Читать книгу Value-Based Fees - Alan Weiss - Страница 34

Back in the pre-Accenture days when Arthur Anderson had a consulting division, I was hired to help it's placement practice convert to value-based fees. The partner in charge was highly amenable, and so were his people.

At one point we finally landed a huge account for over $400,000 with a value-based fee. The company's accountants refused to post the business, and insisted on hourly fees that could fit inside their “standard boxes” on the spread sheets. Using the old hourly billing, the sale could only be justified at $157,000. The managing partner asked what he should do.

I told him to go to his boss, the managing partner, and ask if he'd prefer $157,000 in neat boxes, or a messy $400,000 with a lot of footnotes all over the spread sheet. His boss opted for the mess and told the accountants to make it happen.

Taking a percentage of some arbitrary figure is no better than time unit billing. Why not be paid for the true value you bring? If you don't believe that, the client won't either.

Professions that focus on commodity billing—be they legal, financial, architectural, search, design, consulting, or any other—are those that don't believe their own value proposition in terms of client outcome and therefore can't adequately make a case for it.