Pricing
Three estimators priced the same job. The spread was 22%.
Estimating error doesn't cancel out across a portfolio of jobs: it selects, and the selection runs against you.
Rialto Bridge
Pricing
Articles on pricing.
Pricing
The waiting list is eleven weeks. The price hasn’t moved in two years.
A long backlog feels like proof of demand. Often it is proof that someone else is deciding who gets served,…
Pricing
The contract allows an annual uplift. It has never been applied.
Most price rises are hard because they have to be won. This one was already won, and then quietly given…
Pricing
The annual plan is 15% off. That cash costs about 35% a year.
Prepay discounts are usually priced against the cost of borrowing. That is the wrong benchmark, and it flatters the offer…
Pricing
The price rise went out in January. Nobody complained.
Silence after a price increase gets read as vindication. It is really a measurement, and there are four very different…
Pricing
Sales hit target. Gross margin fell four points.
When a commission plan pays on revenue, the seller and the business are not arguing about the same number, and…
Pricing
The retainer was scoped at 20 hours. Last month it took 41.
Recurring revenue hides margin erosion better than any other commercial arrangement, because the number that moves is never the one…
Pricing
The scope changed in week three. The invoice didn’t.
Unbilled scope change rarely shows up as a loss. It shows up as a job that ran long, a customer…
Pricing
The order book is full to March. The price list is from last year.
A stretched lead time is a pricing signal that most businesses file as a scheduling problem, and the mistranslation quietly…
Pricing
The estimate was accurate on average. The jobs you won were not.
Unbiased estimating can still produce a portfolio of loss-making work, because winning a quote is not a random draw from…
Take it further
This is the general pattern. Your business is the specific case.
Everything here is free to read with an account, and always will be. What it cannot do is tell you which of these applies to your numbers, your market and your constraints. That is the work we do with clients.