We’ve just done a study with 68 participants from professional services firms, about approaches to pricing and the impact on profitability.
One of the things that struck me was the examples given of the most profitable matters and relationships. When people talked about how they approached pricing, all of these took into account the broader context – i.e. not just “what’s our hourly rate.” In the most successful examples, people had understood the value to the client, understood what the client really wanted to achieve, had a sense of competitor pricing, and been absolutely transparent in nailing the real deliverables of value.
These tended also to be the firms who were confident about future profitability.