I'm not sure if I agree with your terminology; I call myself a consultant, and have been doing it full-time for more than 15 years.
However, I'm mostly intrigued by the idea of value-based consulting. I've spoken with colleagues about it in the past, and the concept makes sense to me, and is much more attractive than billing out by the hour or day. But it's not at all obvious to me how I would price, in a value-based way, the work that I do for my clients.
It seems to me that some jobs are more appropriate for value-based pricing than others, but if people could give some examples of how it works, that would be really helpful.
This is a large topic, but I can recommend the book Million Dollar Consulting by Alan Weiss as a good starting point.
More immediately, you might ask whoever is buying your services for some insight into how your tasks fit into their business goals and the ROI they expect to get from the $ they spend on you. Someone at their org should have this. If not, you get to help them develop such a model which will likely be favorable to you.
Note that you will have to work with the business side to make value-based pricing work at all.
A few books that helped me keep my soul and be productive in consulting:
Crack my head open for re-flashing
- An open heart - Dalai Lama
- Love is the Killer App - Tim Sanders
- The Man who mistook his Job for a life
Consulting:
- High Impact Consulting - This book taught me to only do tiny but really painful items for new customers to build momentum. By getting short term, high impact/pain point items out of the way, it clears the table to say "This consultant has learnt my business and why we do things the way we do". Big projects land themselves. I call it dating before I get married.
If we're wanting to call the categories something else I can respect and probably agree with that.
All I know is most people start as freelancers, become contractors (more focused in an area), lead into consultants (enough focused experience to give advice and oversee it).
I've included one way I value based price above. It's simple, makes sense for everyone, and is measurable.
Comments
I'm not sure if I agree with your terminology; I call myself a consultant, and have been doing it full-time for more than 15 years.
However, I'm mostly intrigued by the idea of value-based consulting. I've spoken with colleagues about it in the past, and the concept makes sense to me, and is much more attractive than billing out by the hour or day. But it's not at all obvious to me how I would price, in a value-based way, the work that I do for my clients.
It seems to me that some jobs are more appropriate for value-based pricing than others, but if people could give some examples of how it works, that would be really helpful.
This is a large topic, but I can recommend the book Million Dollar Consulting by Alan Weiss as a good starting point.
More immediately, you might ask whoever is buying your services for some insight into how your tasks fit into their business goals and the ROI they expect to get from the $ they spend on you. Someone at their org should have this. If not, you get to help them develop such a model which will likely be favorable to you.
Note that you will have to work with the business side to make value-based pricing work at all.
A few books that helped me keep my soul and be productive in consulting:
Crack my head open for re-flashing
- An open heart - Dalai Lama
- Love is the Killer App - Tim Sanders
- The Man who mistook his Job for a life
Consulting:
- High Impact Consulting - This book taught me to only do tiny but really painful items for new customers to build momentum. By getting short term, high impact/pain point items out of the way, it clears the table to say "This consultant has learnt my business and why we do things the way we do". Big projects land themselves. I call it dating before I get married.
+1 for the dating before getting married metaphor
If we're wanting to call the categories something else I can respect and probably agree with that.
All I know is most people start as freelancers, become contractors (more focused in an area), lead into consultants (enough focused experience to give advice and oversee it).
I've included one way I value based price above. It's simple, makes sense for everyone, and is measurable.