How to Rewrite Your Offer for a Wealthy Client

Imagine a personal trainer named Owen Ashworth who charges $150 a session. Mrs. Kerrigan has trained with him since January, on Tuesdays and Fridays at her house. She hired him so that she could stop planning her own exercise. At the end of each month, Owen sends the invoice his booking app makes. It lists every session by date, at $150 each.

In March, Mrs. Kerrigan goes down the list with her calendar open. “Nine sessions?” she writes. “I thought we said twice a week. And wasn’t the Tuesday one cut short?” Owen replies between two clients. He explains that March had five Tuesdays, and he takes $75 off for the short one. In April, she tells him that she will plan her own workouts over the summer, and she stops booking.

Suppose instead that Owen sells Mrs. Kerrigan a month of her training taken care of. The month covers two sessions a week at her house and a plan he reviews every four weeks. Owen also answers her texts on weekdays. It costs $1,400. Each invoice shows one charge: “Training for March, $1,400.” Mrs. Kerrigan pays it. In April, she asks whether Owen can take on her husband too.

Owen gave the same training both times. In the first version, his invoice put each session in front of Mrs. Kerrigan, so she weighed each session. Checking the list became a job for her, the kind of job she hired him to take off her hands. In the second version, the invoice showed one month of her training taken care of.

So rewrite what you sell as one whole result, in a unit that fits it, with its limits written down. Here is why a client weighs whatever the bill shows, and what one designer did after a client objected to her invoices.

A locksmith lost his tips when he got faster

Dan Ariely is a professor of psychology and behavioral economics at Duke University. In 2010, he wrote about a meeting with a locksmith. As an apprentice, the locksmith was slow, and he would often break the lock. Even so, his customers tipped him better.

Once he could open a lock in only a moment, his customers complained that he was overcharging. They stopped tipping him.

Ariely’s explanation is that people do not judge a service only by what it does for them. They also judge whether the price is fair for “how much effort was exerted.” The locksmith’s customers could see the effort, so the effort is what they judged.

Here is the course’s view of what that means for your bill. The unit you sell in decides what the client weighs. A bill in hours puts time in front of the client, so they weigh each hour. A bill for a month of training taken care of puts the month in front of them, as Owen’s one-charge invoice did.

A flat price can also look like too little work, as the locksmith found. So a whole result needs everything it includes written out, where the client can see it.

A designer moved to one fee after a repeat client objected to her invoices

Sandra Funk is an interior designer who writes on her site about leaving hourly billing. Early in her career, she charged by the hour. As her rate rose over the years, she watched hourly clients “fixate on invoices and watch the clock in meetings.”

Then a high-end client who had hired her before told her, “I don’t want to be nickeled and dimed.” He said it after one too many invoices. He valued her work and could easily afford it. He did not want to keep hunting for his checkbook, his login, and the next invoice. “Rude in the moment? Completely. It was also the pricing lesson I needed,” she wrote.

Funk saw the same pattern in her other hourly clients. “They were only committed to me as far as the next invoice,” she wrote. Again and again, a client wanted to “take it from here” partway through a project.

So she moved to a flat design fee for the whole project. Each client sees the fee and an estimate for the furnishings before the work starts. The client pays half the design fee on signing and the rest before the first design presentation. Into the fee, she builds the problems that turn up on every project, such as “a scratch, a nick, a delay.”

Afterward, she wrote, “No one fires me midway to save a few dollars.” The change also made her business “dramatically more profitable.”

If your clients study your invoices, treat that as a sign that the unit needs to change, not the rate.

Name the client you are writing for

An offer has three parts: what you sell, to whom, and in what unit. The second part decides the third, because who the client is decides what they want taken care of. So name the kind of household and the situation they are in, in one sentence.

For example, a home organizer might write, “Families moving into a house they have just bought.” A trainer might write, “People coming back to exercise after an injury.” If you have already chosen the kind of wealth that hires your trade, name a group inside it.

Choose the unit from what the client wants taken care of

The course suggests matching the unit to the shape of the work. Then the bill shows the result the client is paying for. A one-off job with a finish, such as a renovation or a wedding, is sold as a project. A routine that goes on until the client stops, such as walks or weeknight dinners, is sold by the month. Work tied to a yearly cycle, such as a school year of tutoring, is sold by the year.

A cycle the client already uses works too, such as a 12-week training block before a race.

Write down the limits of the offer

A whole result needs limits. Write down what is included, what is not, and when the offer ends or renews. Here is the course’s reason. You cannot set a price for a job with no end. Without limits, a client can reasonably ask for a little more each week, and the flat fee turns into unpaid hours.

Small requests, such as a quick call or a question by email, belong inside the offer. A charge for each one would put every request in front of the client, as hours on a bill do. Then the client would weigh each question before asking it.

The limits are for larger pieces of work, such as a second house or a trip. Anything outside the limits is quoted on its own, before you start it.

What a rewritten offer looks like

Imagine a dog walker named Leah Brandt. Her current offer is 30-minute walks at $25 each, for anyone who books.

Leah rewrites the three parts. What she sells becomes a dog that is looked after on weekdays. That means a walk, fresh water, the midday meal, and a short note to the owners. She writes it for households near the park, with both partners working long days. The unit becomes the month.

Then Leah writes the limits. The offer covers weekdays from 8 a.m. to 6 p.m., for up to two dogs from one household. Weekend care and trips to the vet are quoted separately. The month renews on the first unless the owners give a week’s notice.

At her old rate, one walk each weekday comes to about $540 a month. The new month also covers the meal, the note, a second dog, and a promise to be there every weekday. Leah adds what those are worth to her and sets the month at $900.

Why nicer words on an hourly offer change nothing

Imagine a home organizer named Nell Hadley who charges $85 an hour. She wants wealthier clients, so on a free Sunday she rewrites her website. Her service becomes “bespoke, white-glove home organizing.” She leaves the hourly rate as it is, because changing it would mean rethinking every quote.

Mrs. Pellham hires Nell to sort out her garage. The invoice shows 14 hours. “Fourteen hours for a garage?” Mrs. Pellham asks. Nell explains that the shelving took longer than she planned. Mrs. Pellham pays the invoice, then decides to do the closets herself. The better words did not change what she weighed, because the bill still showed hours.

In the version that works, Nell sells the garage as one project. It covers the garage cleared, sorted, and labeled, with a visit each season to put it right again. Hauling away what the family does not keep is quoted separately. Mrs. Pellham pays the project fee, and in the fall she asks Nell for a price on the attic.

How to rewrite your offer

Write your current offer in three parts: what you sell, to whom, and in what unit. Use the words on your price list. For example, an event planner might write, “Party planning, for anyone who calls, at $120 an hour.”
Rewrite what you sell as the result the client would describe to a friend. For example, a florist’s client might say, “The house has fresh flowers every week, and I never think about them.”
Name the client you are writing for, in one sentence: the kind of household and the situation they are in. For example, a tutor might write, “Families whose child is starting at a new school in the middle of the year.”
Choose the unit: a project, a month, a year, or a cycle the client already uses. For example, a coach whose clients run their companies by the quarter might sell coaching by the quarter.
Write the limits. Say what is included, what is not, and when the offer ends or renews. For example, a family photographer might write, “The year includes four sessions, one each season. Prints and albums are ordered separately. The year renews on the date of the first session.”
Price the unit. Work out what the same work comes to at your current rate. Then add what the offer now covers that you did not charge for before. Leah did this when she set her month at $900.
Change the words on your website last, so that they describe the offer you have written. For example, Leah’s page would show the month, what it covers, and its price, where it used to say $25 a walk.

Next: You will see what to say when someone influential turns up in a room you go back to. You will also see how to keep that conversation from turning into a pitch.