Value-Based Fees: How to Charge—and Get—What You're Worth: A Guide for Consultants, Second Edition

4.6. CHAPTER ROI

• Conceptual agreement is at the heart of the value-based billing process. Any time invested in gaining conceptual agreement, based on a trusting relationship with a true economic buyer, will actually speed the sale at higher margins.

• Your own uniqueness is an essential component that only you can calculate. But it's as much based on self-esteem and self-belief as it is on any pragmatic background or history.

• The reciprocity of the "good deal" creates the win-win dynamic. The client deserves a good deal, but so do you. One is incomplete without the other.

• The "choice of yeses"—options—is the key tactic in moving a buyer to a consideration of value-based fees, and the propensity will be to move upward through increasing value. Never submit a proposal without options of distinctly different value propositions.

• You have an internal assessment about your own worth that you can calculate.

Use the fee formula until you get comfortable, then let the art overtake the science. Remember that you never have to justify your fee basis to a client, and only low-level people will usually make such a demand. You only have to demonstrate the value of the outcomes. Fee setting is a time to be aggressive, not defensive.

If you can't articulate your own value, you can't very well suggest value-based fees. Look in the mirror, and practice on the toughest buyer of all. The first sale is to yourself.