September 18, 2025
Measuring Intangibles
If you can detect a thing, you can measure it.
Here are some things that you can detect:
- Pain
- Stress
- Happiness
- Love
- Satisfaction
- Trust
- Credibility
- Risk
All of these things can be measured.
The measurement might not be exact.
The measurement might not be scientific.
But the measurement can still be useful.
Let’s take pain, for example...
Even though it is a mysterious and intangible thing, it wouldn’t take a genius to devise a test to measure an increase or decrease of physical pain.
What does this have to do with pricing, you ask?
To set a value-based price, you need to know what needle the client is paying you to move.
It could be something fairly tangible (e.g., top-line revenue) or it could be something fairly intangible (e.g., brand reputation).
Whatever the case, if you don’t know what the needle is, you can’t set a price based on value.
Yours,
—J