The client said: “I’d like to know how many hours it takes you to do it. I like to be able to tell your costs apart from your profit.” My shoulders slumped. Sigh. The rapport seemed great, but this attempt at reducing it all down to a sterile form of calculation meant that he still didn’t get it. Okay, back to square one, tactfully trying to redirect this conversation back to the point.
The point is, it’s just not as simple as expensive components make for expensive products and form “fair value”, everything else is “profit”.
While mostly true for products, that statement is grossly inapplicable for expertise.
Medicines are much more than just complex candy.
I have seen experts save clients from paying thousands of dollars of man-hours, legal fees, missed revenue, or grief counseling with a single, 40-minute advisory session or task. Heaps of value, while the only costs were a few puffs of air. It took 20 years of practice to get that ability of course, but none of it was really expended in giving advice.
_
Adding gold dust to a painkiller would just pollute the solution, despite the resulting cost of components being higher._ So any attempt at hand-waving away expertise services as “same as products, but thinner” is just dead wrong.
This week, go and draft 3 value-focused responses you can use when asked ‘How long will this take?” type of question. You will be glad you did.