Pricing a service
The five pricing modes applied to work rather than goods, why "on request" costs you more enquiries than you think, and how to publish a number when every job is different.
Every service business says the same thing: it depends. That is true, and it is not a reason to publish nothing.
A buyer with no number cannot tell whether you are in their universe, so they enquire with the supplier who gave them one — or they do not enquire at all.
The five modes
The mode tells a buyer how to read the number.
| Mode | What it says | Where it fits services |
|---|---|---|
| Fixed | This is the price | Productised work — an audit, an inspection, a defined package |
| Starting from | The floor, and it rises | Scoped engagements with a real minimum |
| Range | It falls between these | Work whose cost varies with a knowable factor |
| On request | Ask and we will price it | Genuinely bespoke work |
| Not disclosed | We do not publish | Where publishing harms your position |
The case against defaulting to "on request"
It is the honest answer for genuinely bespoke work. It is also the default that costs service businesses the most enquiries, for a reason worth spelling out.
A buyer comparing four suppliers, three of whom published a range, has to spend credits on an enquiry to find out whether you are affordable. Some will. Most will start with the three they can already evaluate, and you are in the round they never reach.
A range you can defend beats a blank you cannot
"Between these two numbers, depending on scale and site conditions" tells a buyer whether to proceed. It is not a quote and nobody treats it as one.
Publishing a number when every job is different
Find the unit that actually drives your cost
Per day, per person-day, per site, per square metre, per audit, per user, per month. Most service businesses have one even if they have never written it down.
Price that unit, not the project
The project varies. The unit usually does not, and a buyer can multiply.
Say what moves it
Travel, out-of-hours work, site conditions, scale. Naming the variables is what makes a range credible rather than evasive.
Productise the entry point
Many service businesses have one thing they do the same way every time — an initial assessment, a survey, a defined first engagement. Publish that one at a fixed price even if nothing else is fixed.
It converts "it depends" into a way in.
Variants for services
The variant mechanism works here too, and it is underused.
Service tiers are variants: a basic and an extended version of the same engagement, an annual and a monthly commitment, on-site and remote delivery of the same work.
Each carries its own price and its own unit. A buyer who can see three tiers can place themselves; one shown a single "contact us" cannot.
Minimums
A minimum engagement size is the service equivalent of a minimum order quantity, and it saves everyone the same wasted enquiry.
A buyer with a two-day job approaching a firm whose minimum is a fortnight should find that out from the listing, not from a declined enquiry you both paid for.
Payment terms
Whether you take an advance, whether you invoice on milestones, what your terms are.
Buyers price terms whether or not you state them, and on services the cash-flow shape is often as commercially significant as the headline number.
The thing to remember
Whatever you publish is not a quote. It is the information a buyer needs to decide whether talking to you is worth their credits.
Set it so the enquiries you receive are from people who could actually afford the work — which is the same thing as saying: set it so you spend fewer credits declining.