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

5.2. OFFERING NEW VALUE

The most important and most effective method for converting existing clients to a value-based fee system is to offer new value. There is no reason in the world for a client to move from your hourly or daily rate to a fixed fee for the exact same value the buyer is now receiving. Think about it: if people change only in accordance with their own self-interests ("What's in it for me?"), why abandon a clear, reasonable (that is, cheap), and long-standing billing arrangement?

Well, you abandon it if a new system provides more value and better appeals to their self-interest. I'm going to say that again: Clients will abandon an old system if a new system provides more value and better appeals to their self-interest.

If you focus on nothing else, focus on that. What new value can you offer the buyer in the next phase of the project, in a new project, or in the negotiation of a new agreement that will encourage consideration of switching to a value-based system? Remember our graphic from Chapter one, repeated in Figure 5.1. We have to create a dynamic in which the buyer appreciates the greater value inherent in a new, clear set of benefits so that the investment seems extraordinarily reasonable.

Figure 5.1. Revisiting ROI

Here are some examples:

• I would pay more for postage if the postal service picked up at my door or delivered in the early morning.

• I would pay ...