Raise The Rate, Not The Count.

In the survey behind issue 31, 36.4% of consultants named rates as a top problem. Second only to finding clients. I put both on the same page last week. I used the year I filled in for issue 31. Round numbers, invented: $96,000 billed. A 10% rate rise on exactly that work, same clients, same calls, same delivery, is $9,600. Finding that $9,600 by selling more is another engagement, a pipeline, weeks of chase. One of those is a conversation. The other is a quarter.

WHAT WORKS

The method is one file and two columns.

I reused the year from issue 31, so there was nothing new to gather: $96,000 billed, invented, but the shape is the one you will find. Stop asking whether your rate is correct, which is unanswerable, and ask a smaller question instead. To reach any given number next year, what does the rate path cost and what does the count path cost?

Without the arithmetic, the answer to "am I priced right?" comes from a feeling. Nobody has pushed back on a number in a while. Invoices go out, invoices get paid, and the silence reads as a signal that the price is about right.

With it, the question is one row. At +10%, that same $96,000 of work becomes $105,600. Nothing about the week changes. No extra kickoff call, no extra scoping document, no extra invoice to chase. The calendar is identical.

The count path to the same $105,600 means delivering 10% more. More scoping, more revisions, more onboarding, more admin, and one more client who can go quiet in month four the way I described in issue 30. The revenue matches. The workload does not.

The rate path changes one number in one document. The count path changes every week of the year.

What makes it land is seeing both routes to the same destination written down together. Every rate conversation you avoid is worth a specific amount of work you agree to do instead. At +20%, the rate path gets to $115,200 in one sentence on one proposal. The count path to $115,200 is a fifth of the year, given away to win back what one sentence could have asked for.

This does not tell you how far to move. It tells you the size of the thing you are avoiding, in money, which is more than the feeling ever did.

ONE PRACTICAL IMPLEMENTATION

This takes about twenty minutes and needs no formulas.

• →Export the last twelve months of invoices from your accounting tool as CSV. Delete the client name column before it goes anywhere.
• →Paste it into whichever AI assistant you already pay for. Ask: group these lines by type of work, total each group, count each group, and show the rate per unit where one is visible.
• →Ask for the rate column: what each group totals at plus 10, plus 20, and plus 30 percent, with no change to volume.
• →Ask for the count column: how many more units of each group I would have to deliver, at today's rate, to reach those same totals.
• →Read the two columns side by side. Keep the page open when you write your next proposal.

Apply the increase to your largest group only. In most invoice files one type of work carries most of the total, so moving that one number moves nearly everything without touching the rest.

WHAT DOESN'T WORK

Judging your rate from invoices. The invoice file only contains people who said yes. I built an inbox cap once that counted rows scanned rather than candidates found, so it hit its limit before it ever reached anything that mattered. An invoice file does the same thing. The quotes that got declined and the ones discounted before sending are never in it.

Reading quiet renewal as price approval. Look at your own recurring spend against when you last used each thing. Some of it survives only because cancelling is admin. You never decided it was worth it, only that the cancellation form was worse. A client can renew you on exactly that basis, and it is easy to count it as a vote.

Raising the rate retroactively across live work. That is a renegotiation with people who already trust your number, and it costs more goodwill than it earns.

Waiting for the moment. There is no invoice that arrives and tells you that you are underpriced.

ONE THING TO DO THIS WEEK

Quote your next piece of work 15% above your last comparable one, and change nothing else.

• →Find the most recent proposal for similar work.
• →Multiply the number by 1.15.
• →Send it with the same scope, same timeline, same wording. Do not add a paragraph justifying the increase.
• →Write one line somewhere: date, old number, new number, what they said.

After three of those you will have a real answer instead of a feeling.

The number you are most afraid to send is usually the cheapest thing you can change.

If you want to run this against your own invoice file with me, book twenty minutes on my Calendly.