This article sheds light on various areas where service professionals make mistakes with their pricing strategies and often end up grossly underpaid.
These issues have happened to us every now and then. Unfortunately, they are rampant in certain industries, like IT or engineering consulting. These people tend to perform tasks for a price and often end up being traded like sacks of potatoes.

1. Revealing your fees on your materials. As soon as people can see your fee, they make a mental note if it, and start comparing you to other people in your field. You have just educated them to focus on price, tasks and deliverables. And since this is the kind of education people have received over the years, you only confirm that they are right.

2. Using time as a basis of your fees. Look, there are only 24 hours, and as long as your fees are tied to time, your income is limited. The best way of avoiding the Wal-Mart syndrome (high volume and low margin) is by charging for the value your offer. Time-based fees will almost always lend you in downhill negotiations.

3. Discussing your fees to early. By all means, you must avoid mentioning your fees before submitting your proposal for the gig. First you must make sure that you are meeting the economic buyer and nobody else, and then build the relationship and the conceptual agreement (objectives, metrics and value). You must postpone the mentioning of your fees until buyers can see them in your proposal, juxtaposed against the value buyers stipulated to you during your meeting. And for the proposal, use the buyers