You are
the number.
Your job is to put a credible price on a thing that didn't exist this morning, and then defend it in front of a room. The pricing slide lives or dies in the defense, not in the slide. Your pre-flight is mostly about walking in with the right mental model — anchor to what gets replaced, never to what gets built.
Five items. Total time investment: under an hour.
- 01
Read the spec end to end
Once is enough. As you read, ask one question on every page: "what activity does this replace, and what does that activity currently cost?" That question is your pricing model in disguise.
- 02
Identify the cost-replaced anchor
The wrong way to price a productized consulting capability is to start from the cost to build. The right way is to start from the cost it replaces. If the buyer currently spends $X/month on consultant hours doing the thing this product automates, that's your anchor. Find that number for your team's spec before April 17.
- 03
Sketch the v0.1 business case
Three lines: (1) what does the buyer spend today, (2) what would they spend on this product, (3) what's the gap. The Narrator needs a number to point at by mid-morning on April 17 — your job is to have it ready by then. The deeper math comes later in the day.
- 04
Anticipate the four standard objections
"Why not just hire someone?" "Why not just use Jira / Excel / a free tool?" "What's the implementation cost?" "What happens after year one?" If you can answer all four in two sentences each, you'll defend the pricing slide in Q&A. If you can't, write the answers down before April 17.
- 05
Acknowledge recording consent
Every working session is recorded. Your business case work and Q&A defense get captured.
Pricing is advocacy, not a spreadsheet.
The slide is one slide. The defense is the rest. The Narrator delivers the number; you back them up in Q&A. If a judge pushes back on the price, you have 10 seconds to land a credible reason — not 10 minutes to walk through a model.
Anchor to value, never to build cost.
Build cost is irrelevant to the buyer. Value is the only number they care about. "This costs $X because we spent Y hours building it" is the wrong sentence. "This costs $X because it replaces Y hours of consultant time per month" is the right one.
The Client Advocate will pressure-test you in Build Sprint 1.
The CA's job is to ask buyer questions. Your number will be one of them. Welcome the pressure-testing — it's better to be wrong at 1:00 PM and right at 4:00 PM than the other way around.
The characteristic mistakes. Read them so you can notice yourself making one on the day and correct in real time.
Anchoring to build cost instead of value replaced
"This cost $X to build" is the wrong sentence. "This replaces $X of consultant time per month" is the right one. Build cost is irrelevant to a buyer. The moment your math starts from hours spent instead of value delivered, the pricing slide dies in Q&A.
Bringing a spreadsheet to a pitch
The pricing slide is advocacy, not analysis. One number, one reason, one defense. If the slide has a grid with seven rows and five columns, it's too much — the audience won't read it and the Narrator won't know what to point at. Compress to a single anchor number and a single justification.
Getting defensive in Q&A
A judge pushing back on your number is doing their job. Welcome it, respond with evidence, move on. Defensiveness reads as uncertainty to the audience, even when your number is right. The calm "that's a fair question — here's the math" beats the frustrated "well actually" every time.
Waiting until Polish to test the model
The Client Advocate should be pressure-testing your number in Sprint 1, not hearing it for the first time at 3:30 PM when there's no time to change anything. Surface the number by lunch. Let the CA stress it before the sprint closes.
Every working session is recorded. Your pricing model and Q&A defense get captured and become reference material the firm will reuse on future deals.