How I price an engagement.

Why publish this at all

Most consulting websites are coy about money. You read three pages of "outcomes" copy, click contact, get into a discovery call, and only thirty minutes in does the actual number come out. By then you've spent an hour you can't get back, and the consultant has anchored against your patience. 1 1I've been on both sides of this. As a buyer it's exhausting; as a seller, it's a tactic that selects against the buyers I most want.

That's not how I want to be hired. I'd rather the conversation start with both of us already aligned on the shape of the work and the cost. Either we proceed because it makes sense for both, or we don't — and either way we get an hour of our lives back.

So this page is the contract I publish in advance. It tells you, plainly, how I scope, what I charge, and what you're getting. If a number on it disqualifies us from working together, that's a good outcome too.

How I price

Three rules, in order of how much they matter.

1. Flat fee, agreed before the work starts.

Every engagement has a fixed price written into a one-page scope before we begin. Not an estimate, not "time and materials," not "we'll see how it goes." If something is uncertain enough that I can't quote it flat, we don't start with it — we start with a small piece I can quote, learn what we need to learn, then scope the rest. 2 2This is the single biggest reason I don't bill hourly. Hourly billing pays me more when I'm slower. That's a bad incentive structure for both of us.

2. Priced against the value of the outcome, not the hours.

A site rebuild that helps you close one extra $40K customer pays for itself the day it ships. A pricing repositioning that lifts your average deal size by 12% is worth a multiple of what it costs to do. I price against that range, not against my calendar.

This means the same kind of work can cost different amounts for different businesses — because it's worth different amounts. I'd rather be transparent about that than pretend otherwise.

3. Scope is fixed. Surprises are not allowed.

If scope changes mid-engagement — you decide you want a second landing page, a new email sequence, a redesign of something we'd already agreed not to touch — we stop, talk about it, and either expand the scope in writing or defer the new work. You will never see a surprise on an invoice.

What it actually costs

Three engagement shapes cover most of what I do. The ranges are real — what most projects land between. For anything that doesn't fit cleanly, the diagnostic call sorts it out. 3 3Yes, I'm publishing ranges. No, that doesn't mean every quote will be at the high end. It means I've decided in advance which clients I want to work with, and the floor is part of that filter.

2 slots, Q3 2026.

A senior fractional partner at this level lands around $240,000 a year. A full-time VP of Growth costs $250,000–$350,000 loaded — salary, benefits, equity, the three months of ramp where they don't ship anything. The math isn't that I'm cheaper. The math is that the engagement starts compounding the week we sign, and ends when you've outgrown needing it.

What I guarantee — and what I don't

I guarantee the work I ship is good. If you read the work, look at what I've built, talk to me on a call, and the work I'm proposing isn't materially better than what you have today — I won't take the engagement. If after we start, I genuinely think the strategy I scoped is wrong, I'll tell you, refund the rest, and recommend who you should call instead.

I do not guarantee revenue outcomes. Anyone who does is selling you something else. Too many variables — your market, your team, your cash position, your execution, the economy — sit between what I ship and what your P&L does. What I can guarantee is that the work is well-shaped, well-built, well-positioned, and your odds of the outcome you want go up.

Most consulting fraud lives in the gap between those two paragraphs. I'd rather be honest about it.

If we're not a fit

If the numbers above are out of reach, that's an honest signal that I'm not the right partner for this season of your business. There's no version of "we'll work it out" — the floor is the floor. 4 4What I will do, if you ask, is point you to someone whose practice fits where you are. There are excellent operators who work earlier-stage and earlier-budget than I do.

If the numbers are within reach but you want to see the work first, the /now page tells you what I'm currently working on, and the /principles page tells you how. Read those before booking the call. If you've read both and the work still looks like the kind of work you want done, the next step is a thirty-minute call: masood@rayhangroup.co.

That's the playbook.