Value-Based Fees: How to Charge—and Get—What You're Worth: A Guide for Consultants, Second Edition

4.2. ESTABLISHING YOUR UNIQUE VALUE

The examples show how to establish value in terms of buyer needs. A second major component of value, however, can be ascertained without the buyer's involvement, and that's your uniqueness and personal contribution.

There are three questions that you should answer in every single engagement, prior to establishing fees:

1. Why me?

2. Why now?

3. Why in this manner?

4.2.1. Why Me?

It's easy to assess your own unique value, but most consultants don't bother. If you don't do it, no one else is going to do it for you.

If there are hundreds of consultants who can do the work in question and provide the value the client requests, you are less valuable to the success of the project. But if the number of consultants who can do the work is limited, your value increases. This is basic supply and demand mentality, but in this limited instance, it works.

Here are some components of this question that can help you determine whether you are uniquely valuable or simply another fish in the school:

• Is the buyer talking to other consultants? If so, to a limited range or a great many?

• Do you possess some unique expertise or history (you "wrote the book," you once worked in the industry, you worked for the buyer in the past, or the like)?

• Have you been referred to the buyer by a trusted source?

• Are you known within the industry, or do you have a unique reputation?

• Are you at the right place at the right time (you're local, you're available to start immediately, and so on)?