Читать книгу Value-Based Fees - Alan Weiss - Страница 28

Almost any client will reasonably ask for some estimate of investment so that a proper budget can be allocated. Even with the most exacting formula, these are always only estimates, and the client's budget is actually endangered constantly.

Alanism: Money is not a resource, it’s a priority. The idea is to be such a high priority with such a great ROI that the client reallocates funds to you and away from something else.

 If, at a critical point in the project investigation, you and the client find an unforeseen critical need, how can the client appropriately budget more funds or preserve those already in place? Must you lower your hourly rate, demand additional funds, or ignore the urgency?

 The client is too often forced into a Hobson's choice: some priorities can be met but not others as the hours and days build and the meter constantly ticks away at the fixed budget.

 If there is more than one budget involved among multiple buyers, how are the funds correctly allocated? If the actions of one department demand remedial work in another, which should be properly assessed, and by how much? Not everyone is going to be happy with the decision.

As projects unfold, something has to give: Either the client will have to come up with additional funds to pay for more hours, or the consultant will have to leave work undone (or work free of charge). Why on earth get into that position?

There's one final ethical issue I want to discuss, which often doesn't arise as an ethical problem but actually is one: downward pressure on consulting fees when they are based on time and materials.

The client's natural compulsion will be to reduce one or both of the only two variables representing the buyer's costs: amount of time or amount of money per time unit. The consultant will be compelled to try to do the exact opposite. However, since the client is the only one who can say yes or no, the buyer's determination will prevail. Three bad things immediately transpire:

1 The buyer and consultant are in an adversarial position, despite working together, presumably as partners, on the same goals. One is trying to minimize involvement, and the other is trying to maximize it. Yet the point should be active collaboration toward goals, not concern about the methodology or involvement to reach the goals.

2 The buyer will want to minimize time, requiring the consultant to use fewer resources, make fewer visits, or narrow the scope. All of this may be highly detrimental to the quality of the investigation.

3 The buyer will want to minimize hourly rates, which often forces the consultant to make concessions. This, in turn, has two consequences: it endangers the “magic formula” based on the consultant's earnings needs calculations, and it tells the buyer that the consultant has padded the fees and prompts even the most benign of buyers to wonder, “How low can this person go?” (I can name that tune in two notes.)

For legitimate ethical interests, for the client and the consultant, time-and-materials billing is problematic and compromising. Not usually compromising. Always compromising.