My first client as a solo consultant was a very warm inbound. (We love those.)

But we still had a long back-and-forth about my rate.

Why?

There were a lot of pieces to the project that required my specific expertise…

But the ultimate deliverable was a course…

Which means the client thought of me as a writer…

The client was used to hiring freelance writers using…

you guessed it…an hourly rate.

And unfortunately, a low hourly rate.

I could’ve just walked away, but honestly, I really wanted to close a first client, and seemingly the only hurdle was the price.

So, synthesizing my own POV on things I’d read about hourly vs. value pricing, I put this exact slide in my proposal deck:

And we spent a good 5-10 minutes on a live call talking about it.

Looking back, it was a bit bold for me to run in and seek to educate the client on pricing methodology.

I’d use a gentler approach now.

But based on our conversation, two things shifted their thinking:

• Mentioning that hourly rates were a ‘race to the bottom’ got them thinking about the quality of the deliverable vs. the cost

• Attaching the deliverable to the lowest possible revenue upside ($55k) reframed their mental anchor about what this total project should cost, not an hourly equivalent

Result: we arrived at a fixed project fee, and I started the following week.

No time tracking, no hourly invoicing, no approval for extra time.

In fact, we never talked about hours again.

💡

-Wes