The Pricing Chat Clients Never Expect
Quick answer
The pricing conversation clients never expect is the honest one: scope on the table, the number logic shown line by line, and the trade-offs spelled out before anyone signs. It takes ten minutes and it kills the surprise invoice.
Why the honest scope-and-number conversation beats the silent surprise invoice, and how to run it in ten minutes.
Picture this. A manufacturing client rings me up after a data migration quote gone wrong. Not my quote, someone else's. The project started at twelve grand and landed somewhere north of thirty, and nobody had a conversation about any of it. The extras just kept arriving on invoices, like a subscription nobody remembers signing up for.
That conversation, the one where scope and numbers get laid out honestly before the work starts? Clients tell me straight: they never expect it. They expect the dance. Scope kept vague, day rates kept quiet, and the real number surfacing three months in, wearing an "unforeseen complexity" hat.
The chat that changes everything
So here's what I do instead, and it takes about ten minutes. Before any quote leaves my desk, we have the scope-and-number chat:
- What's in. In plain English. "We migrate customer, supplier and item master data. That's it." No appendix three layers deep.
- What's out. Said out loud, not buried in a proposal. "Order history stays where it is. If you want it moved, that's a separate conversation with its own number."
- Where the number comes from. I show the working. Days by activity, rate, contingency, and what would make it move. Not a mysterious lump sum that arrived on a windscreen like a parking fine.
The number logic, shown
Say it's a customer master cleanup, 40,000 records, dedupe and enrich. I'll walk it through: profiling at two days, rules definition at three with their SMEs in the room, the automated cleanse at two, exception handling sized off a sample we've already profiled, plus a contingency percentage tied to data quality scores we measured, not ones we guessed.
Every line has a reason a procurement manager can interrogate. And here's the funny thing: showing the logic means they rarely do. Trust the working, question the lump sum. Every time.
Clients don't balk at a big number. They balk at a big number that arrived from nowhere, with no way to tell if it's fair.
Why it's harder than it sounds
Most consultancies know this and don't do it. Vague scope is profitable. Surprise invoices are profitable. The silent approach transfers risk to the client and calls it margin.
But it's a sugar rush. That manufacturing client who got burnt? They're now three projects in with me, because the first number I gave them was the number they paid. Referral maths beats invoice maths over any horizon longer than a quarter.
How to run your own version
You don't need to be a consultancy for this. Anyone buying work, software or services can demand the same conversation:
- Ask for in, out and why. If a supplier can't tell you what's excluded, you've found your risk.
- Ask what moves the number. Good suppliers know their sensitivities. "If your item master is dirtier than the sample, day ten becomes day fifteen."
- Get the trade-offs framed as choices. Phased delivery, reduced scope, or contingency held jointly. When cost becomes a decision rather than a fate, everyone behaves better.
Courage in pricing isn't charging more. It's being the one willing to say the number out loud, show where it came from, and stand behind it. Clients never expect it. That's exactly why it works.
Been on the wrong end of a surprise invoice?
I help UK SMEs get honest numbers on data and ERP work: scope, sizing and the trade-offs made plain. No silent extras, ever.
Let's have a chatMatty Hatton is the founder of Digital Adaption, an ERP and data consultancy based on the Wirral. He has spent 15 years delivering ERP transformations for manufacturers, including leading the data migration on a £4.5m consolidation of four legacy systems onto a single Infor LN cloud instance for a 220-user group. He holds an MSc in Digital Transformation and IT Strategy from Manchester Metropolitan University and is Microsoft PL-200 certified.