Get paid for outcomes not hours

Every adviser needs to know how to get paid for outcomes not hours worked. When you’re doing a job that anyone can do, selling yourself by the hour makes some kind of sense. But when people are buying your unique Genius, don’t sell yourself by the pound.

“We get paid for outcomes, not hours Andrew!”

Early in my journey as a solo practitioner, I was engaged by a sales consultancy to do a half-day with one of their clients. I had to help the MD understand what was going wrong in his sales team. Thinking about what material I would share, I just couldn’t see how I was going to fill 3½ hours with him.

I called Charles (excellent sales coach, by the way), the principal, and shared my concern. Here’s what Charles said to me, that has informed my practice ever since:

“He’s a very busy man, I’m sure if he can get what he needs in a couple of hours and get on with his day he’ll be delighted. We get paid for outcomes, not hours Andrew!”

Selling Genius by the Pound

If you’re my sort of vintage, you’ll recognise the Genesis album there (“Selling England by the Pound”) – but I digress. Or do I – one of the first verses on the album ends with “For her merchandise, he traded in his prize” – is that you selling your Genius by the pound?

I often speak about the value of working hard at your Genius. But that doesn’t mean there’s a simple equation between the hours you put in and the value you create. In fact, when you’re working in your Genius, you can often create enormous value in a short space of time.

The more hours = more value concept stems from the old protestant work ethic idea that if you get paid well for it, you should put in the hours. But that’s just wrong. I believe it’s more likely that it’s the stuff you can do with ease (and fun) that produces the best outcomes for your clients. So why shouldn’t you get paid for outcomes not hours, if more ease and fun = more value!

Avoid the time for money trap – get paid for outcomes not hours

A big challenge for us coach and consultant types is avoiding the time for money trap. It’s said there are two ways to use your time well and get paid more. One is the classic leverage play – doing group work. You get paid by multiple people for the same hours. And the other is to invest time once and get paid for it multiple times – with info products. Once created, you don’t have to put it any more more work each time you get paid.

But I believe there’s another way to break out of the limits on your income, and that’s to charge for what you help your clients achieve, not the number of hours you put in. I know many coaches whose VIP or premium model means they can earn a very healthy income from just a few clients, because they give them increased attention, as well as time.

It’s not what you do, it’s the way that you do it

Oh, dear, I really seem to be in the lyrics of my youth today! But Bananarama had it right. If you have a powerful tool that quickly creates massive transformation for a client, it’s just plain crazy to sell it by the hour. I have tools in my armoury that can literally change a client’s life in just a few hours. Sometimes in just a few minutes. I’m sure you do too.

Now think about how your conversations with clients about what you can do for them:

“I’ve got this great tool, it’ll sort you out in a single session”

“Sounds great, how much is it for a session?”

“It’s two thousand pounds”

“How much???!! For a single session!!!”

Where can you go from there? I bet you’ve had conversations something like that.

Compare that with this approach, that sets you up to get paid for outcomes not hours:

“I can definitely help you, I’ve got lots of great tools. Here’s what we can do – whether it takes one session or loads of them, I’ll work with you until you get the outcome you’re looking for”

“Sounds great, how much will you charge?”

“Let’s say two thousand pounds, shall we?”

“That’s very reasonable, when can we start?”

Yes, I know that’s probably a bit easier than it will be in real life, but you get the idea.

But what if they don’t get the outcome?

You may feel there is a risk involved in choosing to get paid for outcomes not hours. And I agree, it is a real risk, the client may not agree they got the outcome.

I’d say two things to that. Firstly, if your stuff works, don’t worry about it, because they will. And secondly, when you work this way it’s up to you to only take on the clients who you know you can get the outcome for.

If you’re not sure about their commitment, by all means charge them by the hour. But understand that it’s the uncommitted ones who will niggle on price and not value your time. Do you really want to do lots of hours of frustrating work like that? It’s hardly you in your Genius, is it!

Having said that, you would be wise to agree some measures upfront by which you’ll both know they’ve got the outcome you’re promising. Ideally you can find some ‘hard’ objective measures – money, units of output, etc. But ‘soft’ or subjective measures will work too. You can use scores from 1-10, for example, and agree where their score needs to be for the outcome to be considered achieved.