An argument, not a policy
Why we publish our rates
Almost nobody in this trade does. The reasons given are about flexibility and value-based pricing. The real one is simpler and less flattering, and it is worth saying out loud.
The reason nobody publishes
A fee that is only revealed after you have spent an hour explaining what is wrong with your business is a fee that has been arrived at partly from what is wrong with your business. That is not a conspiracy and mostly it is not even conscious — it is what happens when a number is set by one party who has just learned how much the problem is costing the other. The industry describes this as pricing to value. From the buying side it is indistinguishable from pricing to desperation, and the two are impossible to tell apart from the outside, which is the whole difficulty.
What publishing actually costs us
Two things, and they are real. The first is that some businesses read $2,200 a day and never telephone, including a few we could have helped and a few who would have been fine with the total once they had seen the shape of the work. The second is that we cannot charge one client more than another for the same days, which is a constraint most firms in this trade would not accept.
We take both, because the alternative costs more in a way that does not show up on an invoice: the first meeting becomes a negotiation, and everything said in it is heard as positioning.
What it buys
- The first meeting can be about the business, because the money question already has an answer
- You can work out the fee yourself before you call, and several people do and then call anyway
- We can say "this is not worth doing" without it costing us a negotiation we had already half-won
- Nobody discovers in week three that the number moved
The same argument applied to everything else
Publishing a rate is easy compared with publishing the boundary. The page that says what we will not do, and which kind of professional each of those belongs to, costs us more enquiries than the rates page does — and it is the page most likely to be read by somebody who then rings about something we can do. Both pages exist for the same reason: a firm whose website only says the flattering things has told you nothing you can use.
What we do not do, and who we send you to
Every fee here is a rate times a number of days. Every fee on this site is a day rate multiplied by a number of days, and both numbers are printed. A partner day is $2,200, a blended day is $1,800 and a consultant day is $1,400. There is nothing else: no retainer to be quoted later, no percentage, no success fee.
$2,200 a partner day · ninety minutes free · about one in four we talk out of it
Start with the assessment, or just telephone
The assessment takes about four minutes and gives you a written summary of what your answers suggest and which engagement addresses each thing. It is indicative and not professional advice, and it is a better opening than a blank contact form. If you would rather skip it, the telephone works and the first meeting is ninety minutes and free.