January 15, 2025

How do you transition an hourly client over to value pricing?

TL;DR:

It’s wicked hard.

• They don’t think of you the way you want them to
• It’d kind of like being in the friend zone
• Probably easier to find new clients who don’t have you pigeonholed in the wrong place

BUT if you love the client or whatever, and want to give it a try, here are some tactics for you:

1. Quietly lay the ground work while still billing hourly
   • Try to gain more access to business people (e.g., founder, president, ceo, sales director) vs tech people (dev lead, dev manager, project manager, cto, even cio)
   • Start probing for business cases behind specific requests
   • Politely offer alternative solutions when they occur to you
2. Wait for an opportunity to quote a new chunk of work
   • Pull your business contacts into the “scope” meeting
   • Have The Why Conversation to get at the desired business outcomes
   • Present a proposal with both an hourly estimate and a fixed price
3. What you SHOULD NOT do:
   • Don’t barge into their office and say “So, we’re going to do value pricing from now on!”
   • Don’t try to explain what value pricing is
   • Actually, don’t mention value pricing at all; just say you’ll give them a fixed price for the project

Hope this helps!

Yours,

—J

BackRandomNext