How do we price a service we haven't really defined yet?
You keep saying the hard part is pricing. It isn't. Pricing is easy once the thing being priced is real. What you have right now is a service that bends to fit whoever asks — more hours here, a favor there, an exception for the client who shouts loudest. A product doesn't bend. It has edges. You haven't built the edges yet, so naturally no price feels right; you're trying to tag a shape that keeps changing. This is not a solo problem, and you shouldn't try to solve it alone at your desk. Your team has been delivering this work together, informally agreeing on what counts as 'done' and what counts as 'extra.' Those private agreements are the actual product. Drag them into the open. Someone on your team believes the offer includes unlimited revisions; someone else assumes it doesn't. Until you resolve that out loud, together, your pricing conversation is really an argument between two different businesses wearing one name. Do not wait for the packaging to feel finished before you price it. It will never feel finished — that's comfort talking, not readiness. Decide what you deliver, for whom, and why it's worth paying for. Write it down where everyone can see it. Then price the thing you wrote, not the thing you secretly still hope to become.
The price isn't stuck — the definition is. You cannot set a fair number on something your team hasn't agreed is one thing, for one kind of person, solving one named problem. Stop arguing about price. Sit down together and write, in one sentence, exactly what you deliver and to whom. The number follows that sentence; it does not come before it.
What changes unlock by starting
- A single written sentence the whole team agrees defines the offer
- A short, explicit list of what's included and what isn't
- Fewer pricing arguments, because the argument underneath them is settled
- A price you can quote without hedging, because you know what you're quoting it for