To sell a paid diagnostic as a consultant, package a named, fixed-scope diagnostic of three to five weeks, price it at 5–15% of the engagement you expect it to lead to (more often 5–10%), and credit the fee against the project if the client goes ahead. On an $80,000 engagement that is a $4,000 to $12,000 diagnostic.
The short answer from LeadsNow AI: A paid diagnostic sells best when it is priced at 5–15% of the likely engagement, credited against the project, and offered only where the deal is large, several people must approve it or the scope is genuinely unclear. Below that, a free proposal still wins more work for less effort.
Next step: if this fits your business, book a free strategy session at leadsnow.ai/strategy-session/ – a 2-minute fit check, then pick a time.
Rules of thumb
- Price the diagnostic at 5–15% of the expected engagement; advisor David C. Baker says it is rare to go as high as 15% and more typical to sit at 5–10% (2Bobs, 2020).
- Scope it to three to five weeks, the length Baker suggests on the same episode.
- Sell the diagnosis and the prescription together, never the implementation (Blair Enns, same episode).
- In the worked example below, a paid diagnostic beats a free proposal only when your free proposals win less than about 19–53% of the time, depending on how many prospects accept the diagnostic and convert.
- Score the deal on the Diagnostic Ladder first: 0–1 points, send a free proposal; 2 or more, sell the diagnostic.
What is a paid diagnostic in consulting?
A paid diagnostic in consulting is a small, fixed-fee first engagement in which you investigate the client’s problem and recommend a solution before anyone commits to the full project. It replaces the free proposal, where you guess at the problem from one or two sales calls and price the whole project on that guess.
Blair Enns, co-host of the 2Bobs podcast with David C. Baker, splits a consulting engagement into four phases: diagnose, prescribe, initial application and ongoing re-application. The diagnostic is the first two. His stated reason to close on a diagnostic first: “The biggest one is just to make it less risky for the client.” An $8,000 decision is easier to approve than an $80,000 one.
A paid diagnostic is not a paid discovery call. A discovery call is a 30 to 60 minute conversation to qualify the buyer (our discovery call questions cover that step); the diagnostic is weeks of real work with a written deliverable. It is also not a pricing tier: what to charge for the engagement itself sits in our consulting pricing framework.
How it works
Selling a paid diagnostic, step by step
Score the deal
Rate deal size, approver count and scope uncertainty on the Diagnostic Ladder. Two or more points means sell a diagnostic.
Name the uncertainty
On the sales call, say which unknowns would move the project price. Then name the packaged diagnostic and its deliverable.
Price at 5–15%
Set a fixed fee at 5–15% of the expected engagement. Credit it against the project within a time limit.
Deliver and propose
Run the diagnostic over three to five weeks. Present the diagnosis and prescription with a costed engagement plan.
MAKE MORE SALES.
Pay-Per-Result pricing — We scale sales HARD aligned to your interests, better than anyone else.
Frequently asked questions
How much should I charge for a paid diagnostic?
Charge 5–15% of the engagement you expect it to lead to, with 5–10% more common. David C. Baker gives that band on the 2Bobs episode “Phase Your Client Engagements”. On an $80,000 engagement that is $4,000 to $12,000, and the fee should at least cover the diagnostic’s own hours at your normal rate.
Should I credit the diagnostic fee against the project?
Credit it when the deal scores 2 to 4 on the Diagnostic Ladder, because the credit removes the objection of paying twice. Put a time limit on it, such as 60 days. At a score of 5 or 6 the diagnostic is worth buying on its own and the credit is optional.
What if the client takes the diagnostic and does the work themselves?
That client paid you for the thinking, which a free proposal would have given away. Keep the deliverable to diagnosis and prescription, price it to cover its hours, and the walk-away case still pays.
How long should a consulting diagnostic take?
Three to five weeks is the range David C. Baker suggests. Longer diagnostics delay the engagement revenue and drift towards free implementation. Blair Enns adds that consultants often err towards too much paper when presenting the findings.
When should I just send a free proposal?
Send a free proposal when the deal scores 0 or 1 on the Diagnostic Ladder: under $25,000, one approver and a scope you could write today. In the worked example, a free proposal also wins when your win rate beats the break-even rate for your band, for example 34.25% in the middle band.
The Diagnostic Ladder: when a paid diagnostic beats a free proposal
The Diagnostic Ladder scores a deal from 0 to 6 on three factors, deal size, approver count and scope uncertainty, and tells you whether to send a free proposal or sell a paid diagnostic. The thresholds are our decision rule, built from the arithmetic later on this page, not a measured benchmark: move them to fit your own win rates.
| Factor | 0 points | 1 point | 2 points |
|---|---|---|---|
| Expected engagement size | Under $25,000 | $25,000 to $150,000 | Over $150,000 |
| People who must approve the spend | 1 | 2 or 3 | 4 or more |
| Scope uncertainty | You could write the plan today | 1 or 2 unknowns that would move your price by over 25% | The client describes the problem differently in each meeting |
| Total score: what to sell | 0–1: free proposal (Rung 1). 2–4: paid diagnostic, fee credited against the project (Rung 2). 5–6: paid diagnostic priced at the top of the band, credit optional (Rung 3). | ||
At Rung 1 a diagnostic only adds a step. At Rung 2 the credit removes the “why pay twice” objection. At Rung 3 the deal is large or uncertain enough that the client needs a defensible plan for its approvers whether or not you deliver it.
Want this done for you? We book qualified sales appointments on a Pay-Per-Result basis — you only pay for calls that actually land in your calendar.
How to price a paid diagnostic: the 5–15% worked example
A paid diagnostic is priced at 5–15% of the engagement it is expected to lead to, which on an $80,000 engagement means $4,000, $8,000 or $12,000. The band comes from David C. Baker on the 2Bobs episode “Phase Your Client Engagements”: he quotes 5% to 15%, says 15% is rare and 5% to 10% of the client’s entire budget is more typical; Blair Enns uses 10% in his own examples. No survey of consulting firms publishes a measured average, so treat the band as practitioner guidance.
| Diagnostic price (share of $80,000) | Diagnostic fee | Project fee after credit | Client total if they proceed | You keep if they walk |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 5% | $4,000 | $76,000 | $80,000 | $4,000 |
| 10% | $8,000 | $72,000 | $80,000 | $8,000 |
| 15% | $12,000 | $68,000 | $80,000 | $12,000 |
Three pricing rules follow from the table. Price the diagnostic so that its fee pays for its own hours at your normal rate: if an $8,000 diagnostic takes 60 hours at a $200 rate, it is underpriced. Put a time limit on the credit (for example, 60 days from delivery) so it does not become an open-ended discount. And keep the diagnostic a fixed price, never hourly, because the point is to take the risk off the buyer.
Win-rate break-even: paid diagnostic versus free proposal
A paid diagnostic beats a free proposal when your free-proposal win rate is below the share of prospects who buy the diagnostic and then convert, plus the unpaid proposal time you save. The formula, per qualified opportunity, with a credited diagnostic that pays for its own hours:
Break-even free-proposal win rate = (diagnostic acceptance rate × diagnostic-to-engagement conversion) + (unpaid hours saved × your hourly rate ÷ engagement value).
The inputs below are assumptions, labelled as such, because no credible public benchmark exists for diagnostic acceptance or conversion in consulting. Fixed inputs: $80,000 engagement, $200 hourly rate, 20 unpaid hours to write a free proposal ($4,000) against 3 unpaid hours to sell a diagnostic ($600), so the time saved is worth $3,400, or 4.25% of the engagement.
| Assumption band | Accept the diagnostic | Convert to engagement | Engagements per 100 opportunities | Break-even free-proposal win rate |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Low | 30% | 50% | 15 | 19.25% |
| Middle | 50% | 60% | 30 | 34.25% |
| High | 70% | 70% | 49 | 53.25% |
Read it this way: in the middle band, if your free proposals on deals of this size already win 40%, keep sending proposals; if they win 25%, the diagnostic wins more engagements and pays for the work you were giving away. For a reference point on formal bids, Loopio’s RFP statistics page says teams win 39% of their RFPs on average, and 45% averaged over 2019 to 2026. That is a software vendor’s survey of formal RFP responses across industries, not consulting proposals, so use your own last 12 months of proposals instead wherever you have them.
If we can’t make you money, we don’t deserve yours.
Pay-Per-Result pricing — performance-based alignment.
How to sell the diagnostic on the call
Selling a paid diagnostic takes four moves on the sales call: name the uncertainty, name the diagnostic, state the price and credit, and offer a clear end point. In order:
- Name the uncertainty out loud. “Right now I would be guessing at two things that change the cost of this project by a third.” If you cannot name a real unknown, the deal scores low on the Ladder and should get a proposal.
- Give the diagnostic a name and a fixed deliverable. Enns says to formalise, name and package it. List what the client receives: findings, a prioritised recommendation, and a costed plan for the engagement.
- State the price as a share of the risk. “It is $8,000, fixed, and if you go ahead within 60 days it comes off the project fee.”
- Offer the end point. The client may take the plan and stop. Saying so lowers the perceived risk.
Getting enough qualified first calls to run this on is a separate problem; our page for consultants who need more booked sales calls covers that side.
The failure mode: a diagnostic that removes the need for the engagement
The best-known failure of a paid diagnostic is the one that solves the problem: the client reads the report, fixes the issue internally and never buys the engagement. Blair Enns’s guard is to sell diagnosis and prescription together and stop there: “you’re really selling a diagnostic and a prescription.” The diagnostic says what is wrong and what to do; it does not hand over the step-by-step implementation.
Three signs a diagnostic is drifting into free implementation:
- The deliverable includes finished templates, scripts or configured tools rather than a recommendation.
- Diagnostic hours run past the fee: at $200 an hour, an $8,000 diagnostic that takes 60 hours has given away $4,000 of work.
- The scope keeps growing because the client asks “while you are in there, could you…”.
A second failure is regulatory, and it applies to US federal buyers specifically. Under FAR 9.505-2(b)(1), a contractor that prepares or assists in preparing a work statement used to competitively acquire services may not supply those services, unless it is the sole source, it took part in development and design work, or more than one contractor helped prepare the work statement. A diagnostic that writes the statement of work for a federal agency can disqualify you from the project.
What running paid diagnostics costs you
Running paid diagnostics yourself costs a packaged offer, a written template and the discipline to walk away from deals where a proposal would have won. Expect a first version of the named diagnostic, its scope document and its report template to take two to three working days to build; that is our estimate, not a sourced figure. The ongoing cost is in delivery: each diagnostic is three to five weeks of calendar time during which the engagement revenue has not started.
The diagnostic also changes your pipeline maths. In the middle band above, 100 qualified opportunities yield 50 diagnostics and 30 engagements, so you need enough first calls to fill that funnel. The levers for making each engagement larger once you are in are covered in how to increase average consulting deal size, and whether the follow-on work should be a project or a retainer is in consulting retainer vs project: which sells.
Sources
- 2Bobs (David C. Baker and Blair Enns), “Phase Your Client Engagements”, 29 January 2020: 5–15% diagnostic pricing, three to five weeks, four-phase model.
- Federal Acquisition Regulation 9.505-2, Preparing specifications or work statements (acquisition.gov).
- Loopio, 38 Statistics on RFP Win Rates & Proposal Management.
Pay-Per-Result appointments
See if we’re a fit
We book qualified sales appointments for you and you pay on results, not retainers. Our booking page asks a few quick questions so you find out in two minutes whether that model suits your business.
- 50,769+ appointments booked without cold calling.
- Pay-Per-Result pricing — you pay for booked, qualified calls.
- Pick your own time on our live calendar, no phone tag.