Implementing Value Pricing: A Radical Business Model for Professional Firms 1st Edition

This book will completely change how service professionals think about how they price their services. As an attorney who owns a law firm, it is difficult to break out of the methods and lingo that are driven into us beginning in law school. The billable hour is indeed broken. No one likes it. What's worse is that it's the only method customers know, so they revert back to the dollars per hour calculation when evaluating services offered. Well, changing things has to start somewhere.In this book, Ron provides everything needed to start moving your professional services organization towards value based pricing. Want to be compensated for the years of study and work you've invested in yourself? There are step by step processes outlined in the book to help you move towards this pricing structure. You could start by charging prices, not fees. Words matter.My copy is tabbed, underlined, and annotated. I've already added the Fixed Price Agreement with TIP clause into our standard engagement. I'm looking forward to using this method. Thanks!

Compelling wisdom and practical advice for firms who want to escape the billable hour model.

On a trip to China I had the opportunity to read from start to finish Ron Baker's Implementing Value Pricing book. Early on, as I read each page, I got the sensation that "I hope this book doesn't end!" The "theories" outlined in this prose are radical and very intelligently conveyed, allowing the reader to grasp these concepts in a methodical manner. As a person with a CI (continuous improvement) ideology of how to approach business (and life), I was enamored with the blend of rational and sensible concepts as delivered by Mr. Baker. Pricing time indeed makes no sense. It is NOT what the customer demands. The Customer demands service and results. Providing a Customer a price up front is respectful and professional. We want them to call us to help them with their needs, not worry about that sinking feeling of calling my advisor and watching the clock.Beyond that, tracking time is wasteful (highly against CI principals). It is inexact and therefore meaningless. As Ron shared with me, we already know our cost. Can't we be smart enough to build a business model that ensures a healthy profit. If we can't, we are in the wrong business. I've just started a new Outsourced Accounting Business. Our goal is to make our value proposition (at premium prices) so that our Customers see us as a necessity in their business and highly dependent on the value we bring to the table. I can assure you I will read this book at least 2 more times. It's like a great movie, you'll catch other insights the more you watch (read) it!I cannot praise Ron enough for delivering to us in the "professions" a mantra of which to follow as we forge forward helping our Customers succeed!Thank you again, Ron.

I purchased this book to help me with a project at work. The book neatly summarizes everything I’ve learned about pricing in the past 10 years in public accounting and then provides a very useful and specific framework for organizing that knowledge and putting it to work. Exactly what I needed and worth the price tag. What’s more, the author was INSTANTLY responsive to my question by e-mail and sent me the missing appendices immediately. I feel very good recommending this book, and Ron Baker, to any firms considering a turn away from timesheets and towards satisfying relationships with their clients.

I have always struggled with the hourly-rate system of billing, and now I understand why. I told myself that after I finished the book, I would think through how to undertake this new value pricing approach in my practice and slowly integrate it, but as I read the book, I became so excited to implement value pricing that I used it for the first time, before I finished the book, on a new project that just begged for it. It makes so much sense. I felt good about offering a fixed fee for a well-defined scope of work to my clients, called customers in the book, and my clients appreciated knowing the full price of the project up-front. I have used fixed fees on certain types of projects for years, but I always felt awkward about justifying the approach because I couldn't reconcile it with my hourly-rate mind-set, even though I know my clients like the fixed fee arrangement. Now I don't worry about trying to connect the price to a measure of time. It's a new way of thinking in my field (law), but I embrace the challenge! If you're in a field that has traditionally used the hourly-rate system of billing, I recommend you read this book to discover a new and better approach that both you and your clients/customers will like much better. Actually the term "new" is not accurate; value pricing is what the rest of the world has used forever; it's just professions like accounting and law that have gotten hung up on billing by the hour.

Were the accounting and most service based businesses need to head - move away from the trading hours for $$ mentality - but price your product/services on the value you deliver