Pricing Your Expertise

What this is for

You've been asked "what do you charge" and either guessed too low, hedged with a range so wide it meant nothing, or went quiet and let them name a number first. This is for setting a price before that conversation happens, and for saying it without talking yourself back down.

Before you start

• Know the outcome the client actually wants, not the task you'll perform to get there.
• Decide in advance: day, project, retainer, or outcome pricing? Each needs a different prompt below.

The floor: four lines of arithmetic before anything else

Before value math, market data, or scripts, know the number below which this work doesn't work:

1. Target annual income from this work: [e.g. $150,000]
2. Realistic billable days per year. Not 250. A solo consultant runs 40-50% utilization once selling, admin, and empty weeks are counted, so start from 100-120 days.
3. Floor day rate = line 1 ÷ line 2. ($150,000 ÷ 110 days = about $1,365/day.)
4. Floor project price = floor day rate × honest days the project takes, including the meetings, revisions, and email.

Everything below is about pricing above this floor. If a client conversation heads under it, the answer is a smaller scope, not a smaller rate.

Day rate vs. project vs. retainer vs. outcome

• Day rate is easiest to quote and worst for you. It caps income at your calendar and invites the client to measure your worth in hours.
• Project pricing (fixed fee, defined scope) rewards speed and experience: the faster you do it, the higher your effective rate. Default for most consulting work.
• Retainer (fixed monthly fee for ongoing access) is right when the client needs availability, not one deliverable. Price it on value of access, not hours spent.
• Outcome pricing (fee tied to a result) has the highest ceiling but only works when you can measure and roughly control the outcome. Don't offer it if the client controls variables you don't.

Hourly billing punishes you for getting faster. Every hour experience saves you is an hour of revenue you just gave away.

What things cost: honest anchors

Ranges for experienced (15+ years) independent professionals selling to US businesses, wide because market, industry, and reputation move them. Treat these as sanity checks against underpricing, verify against Prompt 2's research for your niche, and remember the floor math above outranks all of them:

Engagement shape	Typical range
Fractional executive retainer (2-3 days/week equivalent)	$5,000-$15,000/month
Advisory retainer (access + monthly cadence, not delivery)	$1,500-$5,000/month
Defined project (4-8 weeks, one outcome)	$5,000-$50,000 by scope and stakes
Day rate, senior operator	$1,500-$4,000
Paid diagnostic/audit (the small first engagement)	$1,000-$5,000

The pattern worth noticing: the smaller the engagement, the more people underprice it. A $2,500 diagnostic that takes you two days is not "expensive"; it's a client paying $1,250 a day for judgment that took 25 years to build, and it's the cheapest way they will ever find out what's wrong.

Prompt 1: Value framing

Use either model. This is reasoning over information you provide, not research.

ROLE: You are a pricing strategist who prices consulting engagements
based on client value, not consultant effort.

CONTEXT: I am pricing an engagement.
- What the client is trying to fix: [THE PROBLEM, e.g. 11-day average
  support ticket resolution time; their biggest client threatened to
  leave over it]
- Cost if they don't fix it: [THE STAKES, e.g. that client is worth
  $180,000/year, and support complaints caused two other client losses
  this year]
- Value if they fix it: [THE UPSIDE, e.g. retaining that one client
  alone is worth $180,000/year, plus churn reduction across 40 other
  accounts]
- What I'd do and how long: [THE WORK, e.g. audit ticketing workflow,
  redesign escalation rules, train two team leads, 4 weeks]

CONSTRAINTS:
- Anchor on the client's cost of inaction and value of the fix, not my
  time or effort.
- Give a value range (low/high), not a single number, and show your
  math.
- Flag which numbers are solid versus your assumptions.
- If the value math is weak or speculative, say so instead of
  inflating it.

OUTPUT FORMAT:
1. A one-paragraph value statement in plain language.
2. A value range in dollars with math shown.
3. A suggested price as a percentage of the low end (typical: 10-20%
   of first-year value).
4. One sentence flagging any weak assumption.

Prompt 2: Comparable-rate research

Use a tool with live web search (Perplexity, or ChatGPT when its search engages). One warning that outranks everything else in this prompt: rate data is exactly where AI research invents numbers. Survey data is inconsistent, marketplace rates are partly paywalled, and a model asked for numbers will produce confident, sourced-looking figures either way. The constraint below is the guardrail; your job is to click every link it returns.

ROLE: You are a research assistant compiling current market rates for
independent consultants.

CONTEXT: My work: [YOUR NICHE, e.g. fractional VP of Operations,
manufacturing companies $20M-$80M revenue, 6-12 week engagements].
Location: [REGION, e.g. Midwest US, clients often national].
Comparable rates I want: [COMPARISON GROUP, e.g. fractional operations
executives and manufacturing consultants].

CONSTRAINTS:
- Search actual published data: industry surveys, marketplace rate
  cards, recent articles with real numbers.
- Every data point must include a working link to its source. If you
  cannot provide a link for a number, do not include the number.
- Report a range, not a single number, with source and date for each
  data point.
- Separate day-rate, project-fee, and retainer data. Don't average
  across models.
- If you can't find data for my exact niche, use the closest adjacent
  category and say so explicitly.

OUTPUT FORMAT: A table: Pricing model | Rate range | Source link |
Date. Then two sentences on where my planned price falls in range.
My planned price: [YOUR NUMBER, or "none yet"]

Prompt 3: The script for saying the number and holding the pause

Use either model. Rehearsing language, not researching.

ROLE: You are a negotiation coach who helps senior professionals quote
prices without hedging, apologizing, or over-explaining.

CONTEXT: My price is [YOUR NUMBER, e.g. $6,000] for [ENGAGEMENT, e.g.
a 6-week operations audit and 90-day plan]. I undercut myself by
[YOUR HABIT, e.g. offering a discount before they respond].

CONSTRAINTS:
- Write the exact sentence for "what do you charge," not a paragraph
  of options.
- After the price, instruct me to stop talking. One-line stage
  direction, not more sales copy.
- Address my specific undercutting habit directly with an alternative.
- No filler like "just to give you an idea." State the price flatly,
  as fact.

OUTPUT FORMAT:
1. The exact line to say the price.
2. A one-line stage direction for after (e.g. "Stop talking. Let them
   respond first.").
3. Three follow-ups: they go quiet / "let me think about it" / "can
   you do less."

Terms are part of the price

The number is half the quote; the terms are the other half, and they're where first engagements go sideways. Four defaults to state up front:

• Deposit: 30-50% to start, non-refundable once work begins. A client who won't pay a deposit is telling you how invoices will go.
• Invoice timing: the remainder on delivery for projects under 6 weeks; monthly for anything longer. Net 15, not net 45.
• Scope creep: "That's outside what we scoped; I'll send a price for it" is a complete sentence. Say it the first time, not the third.
• Kill fee: if they cancel mid-engagement, the deposit is retained and work delivered to date is billed. In writing, before you start.

How to raise a rate on an existing client

Tell them before the invoice, not on it. Give the true reason (scope grew, market moved, you've been underpriced since year one), give 30-60 days' notice, and state the new number as fact: "Starting [DATE], my rate for this work is [NEW NUMBER]." Save the pushback scripts below for their response. Don't pre-negotiate against yourself in the notice.

The three most common pushbacks: exact language

"That's more than we expected."
-> "I understand. Here's what's in scope for that number. Tell me what
   you'd want cut, and I'll tell you what that does to the outcome."

"Can you do it for less?"
-> "I can, if we reduce the scope. Here's a version at [LOWER NUMBER]
   that includes [SMALLER SCOPE] instead."

"We usually pay hourly."
-> "I don't work hourly. It charges you for how long something takes
   me, not for what you get. This price is for the outcome."

Where this goes wrong

• You quote a range instead of a number. A spoken range invites the client to anchor low. Do the value math, then quote one number with tiers around it.
• You explain the price before anyone objects. Justifying your rate first signals you don't believe it. State it, then stop.
• You use rate research to lower your number instead of raise it. Most people search hoping for permission to charge less. Use it to check you're not underpriced, and let the floor math, not the market table, set your minimum.

The 2-minute version

Do the four-line floor calculation. Run Prompt 1 with real numbers from your last conversation. Take the suggested price (checked against the anchor table and your floor). Say the exact line from Prompt 3 out loud once, alone. Send the number today. When it's time to put the offer on one page, the Fractional One-Pager is the next step.

---

Want to know where you actually stand with AI? The free AI Readiness Assessment takes 10 minutes and gives you a personalized roadmap.

Weekly, on Tuesdays. The Gen Xcelerator: practical AI intelligence for people who already know how to do the job. Subscribe free.

Experience Is the API. GenXcelerate