Price by meetings, not by round size: how to package agency services into pricing tiers
Package what the client can count, not the label on their round.
I learned that from a prospect who turned our sales call into a pricing review. It was February 27. Charles and I had walked a founder through the whole system: separate domains, 100 or so mailboxes, each sending five or ten emails a day, AI replies that book meetings. Good questions all the way through. Then they asked to see our pricing sheet, and spent five minutes taking it apart.
They were right. Here is what they said, what I agreed with, and the one part I pushed back on.
Context matters here. This was not a random critic. They run a family office structure, back several portfolio companies and plan to raise a vehicle of their own deal by deal. In their words, their day job, across their whole portfolio, is figuring out pricing boxes. When someone like that tells you your packaging is wrong, you take notes.
The critique: stage names do not match real round sizes
Our fundraising packages at the time were named by stage: seed, Series A, Series B. It felt intuitive. Bigger round, bigger package.
Their first objection was simple. For one of their portfolio companies, the seed alone was going to be $20 million. Under our tiers, which box does that company go in? The answer is none of them.
Their second objection was sharper. Stage does not tell you anything about the work. They might get a response in ten emails and raise $100 million. They might raise $2 million. That is immaterial to what we actually do for them. If the deliverable is the same emails and the same infrastructure, charging wildly different amounts based on a label is hard to defend.
I agreed on the spot. I had said the same thing internally: the tiers did not map. We had customers raising $20 million who were nowhere near Series D.
Package by deliverable: X meetings in Y weeks
Their fix was to price on value, not on the fundraise. Something like: here is what I will do, here is how many confirmed meetings you get, here is the time window. Ten confirmed meetings or twenty. Sixty days. If I do not hit the number, I keep going until I do.
That framing does three things a stage label cannot.
- The buyer can count it. Meetings on a calendar are visible. Stage is a story.
- It works across use cases. Investors, customers and podcast guests all become meetings.
- It forces you to know your own numbers. You cannot promise ten meetings in 60 days unless you know your reply and booking rates.
It also matched what I had told them ten minutes earlier without realizing it was a pricing argument. I was explaining how our AI replies to investors and is trained to eventually send the calendar link so they book a meeting. Then I said: that is the event, that is our KPI. If the booked meeting is the KPI, the booked meeting should be the package.
Three packages, not twenty
The other line I wrote down:
Put 3 packages, not like 20
A base package, a premium package, and one in between. Wayfront's guide to agency pricing lands in the same place: three tiers is the sweet spot, four can work if you serve genuinely distinct segments, and five or more usually means you have not figured out your positioning. Prospects facing five or six options stall.
The difference between tiers should be the thing the client counts: more meetings, a longer window, more audiences. Not features they cannot see.
The part I pushed back on: the bonus
Their full suggestion was a fixed fee plus a bonus tied to results:
Hey, this is my fixed fee.
And then, if we deliver a set number of meetings or they raise a set amount, a bonus on top.
For meetings, a bonus is fair game. For money raised, I said no, clearly: we do not take a performance bonus on capital raised, because we are not brokers. Taking a cut of the capital raised is broker territory, and that is not what we are. If someone offers you that casually, ask whether they are allowed to.
So the rule we use: tie the bonus, if there is one, to the work we control, like confirmed meetings. Never to the investor's decision to write a check.
Why this matters more than it looks
Near the end of the call, the founder told us their team was talking to 23 agencies for similar work. Twenty-three. Every one of those agencies has a pricing page. A buyer comparing 23 options will not decode stage-based tiers. They will pick the one where they understand exactly what they are getting.
That is the real lesson. Packaging is not a finance exercise. It is the last sales pitch you make, and you make it without being in the room.
How to rebuild your tiers
- Write down the one outcome every client actually cares about. For us, meetings.
- Know your conversion math well enough to commit to a number in a time window.
- Build three packages that differ on that number, the window and the number of audiences.
- If you add a bonus, tie it to output you control.
- Kill any tier name that needs explaining.
The prospect who critiques your pricing is doing you a favor. Most just leave and go to agency number 24. See the plans.
Frequently asked questions
Should agencies price by outcome or by retainer?
Package around an outcome the client can count, such as meetings in a time window, even if billing is a monthly fee. It makes the value legible without turning you into a commission shop.
How many service tiers should I offer?
Three. Wayfront's agency pricing guide calls three the sweet spot and warns that five or more usually signals unclear positioning.
What should change between tiers?
The thing the client counts: number of meetings, length of the window, number of audiences. Avoid tiers that differ on features the buyer cannot see.
How do I add a performance bonus without risk?
Tie it to output you control, such as confirmed meetings. For fundraising services, avoid fees tied to capital raised, which is broker territory; check the rules where you operate.