Price the consequence, not the hours

Somebody leaves a corporate salary. They take the old number, divide it by something, and arrive at a day rate. Then they knock a bit off it, because they are new.

I understand the instinct. It is the only number you have. It is also the wrong one, and I can tell you why from the other side of the table.

I am writing one of these for each of the six steps of the method I teach. Last week was S, Situation: one audience, one problem. This week is P. P is Premium offer, one offer with a price on it.

What a salary actually is

I spent two years running technology reward at UBS, and before that senior HR roles at Credit Suisse. My job always dealt with pay. Bands, ranges, what a role was worth, what happened at the edges.

In all of it, I never sat in a room where somebody asked what a person was worth. Not once. It is not a question the organisation knows how to ask.

Two questions moved a number, and only two. What does the market pay for this role. And what would it cost us if this stopped.

The second one is where the money was. A retention case built on somebody being excellent went nowhere. The same case, built on the programme slipping two quarters and what that did to the number underneath it, got signed.

So a salary is not a valuation of you. It is the price of a role, argued by somebody who had to defend it upwards.

Which means dividing it by your working hours does not produce your rate. It produces an old price, for a job you no longer do, with your leverage taken out of it.

Price the consequence, not the hours

The question is the one that got budget signed inside a bank, pointed the other way: what does it cost your buyer if this does not happen.

A year of not deciding. A hire made badly. Twelve months in a role they already know is wrong. Those have numbers attached, and the numbers are not small.

Your price sits somewhere well under that and comfortably over your minimum. That is a much wider range than the day rate allows, and it is the reason the same work is worth CHF 2,000 to one buyer and CHF 20,000 to another.

And your minimum is arithmetic, not confidence. What you need in a year, divided by the hours you will actually sell, which is far fewer than the hours you will work. Do that once, write the number down, and never quote under it. I am a chartered management accountant, not a tax adviser, and this is the one bit of the practice where I will tell you to open a spreadsheet before you open a document.

One offer. Not three.

The instinct after that is to build a small one, a middle one and a big one, so nobody has to say no.

Three offers is three things to describe, three pages to write, three prices to defend, and a buyer doing homework instead of deciding. Sell one until somebody has bought it twice. You will know far more about the second offer by then, and it will cost you an afternoon rather than the year.

The whole method

S is Situation. Your positioning, one audience and one problem. You build a chief of staff to hold it, the one that knows your practice and briefs all the others.

I is Invite. Designing, filling and running a masterclass or workshop, with a workshop designer skill, a registration page and the reminder emails running without you.

M is Message. Your content strategy and your newsletter, with a content strategist and a content editor keeping both going.

P is Premium offer, which is this week. One offer, built and priced, and a finance analyst that holds your minimum so you never quote under it.

L is Listen. Your DM strategy and how you run a sales call, with bookings, call prep, note taking and filing all happening on their own.

E is Earn. Your terms and your sales mechanics, with sales and expenses recorded without you touching them.

Six key steps. Simple because you are building your workforce aligned to it.

What you actually walk away with

One page. What the offer is, who it is for, what happens in it, what it costs, and what it does not include.

That last line is the one that gets skipped, and it is the one that sells. An offer with no edges reads as an offer nobody has thought about, and it invites the buyer to imagine scope you never agreed to.

And where the AI comes in

Two things make this work, and only one of them is new.

Your chief of staff, which you built back in S. You agree the offer with it, and it writes the offer to the brain: the file that holds what your practice is. Every agent that writes reads that file first, so the offer comes out the same on the sales page, in the call, in the proposal and in the reply you send at half past nine at night. Not because something is guarding it. Because it is written down once.

Your finance analyst. It holds your minimum and does the arithmetic before you answer. Somebody asks for a shorter version at a lower price, and the answer comes back with the delivery hours in it rather than out of goodwill at eleven at night.

Where this goes

If you want the free version, the masterclass is ninety minutes, online, where on earth to start when becoming a solopreneur, and where AI actually helps. You leave with one thing to test and what you are doing this week to test it.

If you want the first two letters done properly, one to one with me, that is Positioning & Offer: S and P, four weeks.

And if you are thinking about building your own thing, I would love to speak with you. I am building the programme out at the moment, and the conversations are what shape it. Thirty minutes, and you get my read on where you are as well as me getting yours.

Before any of that: work out your minimum. What you need in a year, divided by the hours you will actually sell. Write it down, and do not quote under it again.