Per Sjöfors, author of The Price Whisperer: A Holistic Approach to Pricing Power, is the founder of Sjöfors & Partners, among many other notable accomplishments. Spanning over 750 client engagements, his proven methods have helped clients achieve extraordinary results, including doubling growth rates and increasing margins by 25%–40%.
Notes from the Show
The Paradox of Pricing
Your price signals quality and value. Low prices can make you seem cheap or unreliable, while higher prices convey confidence and premium results. Clients who pay more are often more invested in the outcome. Pricing is emotional—set yours to inspire trust and confidence.
The Comparison Trap
Hourly rates invite unproductive comparisons and reward inefficiency. You may slow work to earn more or be penalized for finishing quickly. Value-based pricing focuses on results, not hours, creating clear benefits for both you and your clients.
Presentation Matters
You’re presenting results, not selling a service. A strong proposal highlights outcomes, making clients feel confident. When you reveal the price, it should align with the value they already expect.
Anchor Your Value
Start high with a “Best, Better, Good” framework to set expectations. Low prices can raise doubts; higher prices signal quality. Per shares a 2-question exercise for 25 prospective buyers: “What price feels too low to trust?” and “What’s too high to afford?”
What’s Inside:
What is the pricing paradox?
Can you underprice yourself out of a client?
The key to presenting your price.
A 2-question exercise to get pricing right.
Mentioned in this Episode:
Transcribed by AI Susan Tatum 0:38
Hello everyone, and welcome back to Stop the Noise. Today, we're going to be talking about pricing strategies for independent consultants. And my guest is Per Sjofors, who's the best selling author of the price whisperer, a holistic approach to pricing power. And he's a member and thought leader at Forbes Business Council and the C suite hero club. He was recently identified as as among the most the 10 most visionary leaders making a difference in 2023 by Inc Magazine, and also among the top 50 global thought leaders in sales by thinkers 360. Per welcome to the show.
Per Sjorfors 1:13
Thank you very much. Susan, I'm looking forward to this.
Susan Tatum 1:16
Did I miss anything in the intro? Anything else we need to know?
Per Sjofors 1:21
I'm gonna be on that Inc list for 2025 as well.
Susan Tatum 1:26
excellent. So we're expecting great things today then. So I took a peek at your at your book. One of the things that it says is the paradox of pricing power. Ask more, earn more. That is certainly interesting, because you were, you were talking about consumer behavior being irrational, and that there's more of a psychology involved in pricing than we think there is.
Per Sjofors 1:45
Yeah, there are many things related to that. And the specifically to your question, the price sets a message of quality and benefit. And what that means is that if you are underpriced, potential buyers won't buy because they think your services is too cheap. They think that you are going to over promise and under deliver, and for that reason, they won't buy. On the other hand, if you have a higher price that sets an expectation of benefits that are that are higher and it also, which is really kind of interesting, is that it also means that when the job is done, when your consulting engagement is over and the company has paid a fairly whatever relatively large sum of money, they're going to be more happy with the result. And if this is consulting related to changes within a company, they are more likely to actually do those changes because they're vested into into the recommendation or training or whatever what the consultant did. So pricing, like I said, there's a lot lot psychology about pricing. We also have to realize that all our buying decisions are made emotionally. And once we decide that now we're going to buy something, we put rationale on it. And the actual, but the actual decision is, is made by the limbic system you know,
Susan Tatum 3:12
which is the emotional part?
Per Sjofors 3:16
Yeah, exactly. And, you know, they, they can only do four things. I think it is, fight, flee, mate and eat or something like that.
Susan Tatum 3:24
Is this the lizard brain they talk about?
Per Sjofors 3:27
Yeah, it's a lizard brain, yeah, and that works automatically. And when that has made a decision, it says, This is my decision. And it put it up to the, you know, pre frontal lobe thing, and says, This is my decision. Now you put some rationale around it so you feel good, that you
Susan Tatum 3:45
right, you justify it. Yeah, absolutely, yeah. So when I was coming along and marketing for in the tech tech industry, and this goes way back, but it was, you know, we were taught and we felt that it's engineers, it's scientists, it's whatever making the decisions. It's business people. They're rational decisions, so we're just going to throw a bunch of specs at them, and then somewhere along the line, smarter people realized, no, these are still people that are buying
Per Sjofors 4:15
That's right,
Susan Tatum 4:16
but the emotion in the business sense could be, I might lose my job if I pick the wrong source, wrong consultant,
Per Sjofors 4:23
and hence the nobody gets fired for buying IBM,
Susan Tatum 4:27
right. That's very true. I find that the vast majority of independent consultants that I talk to, and these are tend to be newer to the business, so they've been around anywhere from three months to five or six years, but the vast majority of them are using hourly pricing, and I have always been told that that is a big mistake.
Per Sjofors 4:52
Yeah, you are absolutely right.
Susan Tatum 4:55
Okay, so tell us more about that.
Per Sjofors 4:57
The companies want certainty in. What the costs gonna be. And you can imagine that, let's say that I bring in a consultant, and I'm a director of something, you know, you know, Director of Engineering, or whatever, you know, yeah, some time goes by, and then eventually I have to go up to my boss, the VP, and say, I'm sorry, but we used many more hours than we thought so, so the cost was actually three times, three times as much. That is a career ending conversation, right?
Susan Tatum 5:31
Yes
Per Sjofors 5:32
But had, had you gone into the same conversation with the same number, you know, as that three times, and got approval on it, it would have been fine,
Susan Tatum 5:41
right? Because that's what you agreed to. But what? So what? Why is it? I know that consultants can sometimes be told by their clients that we have to have an hourly rate for this. Where does that come from?
Per Sjofors 5:53
Because then you can compare. Yes, it's very easy to compare a hourly rate with another hourly rate, but it doesn't say what you get for that hourly rate.
Susan Tatum 6:02
I think there's probably some situations. Mean, if you are in an RFP, or you're bidding on a through one of the platforms, I mean, there may be some requirements for hourly rates. Are you familiar?
Per Sjofors 6:16
I mean, I, you know my company, we don't work hourly, and I have had some periods in my life where I worked as a, as a, as an independent consultant, and everything was project based. This is, this is a project, and it's going to cost this much. And sometimes I made a lot of money because I was lucky. Sometimes I didn't make so much money because I was unlucky. So the whole hourly rate comes from, from the the it's really cost based, right? So I work an hour, that is costs, cost, and therefore I should be paid, and I should be paid per hour. And it's a it's not what you want, you know, it's not what desires want.
Susan Tatum 6:55
It's Well, it seems, it's always seemed, to me to be a little bit not above board. I mean, because you, if you're charging by the hour, then there might be a tendency to say, Well, I'm gonna slow down. You know, I can solve this thing in three hours, but then I don't get paid much.
Per Sjofors 7:15
Yeah, exactly.
Susan Tatum 7:16
And then to and now I see with, with AI coming along and taking over a lot of the research and some of the strategic work in no time at all. You know, things that used to take weeks to do can now be done in three hours. And yes, you need a strategist to look over it, but if you are charging by the hour, you could be shooting yourself in the foot.
Per Sjofors 7:34
Yeah, yeah, absolutely. But you can also that's true. But again, like you said, you can also affect how much you get paid with how quickly you work, right? But, yeah, I mean, you mentioned the AI here that which is sort of interesting. I don't know if you there's a story I heard 30 years ago, and it obviously is just a story, but it's the and I can't remember it verbatim, but it goes something like this big machine in some factory failed, you know, so the whole factory stood still, and the factory couldn't fix it, so they called in the expert, and the expert goes in, pushes a button, and the machine starts working again. And the invoice for this was, you know, pushing the button, $5 knowing which button to push a 100,000
Susan Tatum 8:23
Yep. And that's so true.
Per Sjofors 8:25
And that goes to to those who use AI as a, as a, as a tool in their consulting practice.
Susan Tatum 8:32
Yeah. I think it will make it. It will make a change there. So okay, so we agree that hourly pricing is bad,
Per Sjofors 8:39
yes.
Susan Tatum 8:40
So how does a consultant get away from that?
Per Sjofors 8:44
I mean, I think it depends on what kind of consultant we're talking about here. There can be many consultants, types of consultants, but it's, I mean, I'll tell you what we do in my company, which is not really a consulting firm, but it's, it's sort of towards that space, and we interview the company, and that takes, typically, about an hour, and that's after the sales call, that also maybe takes an hour. And from that, we can get a fairly reasonable understanding of the scope of the project, and then we say to the customer, so this is the whole span of different things we can do for you, but we have bundled that into a good, better, best strategy. We're good, better, best bundles, if you like, and that makes it easier for the for the customer to make a decision, you know, and it each of those are at a fixed price, obviously, right? And it means that we know a lot about the customer before they they see our proposal. But there are some other things that I think on that is very, very important for consultants in general. And this is because the consultants, you know, sell services buy proposals, okay, right? So the proposal need to include a situational analysis. It needs to include what the customer expects. It needs to include what the consultant is going to do, how it's going to be done, and what the expected outcomes need to be, right. So now the trick is that you never sell. You never send this to the customer. You always, always present it to the customer, always. And there's a couple of reasons for that. First, you want to make sure that the situational analysis is correct. You want to make sure that the what you have written down as a consultant, as the as a specific questions or specific, well, specifics that the customer want is meets what the customer actually wants, right, you know, and then going to how you should do it, and so forth. But the point here is that people, are self centric. They like to read about themselves. They like to be in the limelight. So just by presenting this, and this is what I do, I present it. I ask them to read a couple of pages so they part of it is for that technical reason. I want to make sure that it's correct. Part of it is that they read about themselves and then they feel good
Susan Tatum 11:23
interesting.
Per Sjofors 11:24
And the other thing that this means is that if you present the proposal, you control how the customer reads it. Otherwise, you send the proposal, they flip to the last page and see the price. If you present it, you have the opportunity to make sure that the customer knows your value proposition, knows how you're different than the next guy, knows how what specific value knows exactly what you're going to do before they see the price.
Susan Tatum 11:58
Yeah, well, if you're giving them, if you've written out this document and you sent them a copy of it, are you just showing them little pieces of it?
Per Sjofors 12:05
No, you you show them the entire document. And then once most customers have some few comments. I mean, you misunderstood this, and you misunderstand that, and, oh, this particular question is not important, you can remove that. And then once those corrections are done, you send the document, obviously.
Susan Tatum 12:24
So how do you keep them? But are you going to say what the price is? Are you going to show that to them, or are they
Per Sjofors 12:31
Yes
Susan Tatum 12:32
okay? So whatever they have in their hands to read does not include the price?
Per Sjofors 12:35
No, no, no, no, no. The in that presentation, the presentation can obviously be in person, or it could be Screen Share on Zoom. You go through what you know, what I said, the situational analysis, the particular questions that the customer wants to have solved, or the issues that the customer wants to have solved, and you go through your methodology and so forth. You probably have a timeline there, and then you present also the customer with the price. The whole point is that the customer then knows what they will get before you get to the price.
Susan Tatum 13:11
I have been told by a business coach that I had at one point that the client should never, there should never be anything in a proposal that the client hasn't seen before, or that you've discussed. So I I see with a lot of consultants, that what there's a tendency to do is have a conversation, then say, I'll send you a proposal. And they and they fire this proposal off with no discussion of the proposal, and the price comes as a complete surprise. And as you were saying, maybe there's some things you misunderstood. Maybe there's a chance for collaboration with a client in deciding how this is going to be done. You know.
Per Sjofors 13:49
Yep, yeah, right. And the you know before you you spend all this time creating a proposal, you at least need to have some kind of sense for what the client would expect in terms of money, right? And like other, many others, I get that question very often when I have a first call with with a client, and they say, they always say, we know that nobody can say, How long is a piece of string. But can you give me some indications,
Susan Tatum 14:15
yeah, of what you have budgeted for this?
Per Sjofors 14:18
Yeah. Well, they asked me, What is, what are your prices typically?
Susan Tatum 14:23
Yeah, so you give them a range?
Per Sjofors 14:25
I give them a range.
Susan Tatum 14:26
I want to go back to one thing Per that you said, and we kind of and we glossed over it, and it was really, really important you talked about that you've created a good, better, best solution for whatever their issue is. And I think that's also part of the psychology, because if you give them one prize, then it's a yes or no decision. Am I going to work with you or am I not?
Per Sjofors 14:47
If you have multiple choices, it's not about yes or no. It's about which one
Susan Tatum 14:54
which one, yeah,
Per Sjofors 14:55
and the way I did it was that, and I'm saying I'm just sharing my experience, right? Please do the way I did it was that I took all we can do many, many different things, and I split them into discrete little chunks, if you like. And then I sort of took those chunks and we have a bundle that's called comprehensive that is every chunk, then we have a bundle that is we call professional, which is half the chunks. And we have a bundle that we call entrepreneurial, which is a third of the chunks,
Susan Tatum 15:30
Okay. And is, are you anchor? What did he call it? Anchoring high with a comprehensive
Per Sjofors 15:37
Yes, definitely. Okay, so the way the prices reads here on on is, I always start with a high price.
Susan Tatum 15:46
That makes sense,
Per Sjofors 15:47
because then that be become an anchor for as you read left to right, there is a you start with a high price, and then you go down in price. I mean, if you've seen the typical pricing page of a SaaS company, they typically start low.
Susan Tatum 16:01
They always say, this is our most popular one on the pricing thing, and it's in the middle, right?
Per Sjofors 16:06
It's in the middle. But they start with they have good, better, best, as opposed to best, better, good.
Susan Tatum 16:15
Oh yeah, good point.
Per Sjofors 16:16
Now the other thing they make a mistakes in is that they have the price on top in that little you know, whatever you call it,
Susan Tatum 16:24
a chart or a table
Per Sjofors 16:25
Yeah, sure, exactly. Should have the price on the bottom.
Susan Tatum 16:27
So you're reading through the good,
Per Sjofors 16:29
you're reading through what you're actually getting, or sort of reading maybe too much, but you sort of scanning over what you're getting
Susan Tatum 16:36
yeah, that makes sense. So another question that I have for you is that you, you when we talked earlier, before. You talked, you have a two question, pricing method that you talked about,
Per Sjofors 16:48
yes, yeah. This could be very useful for for, you know, certainly for new starting entrepreneurs or or coaches and consultants and so forth. And the way, the way this does. First of all, we have to realize that the psychology of pricing means that if you are being presented with something that that you think is too low in price, you will not buy it. And we've all been there, right? We hold something in our hands, physically or metaphysically, and we say to ourselves, I want to buy this thing or this service, but at this price, it probably is not going to be any good. Right? So, so, so that's so what you do? First of all, you identify at least 25 potential buyers of of your services, of your consulting services, those are not your current customers. They are not your current prospects. They are definitely not friends and family, but people that could potentially be buyers. And you approach them and you ask them, Can I ask you two questions? And the first question and phraseology here is very important you describe your particular consulting services and make sure that whatever is different in what whatever you do is included in that. And then you say, Now, when you know our services at what price do you think that we are going to over promise and under deliver. So for that reason, you won't buy right? And then you say, and now let's look at the flip side, you know, our services, and in this case, consider that we are going to under promise and vastly over deliver. What is a price that is still too high. So for that reason, you can't buy no matter how good our services. And when you when you talk to at least 25 people and ask these questions, you know, describe the the consulting services describe the likely outcome. And then those two questions, when you talk to at least 25 people average the result of the first question, and you average the result of the second question, and suddenly you know where the span or where your prices should be.
Susan Tatum 19:10
Yeah. So knowing the listeners, I think the big question in there is, how do you get those people to talk to you, to answer those questions? Because you've eliminated all the easy ones.
Per Sjofors 19:21
Well, if you can't find 25 potential customers, you have bigger problems than pricing.
Susan Tatum 19:28
Well, you can find them. You mean, you can identify them. But getting these really you know, we tend to be very busy people, and we tend to be getting inundated by all kinds of people trying to sell us stuff. What have you seen that works as a good way to just get them to I assume you want them to answer the questions, and not just you want them to answer it in a conversation, not just a survey.
Per Sjofors 19:51
No, it should preferably be be in the conversation. I mean, consultants sell B2B, so you can go to LinkedIn, for example, and you. Do these connection requests. And you ask for help. Can you help me please? I have two questions I need answers to, or, and you, I mean, and you, you know, you go, you do 500 of these. Maybe you get your 25. You may say, I have these two questions that I it's going to take about five minutes of your time, so I'll send you five bucks.
Susan Tatum 20:22
You know, you know, I think that you know what you're saying there Per as a is just brilliant because, and I think that not, not too many people do it, because a lot of folks don't like to ask for help, and we think it makes us look weak, and we're supposed to be the experts.
Per Sjofors 20:39
Yeah, no asking for it's, I mean, you know that, like all the successful speakers, right? They all talk about, they make themselves, selves, vulnerable. They talk about their mistakes they made. They show that they're humble in one way or another. And that's how you that's how you become a good speaker.
Susan Tatum 21:00
It's also how you become a good human,
Per Sjofors 21:02
yes,
Susan Tatum 21:03
and, you know, I build good relationships. Well, this has been, you know, I glanced at my watch, and I'm like, wow, we're already up against our time, and that this is so helpful, and I really appreciate you joining me. Is there anything that you think I should have asked you that I didn't?
Per Sjofors 21:19
No, I think, I think, you know, making, making really sure that that well, maybe one thing that I think is important, whether you're a consultant or anything else, and that is that you have to be prepared to walk away from a deal.
Susan Tatum 21:35
Good point
Per Sjofors 21:36
for me, if you come in there and you do your proposal, and it's a fixed price, and it's whatever the number is, and and your your your client is saying, Yeah, we really want to work with you, but you have to do it by, you know, hourly. And you say, No, I won't.
Susan Tatum 21:51
So one question that comes to my mind with that is, it seems like it would be like, when do you know the point at which you should let them know what the price is. Because the longer you wait,
Per Sjofors 22:03
no, the time they should know the price is when they fully understand what you are going to deliver to them. Okay, that is, that is when you deliver the price.
Susan Tatum 22:14
And you need to have yourself mentally in the position that if they say, No, that's too high, we can't, there's just no possible way that we can do that, that you're able to say, well.
Per Sjofors 22:23
well no, you say, then you say, Yes, of course, I can meet your price, but then we can't do these things. Right? That's the that's the beauty of also having to to sort of split your services into discrete little, little activities.
Susan Tatum 22:40
Yeah, you know. So you're not really negotiating the price. You're negotiating what you do.
Per Sjofors 22:47
Yep, that's right.
Susan Tatum 22:48
That is a very good tip. Yeah, so for people who might want to follow up with you and learn more about I know your your work is mostly pricing for products. Is that fair to say? No,
Per Sjofors 22:58
no, most, most of it is services, there is different kinds, and most of it is B2B.
Susan Tatum 23:03
Okay, so since your name is spelled nothing like the way that I'm pronouncing it, tell us what's the best way to get in touch with you.
Per Sjofors 23:11
You just Google the price whisper, yeah, and you should get, you should get about 10 million hits. Wow, um, you know, you'll find my book. You'll find I have a YouTube channel and stuff like that. So,
Susan Tatum 23:22
oh, I didn't know you had a new tube channel. All right, cool. And I will, I'll put your LinkedIn address in the show notes and your book and your YouTube channel. Is that called the price whisperer, also?
Per Sjofors 23:35
at the price whisper Yeah,
Susan Tatum 23:37
okay. All right, excellent. Well, thank you so much. Per I've this has been very enjoyable and educational.
Per Sjofors 23:43
That was the point.
Susan Tatum 23:44
Have a great rest of your day.
Per Sjofors 23:45
Thank you much. Susan.