices or fees.
It’s a very end of the year thing.
My practice, and my advice to clients and all knowledge services firms is this:
Raise fees when you increase the differences you deliver to clients.
Not by the calendar.
Meaning, if you increase the differences you deliver to clients, you raise your fees no matter what time of year it is.
And people objected based on the idea that we owe clients “price consistency.”
By which they mean, “no, we can’t raise prices any old time we feel l feel like it.”
But that’s not what I said or mean.
Raise fees when you increase the IMPACTs you deliver, regardless of the time of year.
In practice this means you have engagements with specific periods of performance.
It may be one year.
But you may also do lots of work for shorter periods of time.
One month.
One quarter.
Some number of weeks.
When that period is over, you may want to create another engagement for the same client. Those who insist on price consistency would tell you the fee for the new engagement should be the same as for the first one.
But wait!
If the IMPACTs you’ll deliver in the successor engagement are more significant than in the first one, your fee should increase proportionally.
And that is real price consistency!
Prices or fees are tied to the IMPACTs you deliver. When the IMPACTs change, the fee changes.
Pricing for IMPACT takes a bit of getting used to.
Once you get used to talking with clients about IMPACT, you’ll never look back.
You’ll banish your fear of raising fees.
Look, you can be the best in your industry
But if you undercharge (“price consistency”)
You’ll struggle to make a living.
