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Part 07

Summarizing How Golding Mean Pricing Can Be Successful For You

Tim Bouchard Partner

We as vendors are always looking to protect ourselves from overworking and being under paid. The most important part of Golden Mean Pricing to me is the benefits it provides both the vendor and the client. It establishes a pricing comfort zone that both parties will be willing to work within in to build a comprehensive plan for the success of the project.

Defining Your Minimum Value Using Hourly Pricing

Using Hourly Pricing to set a floor to establish the least amount of value we can get in return for work helps us from falling into that trap. It also helps us identify clients that may not be ready to work with someone at our pricing level. This is ok: just refer them to another vendor, perhaps a budding freelancer with lower costs or a DIY website platform. Regardless of how far along in your business journey you are, some clients simply aren’t ready to work with a professional yet.

Providing a Mutually Understood Flat-Rate Quote to a Client

Clients will eternally be looking for something they understand from a service standpoint as well as a cost standpoint. Providing a project proposal that identifies a flat-rate quote will work in your favor and appeal to this client need. Business owners and managers are planners. They want to be able to forecast costs and project returns. Golden Mean Pricing helps achieve that for the client.

Outlining Deliverables and Objectives Within Budget

As a service provider you are still able to define deliverables and project objectives. Just because you are offering a flat-rate quote does not mean you are offering an open ended contract of services. Make sure you still define each aspect of the project and have an understanding with the client that these are the deliverables agreed for the cost. You may want to include an area that talks about update costs beyond the scope. If you’ve used your sales process properly (See Part 6: Using the Sales Process to Strengthen Project Pricing), you should have developed an accurate list of deliverables which will help avoid this happening too frequently. The client will also appreciate seeing what exactly they are getting for their money.

Put Yourself in the Client’s Corner

The most important benefit of Golden Mean Pricing is that by identifying a flat-rate quote within a calculated comfort zone you will increase the likelihood of your bid winning. You will avoid not being considered because of sticker shock. Staying in the game is critical. If you’ve put together a comprehensive approach to solving their problems, you’ve just put yourself in their corner. Be careful to avoid a brain dump and focus on how services can reach goals, rather than specific strategizes and examples. That understanding will help your bid stand out among the others by already working with the client before the project has even started.

A Pricing Model That Grows with You

Using the Golden Mean Pricing model has helped grow my business from an individual freelancer to a budding partnership and into a full fledged agency. We’ve been able to acquire higher profile clients with more appropriate budgets for work they are looking to complete. This has benefitted us in identifying other ways we can help them and grow with them. The flexibility of Golden Mean Pricing itself has also allowed us to continue using the model as we grow. As our hourly rate has increased, so has our floor and the types of client budgets that we’re planning within.

I encourage you to try Golden Mean Pricing out and hit me up @timbouchard on Twitter to discuss how it worked for you!