Intensive workshop · Strategy
A price is decided, not calculated
Cost sets the floor. Value and position set everything above it, and a discount settles the price without anyone calling it pricing.
- Duration
- 4 hours
- Delivery
- On site · Virtual
- Participants
- From 6 to 16 participants
- Investment
- Request a quote
Investment depends on scope, number of participants and delivery mode. We prepare a proposal at no obligation.
The problem it solves
The price of almost every small company has a history rather than a method. It was set at the beginning by looking at what the business down the road charged, adjusted once when a supplier raised theirs, and has held ever since out of habit and out of fear of losing the clients already there.
Meanwhile the structure that price was supposed to carry changed completely. People were hired, more space was leased, services that used to be thrown in became part of the job, and the price stayed where it was. The company notices late, and notices in the wrong place: in the bank, where it reads as a collections problem or a volume problem.
And there is a pricing decision taken every day that nobody files as one. The discount is authorised on a call, to close, with the best of intentions, and it stays outside every conversation about pricing because it is mentally filed under sales. A company's price list is usually a fiction. The real price is whatever comes out of that call.
What it covers
The workshop separates three decisions that in practice get taken together and badly. The first is the floor: what a price has to cover for the work to be worth doing at all, including what almost never gets charged, such as the owner's time, the rework you can predict, and the cost of being paid late. The floor does not say what to charge. It says below what it makes no sense to accept.
The second is value: what changes for the client who buys, and how much of that can be supported by something other than an assertion. The third is position: where the company sits against the client's real alternatives, which include doing nothing and doing it in-house.
The session closes where price is actually lost. Participants bring discounts they granted recently, identify what was given up and in return for what, and write a policy: who may discount, how far, against what concession, and with what record. No borrowed figures and no models. Everyone works on their own catalogue.
What participants learn
- Build the price floor for one of your own products or services, including the costs that usually go uncharged.
- Separate a value argument from a claim of quality, and support it with something checkable.
- Position the offer against the client's real alternatives, including not buying at all.
- Write a discount policy with authority, limit and concession defined.
- Decide how and when a price adjustment is communicated to existing clients.
Agenda
- The inherited price: how it was set and what it was carrying then
- The floor: what a price must cover for the work to be worth doing
- Costs that go uncharged: owner's time, rework, late payment
- Value: what changes for the client, and how to support it without adjectives
- Position against the client's real alternatives, including not buying
- The discount as a pricing decision disguised as a sales one
- Discount policy: authority, limit, concession and record
- Adjusting prices with existing clients: what is said, to whom, and in what order
What the organisation leaves with
- A price floor calculated for one of your own product or service lines.
- A value argument per offer, with the evidence that supports it identified.
- A written discount policy with authority and required concession defined.
- A communication plan for the price adjustment, with the order in which clients are approached.
Programme details
- Format
- Intensive workshop
- Also available as
- Executive talk · Workshop · Corporate training day
- Languages
- Español · English
- Includes
- Participant workbook
- Action plan
- Post-training resources
- Facilitation
- ALUD Consulting LLC — Global Business Transformation.
Who it is for
- Owners who set prices by habit or by looking at competitors.
- Sales leads with authority to discount and no written policy.
- Service firms that quote every engagement separately.
- Businesses that grew their structure without ever revisiting their price list.
Frequently asked questions
- Will you tell me what I should be charging?
- No, and anyone who does that from the outside is guessing. The workshop hands over the method and a floor calculated from the numbers you bring; how far above that floor you go is your decision and depends on your market.
- Do I need to bring financial information?
- Bring direct costs, payroll and fixed expenses, even in draft. Without them the floor gets built on estimates, and the result is good for learning the method rather than for deciding on Monday.
- What if my market competes on price alone?
- That happens, and sometimes the honest conclusion is that the offer or the segment has to change, not the price. The workshop does not promise margin where there is none; what it gives you is a way to check before competing any further.
Request this programme
Tell us the context and we will prepare a proposal tailored to your organisation. No obligation.
Working this inside the organisation
If this challenge will not be settled in one session, ALUD Consulting LLC works it as consulting: management consulting, human resources, strategy, organisational design, leadership development and business transformation.