What We’re Learning: A Week on Value-Based Pricing
- Roots & Rivers Team
- Apr 30
- 3 min read
Updated: May 1
This year at Roots & Rivers, we’re piloting Learning Weeks. The initial idea was hatched during a moment of reflection between Hayley and Janani while Annelies was on parental leave: how do we make time to dig into our ever-growing list of open tabs, saved articles, and other curiousities? How do we navigate client work to make space for uninterrupted exploration?
Enter Learning Weeks. Each team member gets two weeks over the year to focus on professional development, an internal project, or a topic of curiosity. During this time, client work is covered by teammates, and non-essential meetings are moved to protect time and focus.
Hayley was the first to try it out, dedicating her Learning Week to exploring value-based pricing — a topic that connects deeply with how we want to show up as a values-driven consulting practice.
What is Value-Based Pricing?
Unlike "cost-plus" pricing which calculates fees based on time and expenses, with a margin added, values-based pricing starts with a different question:
What is the value of this work to the client — in deliverables, outcomes, impact, and long-term ripple effects?
In other words, instead of charging based on hours worked, value-based pricing invites us to consider the significance of the service from the client’s perspective. What outcomes did it unlock for their team? How did it support a strategic shift or contribute to community well-being?
This resonates deeply with us at Roots & Rivers. We’ve pushed back against the hourly rate model, which can feel transactional and doesn’t always reflect the real "cost" or "value" of the work. As we already use project-based and block-fee pricing, an exploration of value-based pricing was a natural next step.
What We’re Learning (So Far)
We’re still early in this journey, here’s what Hayley uncovered in her week of focused learning:
Understanding perceived value is key. We need to build a deeper understanding of how clients perceive the value of the work we did together.
Learning from "no". It’s just as important to understand why someone chose not to work with us. Was it about price, value, timing, or something else?
Value and willingnesss to pay are closely linked. The perception of potential impact influences how we see worth.
The social purpose sector's ability to pay has unique limitations. For nonprofits and charities, the funding available to invest in consulting services is often limited and comes with restrictions. There wasn’t much literature or guidance on how values-based pricing intersects with the social purpose context. This feels like an important knowledge gap and an area we hope to explore more deeply.
Hayley also benefited from some great conversations including with Alan Albert from MarketFit, folks in the Builders Club community, and generous LinkedIn connections who shared articles and ideas.
What's Next?
Hayley’s Learning Week sparked a few clear next steps for our team:
Revise our project wrap-up conversations to include more reflection on value and impact.
Update our feedback requests after unsuccessful proposals to learn more about perceptions of value and pricing.
Reach out to past clients for value-based reflections — what remained constant, what shifted, and what mattered most.
Lessons From the Pilot
Some of Hayley's takeaways from the first Learning Week of the pilot were:
How good it felt to have permission to dive deep into one area of curiosity.
The value of a recap call at the end of the week to help synthesize learnings and share them back with the team.
Ideas for future Learning Weeks (ex. maybe they should start on a Tuesday to give folks space to tie up loose ends).
We’re excited to keep piloting Learning Weeks and sharing what we learn along the way. Values-based pricing is just one of many areas where we’re exploring how to build a more relational and meaningful approach to consulting in the social purpose sector.
Stay tuned! If you’re a fellow consultant or social purpose leader wrestling with pricing questions, we’d love to hear what’s working (or not) for you.
