| Category | Proposals & Pricing |
|---|---|
| Time to Run | 30 min |
| Difficulty | Deep Work |
| Output | Analysis |
| Client-Facing | No — internal use |
You haven't raised your rates in eighteen months. Your last three clients signed without negotiating — which means you're probably underpriced. Or maybe you just lost a deal on price and you're wondering whether to lower your fees or hold the line. Either way, you're making pricing decisions based on gut feel instead of data.
Run this quarterly, or whenever you suspect your pricing is misaligned with the value you deliver. The analysis forces you to look at what your clients actually receive versus what you charge, and whether your pricing reflects your current market position or the one you held two years ago.
Copy the skill file below and save it as pricing-review-analyzer-SKILL.md. Upload it to a Claude project or paste it at the start of a conversation, then provide your inputs.
---
name: pricing-review-analyzer
description: >
Analyzes your current pricing against value delivered, market position, and
engagement economics. Run quarterly or when pricing feels misaligned to
identify specific adjustment opportunities.
metadata:
author: "Kathryn Brown, Practice Builders"
version: "1.0.0"
date: "2026-04-25"
---
# Pricing Review Analyzer
Examines your pricing structure against client outcomes, engagement economics, and market signals to identify where you're leaving money on the table.
**Core Principle: Price based on the value the client receives, not the hours you spend. Every pricing review starts with outcomes and works backward to fees.**
## What This Skill Does
**Job 1: Value-to-Fee Mapping** — Takes the outcomes your clients achieve and maps them against what you charge. Identifies the gap between the value you create and the fee you collect. Most solo consultants significantly undercharge because they price based on effort, not impact.
**Job 2: Engagement Economics Analysis** — Examines the actual economics of your engagements: effective hourly rate, client acquisition cost, lifetime value, and utilization. Surfaces the numbers you should know but probably don't track — like which engagement type actually makes you money versus which one just keeps you busy.
**Job 3: Adjustment Recommendations** — Produces specific, actionable pricing changes with rationale. Not "consider raising your rates" — more like "your diagnostic-to-engagement conversion is 70%, which means your diagnostic is underpriced or your engagement pricing has room to has room to increase without affecting close rate."
### Section 1: Current Pricing Snapshot
Build a table of every service/engagement type with:
| Service | Current Fee | Avg Duration | Effective Rate/Hour | Client Outcome |
|---------|------------|--------------|---------------------|----------------|
| [Service] | [Fee] | [Duration] | [Calculated] | [What client gets] |
The effective hourly rate is the reality check. Many consultants discover their retainer clients are paying \$75/hour effective while their project clients pay \$250/hour effective. This table makes the disparity visible.
### Section 2: Value Gap Analysis
For each service, compare:
- What the client pays (your fee)
- What the client receives (outcome value — revenue gained, time saved, cost avoided)
- The ratio between the two
A healthy consulting engagement delivers 3-10x the fee in value. If your ratio is higher than 10x, you're significantly underpriced. If it's below 3x, you may be overpriced or under-delivering.
Format: One paragraph per service. Name the specific outcomes and estimate the value range. Be honest about what you can and can't quantify.
### Section 3: Market Position Check
Based on competitor awareness inputs, assess:
- Where you sit in the market (budget, mid-market, premium)
- Whether your positioning matches your pricing
- Signals from the market (win rate, pushback frequency, prospect comments)
Watch for: If you're winning every deal, you're underpriced. If you're losing every deal on price, either your pricing is genuinely too high or your value communication is weak. The skill should differentiate between a pricing problem and a positioning problem.
### Section 4: Engagement Economics
Calculate and present:
- **Average client lifetime value (LTV):** Total revenue from average client relationship
- **Effective utilization:** Billable hours ÷ available hours
- **Revenue concentration:** What percentage of revenue comes from your top 3 clients
- **Acquisition cost:** Rough estimate of time/money to land a new client
Flag any red numbers: utilization below 60%, revenue concentration above 40% in one client, LTV declining year over year.
### Section 5: Specific Recommendations
For each recommendation:
- **Signal:** What in the analysis triggered this recommendation
- **Do This:** The specific pricing change (with numbers)
- **Expected Impact:** What you should see if the change works
- **Risk:** What could go wrong and how to mitigate
Limit to 3-5 recommendations. Prioritize by revenue impact. Include at least one "do nothing" recommendation — identify one area where current pricing is appropriate and should be maintained.
### Section 6: Implementation Sequence
Order the recommendations by:
1. Changes to apply to new clients immediately
2. Changes to roll into existing client renewals
3. Changes that require 90+ days of preparation
Never recommend changing fees for existing clients mid-engagement without explicit renewal or change order language.
### What to Skip / What to Watch For
**Leave alone:** Don't lower prices to win more deals. If the analysis shows you're losing on price, the first move is to improve your value communication, not cut your fees. Price cuts are permanent; messaging improvements are free.
**Watch for:** The "busy but broke" pattern — high utilization with low effective hourly rate means you're doing too much low-value work. This is a capacity problem disguised as a revenue problem.
## Quality Check (Internal — never shown to the user)
| Check | Question |
|-------|----------|
| Data grounding | Is every recommendation traced to a specific number or signal from the analysis? |
| Completeness | Did the analysis cover all service types, not just the most profitable one? |
| Actionability | Can each recommendation be implemented without additional research? |
| Balance | Is there at least one "maintain current pricing" recommendation? |
| Sequence | Are changes ordered by implementation timing and risk? |
**Enforcement protocol:** (1) Run all five checks. (2) Identify the weakest section. (3) Rewrite it. (4) Verify the rewrite added specific numbers or clearer action steps. Present only the finished analysis.
## Rules
- Never recommend across-the-board percentage increases without specific justification per service
- Always calculate effective hourly rate — it's the most revealing metric
- Dollar signs in output use numerals (\"\$5,000\" not \"five thousand\")
- Include at least one \"hold the line\" recommendation where current pricing is correct
- Don't recommend price decreases unless the data clearly shows overpricing relative to outcomes
- Flag revenue concentration risk if any single client is above 30% of total revenue
- Every recommendation gets a Signal + Do This + Expected Impact + Risk structure
- Never promise specific revenue outcomes — frame as directional expectations
## Output Format
# Pricing Review: [Your Practice Name]
**Review Date:** [Date]
**Period Analyzed:** [Timeframe]
## Current Pricing Snapshot
| Service | Current Fee | Avg Duration | Effective Rate/Hour | Client Outcome |
|---------|------------|--------------|---------------------|----------------|
| [Service] | [Fee] | [Duration] | [Rate] | [Outcome] |
## Value Gap Analysis
### [Service 1]
[Paragraph: fee vs. outcome value, ratio, assessment]
### [Service 2]
[Paragraph: fee vs. outcome value, ratio, assessment]
## Market Position
[Assessment of positioning vs. pricing, win rate signals, competitor context]
## Engagement Economics
- **Average Client LTV:** [Amount]
- **Effective Utilization:** [Percentage]
- **Revenue Concentration:** [Top client percentage]
- **Acquisition Cost:** [Estimate]
[Flags for any concerning metrics]
## Recommendations
### 1. [Recommendation Title]
- **Signal:** [What triggered this]
- **Do This:** [Specific change with numbers]
- **Expected Impact:** [Directional outcome]
- **Risk:** [What could go wrong + mitigation]
### 2. [Recommendation Title]
[Same structure]
### 3. Hold: [Area to Maintain]
- **Signal:** [Why current pricing works here]
- **Do This:** [Maintain current pricing]
- **Review Trigger:** [What would change this recommendation]
## Implementation Sequence
1. **Immediate (new clients):** [Changes]
2. **Next renewal cycle:** [Changes]
3. **90-day preparation:** [Changes]
## What Makes This Different
Most pricing reviews ask "what should I charge?" and answer with market averages. This skill asks "what do my clients actually get?" and builds pricing from the value backward. The engagement economics section catches the patterns that feel like a revenue problem but are actually a capacity or positioning problem — and those require completely different solutions than a price change.
---
Copyright (c) 2026 Kathryn Brown, Practice Builders
This skill is licensed for your personal and business use. You may run this skill inside your own practice and share the outputs it produces with your team and clients. "Your practice" includes employees and contractors engaged to perform work for your business under your direction — virtual assistants, operations support, bookkeepers, and similar team members.
You may not share, distribute, resell, or repackage the skill file itself — including this SKILL.md document, its prompts, frameworks, and structure — with anyone outside your practice. This includes peer practitioners, other consultants who would use it in their own client work, and anyone outside your operating team. Written permission from Kathryn Brown ([email protected]) is required for any redistribution.
This skill is provided "as is" without warranty of any kind, express or implied.