Exercises: Pricing Your Services
Part A recall · Part B application · Part C field work · Part D critique · Part M mixed review · Part E extension.
Starred (★) problems have worked answers in appendices/answers-to-selected.md.
Part A — Recall and Comprehension
A.1 ★ State what each of the three models bets about who absorbs uncertainty. Which do most planners choose, and what follows?
A.2 Describe the perverse incentive in percentage pricing. Why does the chapter say it does not make planners dishonest?
A.3 ★ Give the second problem with percentage pricing — the one that is the planner's. Work the $60,000 → $38,000 example.
A.4 What two refinements make percentage pricing survivable?
A.5 ★ Why is a flat fee a bet, and why is the error distribution asymmetrical? Give the five things that make it survivable.
A.6 Give hourly pricing's one virtue and three problems. Where does it genuinely work?
A.7 ★ State the chapter's threshold concept. Give the Saturday arithmetic in full.
A.8 What does the Saturday arithmetic say about a $1,700 coordination?
A.9 ★ Why is work that does not consume a Saturday worth taking at a lower effective rate? Apply it to Noor Haddadi.
A.10 What sets your floor and what sets your ceiling?
A.11 ★ Give the three couples in §37.5a and what each is actually buying.
A.12 State the test that distinguishes value pricing from extraction. Give the three honest limits.
A.13 ★ What makes a tier boundary hold? Give the four that do and the four that do not.
A.14 Why must the effective hourly rate rise as the tier falls?
A.15 ★ Give the true-hourly-cost method. What do most planners find, and by how much?
A.16 State the loss-tolerance formula and give the table.
A.17 ★ In the worked 30% rise, what four things improve besides revenue?
A.18 Give the five steps of the quoting sequence. Which is most often skipped and why does it matter?
A.19 ★ Name the four enquiries to decline, and the fifth that is harder.
A.20 Why does the chapter say a referral matters more than the decline?
A.21 ★ Give the four career phases and what sets the price in each. What is the transition people miss?
Part B — Application
B.1 ★ Compute your own sellable Saturdays and minimum viable fee. Show every deduction and state your delivery ceiling honestly.
B.2 A planner quotes 12% of spend with no floor. Model three budget scenarios — $30,000, $55,000, $85,000 — and state the fee, the likely hours, and the effective rate for each.
B.3 ★ Build a three-tier package structure from your own minimum viable fee. Boundaries must be countable, phased, or named deliverables — and state the effective hourly rate for each tier.
B.4 Take a real or reconstructed event and compute its true hourly cost. Every event-specific cost, every hour including pre-engagement. Report the gap against your required rate.
B.5 ★ Write the exclusions list and out-of-scope rate for a partial-planning tier. At least eight exclusions, phrased so a client could not reasonably disagree.
B.6 A client's budget falls from $58,000 to $34,000 four months in. Work out what happens under each of the three models, and say what a floor would have done.
B.7 ★ You are raising fees 35%. Compute your loss tolerance, then model the outcome at a 25% loss: revenue, hours, per-client overhead, effective rate, Saturdays.
B.8 Write the value question for a consultation, and three answers you might get. For each, say what it is worth to the client and how it would move your price inside your range.
B.9 ★ Write the full quoting sequence for one enquiry: the consultation structure, the gap, the proposal's section order, and the number-lands script.
B.10 A client says your fee is $3,000 more than expected. Write your response, without discounting.
B.11 ★ Write the four declines — price, budget mismatch, distrust, and a date you cannot deliver — each ending in a referral.
B.12 Price the same wedding for couples A, B, and C from §37.5a. State your three numbers and defend the differences to somebody who thinks it is unfair.
B.13 ★ Compute what a friend discount actually costs you, in Saturdays and dollars. Then write the version that is clean.
B.14 A corporate client asks for a day rate. Define what a day is, what happens beyond it, and what your rate should be given that it does not consume a Saturday.
B.15 ★ Take the productive struggle's four enquiries and re-solve it assuming your minimum viable fee is $3,200 rather than $5,053. Does the answer change? Show why or why not.
Part C — Field and Practice
C.1 ★ Collect published pricing from six planners in your market. Report the range, how many publish at all, and what is included at each level.
C.2 Ask three planners how they price and whether they have ever computed a true hourly cost. Record the answers.
C.3 ★ Count the prime Saturdays in your market's season. Then ask a working planner how many weddings they deliver in a year, and compare.
C.4 Find a planner who raised prices significantly. Ask what happened to enquiry volume and to income.
C.5 ★ Track every hour on one real engagement, from first enquiry. Report the total against your estimate.
C.6 Ask a venue coordinator what they think planners in your market charge. Compare to C.1's actual figures.
C.7 ★ Find out what corporate day rates are in your market, from two sources. Report the range.
Part D — Critique and Judgment
D.1 The chapter says percentage pricing carries a perverse incentive. Argue that it is overstated — that professional norms handle it fine, as they do in other percentage-based professions.
D.2 ★ §37.5's Saturday argument implies a coordination business is unviable. Build the strongest case for one anyway.
D.3 ★ §37.5a says value pricing means charging couple C more than couple A for identical work. Argue that this is unfair. Then answer your own argument.
D.4 The chapter warns against an anchor tier you would not deliver, then acknowledges that anchoring works. Is the position coherent, or is it having it both ways?
D.5 ★ §37.8's loss-tolerance arithmetic assumes clients are interchangeable. Attack that assumption. Which 23% do you lose?
D.6 The productive struggle takes the difficult client at $11,000. Argue that this is how planners burn out — and say what would make it sustainable.
D.7 ★ §37.9's declines all end in a referral to a competitor. Is that generous or naive? What does it cost, and what does it actually buy?
D.8 Chapter 36 said a planner's leverage is in month one. Chapter 37 says pricing power comes from turning work down. Are these compatible for somebody in year one?
Part M — Mixed Review
M.1 ★ (Ch.2) What does this chapter add to service levels, and what is the counter-intuitive finding that belongs to both?
M.2 (Ch.6) How does percentage pricing interact with budget architecture? Give the subtle version.
M.3 ★ (Ch.36) State both constraints — the hour and the Saturday — and give an example of a fee that satisfies one and fails the other.
M.4 (Ch.29) Chapter 29 said to spend on hospitality rather than decoration. What does that do to a percentage-paid planner's fee?
M.5 ★ (Ch.31) Why is a corporate day rate "capacity pricing in disguise"?
M.6 (Ch.33) Chapter 33 said pricing a destination event as a normal wedding is the commonest business mistake. Explain it using §37.5.
M.7 ★ (Ch.30) Which Chapter 30 artefact makes flat-fee pricing survivable, and how?
M.8 (Ch.21) The productive struggle's client C requires a competence. What did Chapter 21 say that decides whether you may take the money?
M.9 ★ (Ch.3) Which enquiry does Chapter 3 tell you to decline, and at what stage?
M.10 (Ch.35) Where does §35.9's conflict of interest reappear here, and is it the same one?
Part E — Extension and Synthesis
E.1 ★ Build a complete pricing system: Saturday arithmetic, three tiers with boundaries, exclusions, out-of-scope rate, travel policy, and a decline script. Then have a working planner critique it.
E.2 Research pricing models in an adjacent profession — architecture, consulting, photography, law. Report which of the three models dominates and why, and what this chapter could borrow.
E.3 ★ Write 800 words on whether value pricing is defensible in a service where the client is emotionally invested. Engage with D.3 seriously and reach a position you would state to a client who asked directly.
E.4 Model a planner's income across ten years under two strategies: volume at a low price, and fewer events at a rising price. State your assumptions and report where they cross.
E.5 ★ Design the one-page pricing review a planner would do annually: costs, Saturdays, true hourly across three events, market check, and the decision. Under thirty minutes.
E.6 Interview somebody who has been pricing in this industry for a decade about what changed and when. Report the transition points and compare them to §37.9a's four phases.
📐 Mini-Project
Price your own practice, completely.
- The Saturday arithmetic, with an honest delivery ceiling
- The minimum viable fee
- Three tiers, with boundaries that could not be disagreed about
- The exclusions list and out-of-scope rate
- The true hourly cost of three real or reconstructed events
- The gap between what you charge and what you need
- The rise it implies, with the loss tolerance computed
- The four decline scripts, each ending in a referral
Then the step that makes it real: quote your next enquiry at the new number.
Write the number down before the call.
And record what happened — not whether they booked, but whether you said the number and then stopped talking.