Just before we get into details about having fixed-prices for Salesforce work, consider the following story. This is probably not a factual story, but an allegory with an important moral.
Henry Ford of the Ford motor company had a huge machine that automated an important part of the car manufacturing process. One day, the machine suddenly stopped working.
For each minute it didn’t work, the company lost money – and lots of it. Henry’s own engineering staff couldn’t figure out the problem, so he called for an external expert to help.
The expert walked around the machine making various observations and gently knocking on it. After a few minutes and with some white chalk, the expert drew an “x” mark on a particular spot and told the company to replace this piece. They did, and the machine worked again.
The expert then issued an invoice for $10,000. This was a high price to pay for 15 minutes of work, so Henry asked for the invoice to be itemized.
The expert broke it down into two lines:
- $0.01 : for the chalk mark
- $9,999.99 : knowing where to put it
The takeaway
The expert wasn’t charging for their time solving the problem. They were charging for the years of experience it took to know how to solve the problem.
By the way, in my opinion, the expert should have invoiced first and then started the work.