Quiz: Pricing Your Services
21 items: 12 multiple choice · 5 true/false · 3 short answer · 1 applied scenario with rubric.
Answers in <details>. Attempt each before opening.
Part 1 — Multiple Choice (12)
Q1. The three pricing models are best understood as three bets about:
(a) How much the client values the work (b) Who absorbs uncertainty (c) Market positioning (d) Cash-flow timing
Answer
**(b).** **Flat fee: you, entirely. Percentage: shared badly. Hourly: the client, entirely.** **Most planners choose flat fee — the model that transfers all the risk to them — and then price it as though there were none.**Q2. A planner on 15% whose client's budget falls from $60,000 to $38,000:
(a) Earns the same (b) Loses $3,300 for doing the same job, or a harder one (c) Should renegotiate mid-engagement (d) Earns more because the work is harder
Answer
**(b).** **A percentage exposes you to a variable you do not control and which is not correlated with your effort** — and the correlation is weak in both directions. **The fix is a floor.**Q3. Why should a flat fee be priced at the 75th percentile of your tracked hours rather than the median?
(a) To build in profit (b) Because clients expect a premium (c) Because you eat the overruns and not the underruns (d) To allow for inflation
Answer
**(c).** **Every flat fee is a bet that you estimated the hours correctly, and the error distribution is not symmetrical** — events almost never take less time than expected.Q4. Hourly pricing's central structural problem:
(a) Clients dislike it (b) It is hard to track (c) It rewards slowness and punishes expertise (d) It is unusual in weddings
Answer
**(c).** A planner who has done four hundred weddings does in six hours what a beginner does in eleven — **and a model in which expertise reduces your income is badly aligned.** It also caps income at your hours and **turns the client into somebody managing your work.**Q5. The chapter's threshold concept:
(a) Price what the market will bear (b) You are not pricing the event; you are pricing your capacity (c) Always use a flat fee with exclusions (d) Value beats cost
Answer
**(b).** **There are only so many Saturdays, each can be sold exactly once**, and a fee below a Saturday's share of required revenue **is not a low price — it is a Saturday you have given away.**Q6. With $80,850 of required revenue and 16 sellable Saturdays, the minimum viable fee is:
(a) $2,526 (b) $5,053 (c) $8,085 (d) It depends on the tier
Answer
**(b).** **Which means a $1,700 coordination is not a small job at a small price — it is a $5,053 asset sold for $1,700**, and no amount of it being easy work changes that.Q7. Work that does not consume a Saturday:
(a) Should be priced identically (b) Is worth taking at a lower effective rate, because it does not compete for the scarce resource (c) Should be refused (d) Should carry a premium
Answer
**(b)** — which is why corporate work is worth more to a solo planner than its fee suggests. **Noor Haddadi's six corporate events consume roughly one Saturday between them.**Q8. Cost sets your floor. What sets your ceiling?
(a) The market average (b) Your competitors (c) What the engagement is worth to the person buying it (d) Your experience level
Answer
**(c)** — **and the space between floor and ceiling is the entire business.** Three couples receiving identical work are buying convenience, their own capacity back, and a way through — **and those are worth wildly different amounts.**Q9. The test distinguishing value pricing from charging what you can get away with:
(a) Whether the price is above the market (b) Whether the client can afford it (c) At the end, would the client say the fee was worth it? (d) Whether it is published
Answer
**(c).** **Value pricing bets yes; extraction bets they will not notice.** And the ethical line: **you may only price against a value the client has stated out loud** — a value you inferred and did not check is a story you told yourself.Q10. A tier boundary holds if it is:
(a) Described as a "level of involvement" (b) Countable, phased, or a named deliverable (c) Priced as a multiple of the tier below (d) Explained in the contract
Answer
**(b).** **The test: could a client and you disagree about whether something is included?** If yes, it is not a boundary.Q11. The effective hourly rate across tiers should:
(a) Be identical (b) Rise as the tier rises (c) Rise as the tier falls (d) Vary randomly
Answer
**(c)**, and it is counter-intuitive. **Every tier carries the same per-client overhead against fewer billable hours** — **a coordination priced at the full-planning hourly rate loses money.**Q12. At a 30% price rise, the proportion of clients you can lose and still hold revenue:
(a) 30% (b) 23.1% (c) 15% (d) 50%
Answer
**(b).** **Loss tolerance = 1 − 1 ÷ (1 + rise).** And "break even" understates it: at a 20% loss the worked case gains $2,000 of revenue, **350 fewer hours, two Saturdays back, and a 30% higher effective rate.**Part 2 — True or False (5)
Q13. A percentage fee tracks how much work an event requires.
Answer
**False, and weakly in both directions.** **A $90,000 wedding with two decisive clients and a full-service venue can take less time than a $30,000 one in a field with four opinionated parents.**Q14. You should quote in the room while the client is engaged and enthusiastic.
Answer
**False.** **A number quoted in the room is quoted under social pressure by somebody who wants to be liked, and it is almost always low.** One to three days, then a written proposal **with the fee last** — because a proposal that opens with a fee is read backwards.Q15. If a client says the fee is more than expected, offering a discount is a reasonable first response.
Answer
**False.** **Discount the scope, not the price.** *"At five thousand the honest version isn't full planning at a discount — it's the partial package"* is the same money and a completely different message. **"I can do it for less" teaches a client your number was soft.**Q16. An anchor tier that nobody buys is harmless.
Answer
**False.** **A tier you cannot deliver, or would not want to, is a promise on a page** — **and the day somebody buys it, you discover what you have sold.** If you build one, build one you would actually deliver at that price.Q17. You raise prices because you have become busy.
Answer
**False, and the ordering matters.** **You do not raise prices because you are busy; you become busy at a higher price because you raised them and declined the difference.** A planner who takes everything has no pricing power by definition — **and §37.8's arithmetic and §37.9's refusals are the same act.**Part 3 — Short Answer (3)
Q18. State the Saturday arithmetic in full and give its two corollaries.
Answer
**52 Saturdays → 26 in prime season → +8 shoulder = 34 → less dates you will not work = 28 → less the realistic delivery ceiling for a solo planner with quality = 16 sellable.** **Required revenue ÷ 16 = the minimum viable fee.** $80,850 ÷ 16 = **$5,053.** **Corollary one: any Saturday event must clear it, or you must be taking it for a reason you have named** — a portfolio piece, a venue relationship, a favour — **once, deliberately, not as a habit.** **Corollary two, which is the useful one: work that does not consume a Saturday is worth taking at a lower effective rate**, because it is not competing for the scarce resource.Q19. Explain value pricing, its test, and its three limits.
Answer
**Cost sets the floor and value sets the ceiling.** Three couples receiving identical work are buying **convenience**, **their own capacity back**, and **a way through** — and pricing all three at cost-plus charges the third the same as the first for something worth ten times more to them. **The test: at the end, would the client say the fee was worth it?** **Three limits.** **It does not work in a transparent market** — published prices mean everybody sees the same number. **It requires you to actually deliver the value**, and selling "a way through" without Chapter 21's competence is selling something you cannot make. **And it should never be used to price against distress** — the practical form of which is that your range should be stated consistently, **and value moves you inside the range rather than above it.**Q20. Give the price-rise arithmetic and everything that improves besides revenue.
Answer
**Loss tolerance = 1 − 1 ÷ (1 + rise).** +10% → 9.1% · +20% → 16.7% · **+30% → 23.1%** · +50% → 33.3% · +100% → 50%. **In the worked case — $5,000 to $6,500, ten clients to eight:** revenue $50,000 → **$52,000** · hours 1,750 → **1,400** (including per-client overhead) · effective rate $28.57 → **$37.14** · Saturdays consumed 10 → **8.** **And the two Saturdays are not idle** — they are available for the enquiries you previously had to turn down, **which is how a raise compounds.**Part 4 — Applied Scenario (1)
Q21. A planner in year four. Required revenue $94,000**. Delivers **14 weddings a year**, all on Saturdays: **6 full planning at $6,400 (avg 158 hrs), 5 partial at $3,900 (avg 88 hrs), 3 coordination at $2,200 (avg 52 hrs). Per-client unbillable overhead ≈ 15 hrs. Sellable Saturdays: 18. Works about 2,050 hours.
Produce: the revenue and gap · the minimum viable fee and which tiers fail it · the true effective rate · the restructure · and the price rise, with loss tolerance.