Chapter 3
Philosophy
What You Believe Will Inform How You Act
Value Trumps Fee
If you’re discussing price and not value, you’ve lost control of the discussion. Every buyer would love to reduce price, but very few want to reduce value.
The Gospel
You will never be successful in this business charging by a time unit. And that is because it is unfair to the client and inequitable for you.
Fees are based on value. That value can be objective and tangible or subjective and intangible. We’ll talk about conceptual agreement with buyers and creating tremendous return on investment (ROI) later in this chapter. But for now, let’s focus on what may seem like a very simple relationship but is actually misunderstood by most consultants.
Our job is to improve the client’s condition. We deserve to be paid for our contribution to such improvement. But our fees must be consistent with the best interests of the client, not solely ourselves.
The client’s condition is improved objectively (e.g., profit, margin, market share) and subjectively (e.g., stress reduction, higher repute, seamless client interfaces); it is improved professionally (teams are more productive) and personally (they won’t ask the buyer to constantly referee their conflicts).
Thus, we have the two traditional measures of improvement:
1. Objective and subjective business improvement.
2. Buyer professional and personal improvement.
Now add a third:
3. Speed of improvement.
The quicker you can improve a condition, the more ...
