Raising the number isn’t the fix. Making it legible is.
I’m the Pike in Vellacourt & Pike, and I fix what’s actually broken about how firms price — not the number on the page, but whether a buyer can tell what it buys them.
I’m not a negotiator you bring to a deal. I’m the one who decides what the deal should have been worth before it starts.
The pattern I keep seeing
A rate card nobody reads, and a sales team quietly discounting to cover for it.
You don’t have a pricing problem. You have a legibility problem.
Most firms I meet have a rate card nobody outside the firm can read, and a sales team quietly discounting to cover for it. I fix that first, before anyone argues about the number.
Three ways in, depending on how bad it is.
Every engagement starts with the same question: put your rate card beside your competitor’s — what would a buyer conclude?
Pricing Teardown
Every deal you closed and lost in the last four quarters, read against what you actually charged, not what the rate card says.
Price Architecture
A documented structure — tiers, what separates them, and the words your sales team uses to explain the gap without apologising for it.
Quarterly Price Review
Standing sessions to move the structure as your costs and your market move, so the rate card doesn’t quietly rot again.
I’d hired three consultants before this. Every one of them handed me a number. Vellacourt asked what the number was supposed to say about us, and we had no answer. That was the whole problem.
Marguerite Oyelaran
Managing Partner, Oyelaran Advisory
Let’s find out what your rate card is hiding.
One call is usually enough to tell you whether the problem is the structure, the sales conversation, or something further upstream.