Advancements in technology have helped you become more efficient, meaning that if you are still charging by the hour, you are delivering more to your clients for less money than they may have paid previously.

To increase revenue while sticking with an hourly billing model, you need to either invent more hours in the day or continually raise your hourly price—running the risk of alienating a big chunk of your client base.

The truth is, clients aren’t worried about how long it takes you to complete a task, or even how you do it. They only care about the final result—the value they receive from the work you have put in. Which is why value pricing and bundling is an obvious strategy to boost your bottom line.

The challenge though, can be persuading your clients to agree to it.

How does it impact you?

Moving to a value pricing model is a complex and involved journey. It’s no wonder so many accountants identify this as a major barrier. Many that attempt to make the transition often find themselves setting fixed fees—a set price for each service offering—as opposed to a true value pricing model—determining the price on a client-by-client basis and the value you will deliver them. Fixed fees can be an effective model, but it doesn’t offer the same flexibility as value pricing.

On your value pricing journey you might find yourself confronting obstacles when understanding who your customer is, what their perception of value will be, and being able to articulate this to them, and finally getting to the stage when you can both agree on how much they will pay for the service you will provide.

Ensuring you can handle each of these stages is essential.

What can you do about it?

Use the power of threes One of the hardest elements of value pricing is understanding how to package services in a way that will be easy for your clients to choose from while still providing the highest value to your firm.

The “power of threes” is one useful strategy. It refers to the universal truth that the vast majority, when served three different options, will gravitate towards the middle option (think Goldilocks and the Three Bears—the middle option is just right). The same technique can be used when planning your value pricing model.

Use the technique to think about which of your offerings are truly important, and what a client might consider more of a luxury. It will help you understand why your customers may be drawn to one package over another, and what they consider the most important.