When most prospects ask you about what’s your hourly rate, the focus is on the wrong thing —either to measure AND to use as a metric.
- Because time is not a resource.
- Because a rate is not a price, but a variable.
- Because it doesn’t focus on value, but on an arbitrary “cost”.
Here’s what Tim Williams says about it in “The Unnecessary Cost Of Tracking Time”.
Even the most ardent adherents to the time-based billing system will acknowledge that time logged on a timesheet does not equal value received by the client. Compensation agreements may stipulate that clients will pay for hours, but client organizations certainly do not buy hours; they buy outputs and outcomes.
What are your clients after?
Knowing you do the work in a certain amount of time, or knowing you help them get what they want?