September 19, 2020

Reader question: “How do I value price positioning?”

Fellow list member Pranav Kale wrote in with a question related to my Value Pricing Calculator about how to value price something like positioning (shared with permission):

This is lovely Jonathan.

I have a question, which I am sure has been asked to you multiple times. I respect your time, so you can just point my to a resource that might answer this question.

How do you determine the total value of the project if the client cant put a number to it? If I am doing conversion optimization, then yes, I can give a number to the project. But what if I am helping the client with his positioning? It’s not measurable in short-run.

—Pranav

Yes, I have been asked this question a lot, but that’s fine! I’m happy to answer it for the rest of my life because it fundamental to my mission to rid the world of hourly billing :-)

Everything - literally everything - can be measured usefully. Not measured exactly, but measured usefully.

For more on this, read the life-changing book How To Measure Anything by Douglas Hubbard.

But to answer the specific question:

Positioning is worth a lot to people who value positioning.

The trick is finding them, and then building trust with them, so they believe that you can deliver the results they desire.

Yours,

—J