Here’s a great example showing just how much you lose when you discount services or consulting efforts.

Let’s assume you quote a job, fixed price, but calculated by estimating your time.   Here are some considerations you use in your quotation process:

1. Engineering rate: $150/ Hour.  (example rate).

2. Company’s published burden rate: $75/ Hr.

3. Hours estimated to do the job: 8 (one full day)

4. Total proposed price (Fixed Fee): $1200

5. Expected burden cost on the deal: $600

6. Expected gross profit (GP) on the deal: $600

So you put together your proposal and submit it to the client along with whatever products are to be installed.  The client looks at it and figures there’s no harm in asking for some discount.  “How about if we just go with $1000 even?”  Well,  that’s fair.  After all, it’s so close.

Assuming your engineer does complete the work in 8 hours, the client get’s billed $1000.

Looking at the numbers more closely:  That is about 17% off.  Not a huge discount, so you’re not worried.  However, let’s look at the GP discount:

Your fee: $1000

Actual burden cost: 8 X $75 = $600  (Same as above)

Realized GP: $400

Whoa, you gave away $200 right off the bottom line.  That’s a 33.33% discount which is about twice the discount you thought your were giving!  No wonder the numbers don’t work at year end…

© 2010, Dave Stelzl