A recent Wall Street Journal article offers up some interesting observations on ways professional services organizations are charging their clients. Seems the long-held tradition of billing by the hour is under serious review. According to the author, Rita Gunther McGrath, “value-based pricing represents the most obvious alternative.” It’s about time.

To implement value-based pricing, it helps to know what kind of value you are creating in the first place. That can be a challenge to organizations used to the time and effort (and materials) basis of determining the worth of their products and services. It is especially difficult (nearly impossible, really) without knowing how your customers benefit from what they buy from you. Do you know?

How are the circumstances of your customers improved because of their relationship with you? What problems are solved, opportunities exploited, goals met or exceeded? How are you helping customers operate more smoothly and with increased efficiency? What are you taking off their plate so they can concentrate on other, more pressing matters?

In other words, your customers don’t buy what you provide, they buy what it does for them. The most enduringly successful organizations make it a habit of knowing this.   

By shifting to the unique value economy, organizations focus on the actual results and benefits they provide to clients, ensuring that pricing reflects the true worth of their solutions rather than simply their time, effort, and materials.

This approach not only incentivizes innovation and creative problem solving, but it also creates stronger customer relationships, as clients see a direct correlation between their investment with you and measurable results for them.

Value-based pricing enables organizations to prioritize what matters most: delivering distinctive, unique value that sets them apart from the competition and makes them an essential, trusted, reliable partner with their best customers. That unique value is where profits are made.

To make customer analysis part of your strategy and planning process, download my free eBook, “Strategy & Planning” at ajstrategy.com/snp, contact me at joe@ajstrategy.com or visit my website at ajstrategy.com