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Summary: Pricing Paradigm Buster
Review: Alan Weiss has done it again. So many consultants are charging hourly rates for their services that they never benefit from the value they create for their clients. Alan's book describes numerous ways for consultants to change their fee structures and earn higher fees based on value-added work instead of hourly (clerical-type, my term) work. Plus, the book shares several different ways to develop multiple streams of income from consulting and related activities. I recommend this book to everyone. Even as an experienced consultant, I learned some things that will benefit my practice from Alan's book.
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Summary: Valeu-Based Fees a bridge from the conceptual to the real
Review: Alan Weiss' book on value-based fees is a must for anyone who wants to have a successful consulting practice and live and retire to tell about it. While his advice is invaluable to both experienced or new consultant alike, Alan bings a practicality and a simple series of examples, worksteps and checklists to make it real. Making it real is ultimately the most important because charging what you are worth means changing both mindset and behavior, which for people over 40 is tough. I heartily recommend this book for anyone selling their professional services.
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Summary: Value-Based Fees
Review: Essential reading for those truly commited to outstanding success in the field of consulting. I have been reading books by Alan Weiss for several years and this new series "The Ultimate Consultant" has exceeded my expectations. Bravo!
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Summary: Truly Inspiring
Review: For someone just getting into consulting, this book was inspiring and empowering. It makes you understand what worth you can bring to clients.
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Summary: The Holy Grail of Consulting
Review: I enjoy Mr. Weiss' books and presentations, which I find engaging and entertaining. With this book he has given me reasons to confirm my belief that charging a client based on my time and materials used in a project is a problem for both myself AND my client. First I am not true to the client when I bill time just for showing up but not providing any value. Then, how do you compare the value of one who charges $150 for one hour versus the consultant who charges $150 for 2 hours (at $75/hour)? Is one better than the other? Why put the client in a position to make that decision. Basing charges on value (either real or perceived) to the client removes hourly rates from the equation.Yes, all this is based on having true relationships with your clients and Mr. Weiss goes through many different iterations of working with your clients on finding value, education them on value and providing value. There are lots of quick stories and references to his own consulting engagements, many of which are the same ones used as examples in many of his other books, which he not so subtley sells in this one. But then again it is one of the "Ultimate Consultant" series of books he has recently published. Enjoyable and educational reading which has brought about many heated conversations with my peer group about rates and charging clients. It should provoke you also.
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Summary: If you have high payed friends, join them.
Review: I would agree that Alan is a very good sales person, "selling his books". But I would have to say that the ideas or suggestions he has for "value based fees" ( VBF ) takes advantage of friendship on corporate business. It's hard to understand "I think you are undercharging me, increase your proposal by a third". Alan probably is very lucky and/or is surrounded by very nice business people with money to burn. I need those business people next to me!
No doubt that he gives good advice but to apply VBF is a win win or loose loose situation. I'm going to try it first with clients I don't want...
It was a good book to read and now I have a different perspective of business.
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Summary: BSey book, mostly hacksterism
Review: Long on criticising this and that, very short on positive REALISTIC and PRACTICAL advice. Writing's very bad, redundant and disconnected, unstructured and illogical, you truly have to belabor this book even though it's under 200 pages (big fonts, appendices printed only on one side of the sheet.) With the air of great importance the author gives a very outstanding suggestion to base your fees on the perceived value to the client rather than time/tasks, etc. OK, first, this is terribly original and has never really occurred to anyone so far, but more important: how do you elicit that value? No one will willingly give it to you... yet the author skips over this issue, as if it were a matter of simply asking a few questions. It's like when asked "how much" you'd reply "how much you got? What's it worth to you?", yeah, that's a guarantee of success, sure, I believe that, especially when dealing with astute institutional buyers, those tend to be naive and tell you all you need to know how much to jack up your prices. The likely answer to that will be some variation on "none of your efin business, submit your proposal; don't call us we'll call you", and that's gonna be the end of the "value-based" fee setting as presented in this book. There's a lot of self-promotion in the book too, endless references to those "other books I wrote", the first page enumerates the whole oeuvre, and it looks like the author issues 2-3 books per year, not counting booklets, and of course reportedly he's also a "highly sought" and "highly compensated" consultant and keynote speaker too... is that realistic? Don't know, but this book is kinda shabby. My opinion of Weiss has changed in the downward direction. To be fair, there ARE a few useful things in the book, mostly philosophical, of a general character, but overall it's rather poor, especially from the practical viewpoint.
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Summary: A Better Model
Review: Not only does every consultant and hourly contractor need to read this book--but, so does every business executive and purchaser of consulting services. Alan Weiss presents a clear business case for the evolution of compensation in the consulting industry. He walks the reader through an elegant model and gives the logic and the examples to support what is a radical divergence from the "hourly or daily fee" mentality that pervades the market. This is a must read for any consultant who wants to be paid what they are worth and for any company that wants to get what they pay for when using consulting services!
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Summary: Far Beyond Million Dollar Consulting
Review: This book is a MUST read not only for those consultants who have to submit proposals but should be required reading for all professions who charge by the hour - YES doctors, opticians, dentists, accountants and lawyers as well!! This book gives a sound theoretical basis for charging value based fees instead of hourly fees (everyone in the world ONLY has 24 hours in a day so this approach makes absolute sense). BUT the Coup de Grace is the fourth chapter "If you only read one chapter....." which sets out exactly how to structure value based fee proposals and gives a live example. I have long been charging value based rather than time based fees but this chapter raised my fees to a new level.
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Summary: Start charging what you're worth--today!
Review: This book is an absolute 'must-have' for any consultant who wants to dramatically increase sales, profits and fees. Before I even finished the book, I had two great ideas that can bring me 'new' income, worth hundreds--probably thousands--of times the cost of the book. Written in Alan's inimitable style, `Value-Based Fees' is engaging, inspiring and loaded with down-to-earth, real-life examples, plans, guidelines and instructions to launch your income into the stratospheric range. Whether you want to jumpstart your consulting career, or boost an already solid consulting business to a totally new level--you will want to get this book!
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