Setting the correct rates is always a big challenge for consultants, coaches and freelancers who offer more than commodities. Low rates make the service cheap and do only build trust if quality can be guaranteed. High rates might deter customers, on the other side they make them curious: how can this consultant/coach be so expensive and find customers anyway?
This is where the price collapses. This tension forces many dedicated professionals—from specialized developers to master craftsmen—into an incoherent “Pricing Whiplash”, pulling them between undercharging for comfort and overcharging with fragile justifications. The pricing slogan slingers preach an unjustified high price, ignoring the fact that this high rate is merely an invitation for scrutiny that often ends in client dissatisfaction and churn. The true strategic question is not how high to charge, but how to build a pricing structure so transparent and evidence-based that clients trust the premium. This is why we developed the Value Sensitivity Check™ (VSC): a systematized framework that gives the abstract concept of price elasticity a new meaning by anchoring your fee to the best available knowledge for applying it and protecting your price with unassailable transparency.
Prospects might look at the quality assurances of the expensive coach/consultant and search for any signs of overvaluing the services.
From Hourly Trap to Appropriate Value
The root of pricing difficulty for consultants lies in a fundamental misalignment of incentives.
The Problem: The Hourly Trap
Coming from the world of craftsman and technical service many consultants and coaches apply hourly rates, calculated by costs with some surcharge. This leaves no room for productivity enhancements, instead the incentive is to stretch hours.
This hourly model, inherited from skilled trades, creates a zero-sum game: the client pays for time, and the consultant is punished for efficiency. This is the ultimate Trust Killer.
The Solution: Fixed Prices and Shared Value
Craftsmen and other technical suppliers offer fixed prices for bigger projects. This gives incentives to make productivity gains whose financial results get in the long run shared between buyer and producer seller.
These fixed prices are also known as value-based pricing. The value of the service gets shared between buyer and seller, the consultant and coach.
This shifts the focus to outcome, aligning incentives and building trust. However, the move to value-based pricing creates a new challenge for intangible services:
or a consultant who offers his service: where from do I know how the value of my service for the buyer. This leaves a lot of room for wild estimates, leaving money on the table and unsucsessful offers.
The Value Sensitivity Check bridges your value with your clients expectations
The Pricing Slogan Slingers offer no rigorous answer to this uncertainty, telling you only to guess higher. Our goal is to provide a structured, evidence-based process that replaces guesswork with confidence.
My Value Sensitivity Check™ is a bridge to solve these problem. Based on price elasticity considerations it offers a secure network to make the price a good fit between trust, cost for the supplier and value for the buyer.
The VSC™ is the systematic framework that closes the gap between cost calculation and value estimation by forcing the consultant to build an unassailable justification into their price structure.
The Link: Validating Macro-Price with Micro-Signals
The client’s mind needs to reconcile the large, abstract claim of an appropriate premium price (derived from market size and value) with their personal, visceral need to trust the seller. They do this by performing an unconscious, micro-level market research audit on the consultant.
1. The Macro-Claim (The Economic Justification)
This is the logical justification for the high price, based on objective data:
- Input: Public economic data (market size, failure rates, cost of alternatives).
- Goal: To prove the service is necessary and worth the investment (i.e., the cost of failure is high).
2. The Micro-Signal (The Trust Validation)
This is the psychological justification, based on personalized connection:
- Input: Small, unexpected details about the consultant’s process, interests, or style.
- Goal: To prove the consultant is competent, authentic, and understands my specific world.
The Micro-Signals that Build Trust
These “little pieces” are the evidence that the consultant has the necessary Market Power (expertise and process) to manage the client’s risk. They are subtle market research signals that you must strategically integrate into your communication.
The three-language questionaire for the Value-Sensivity Check you can find here. The languages are English, German and French. My answers and evalutions are in the language you prefer to have it.
