Our delivery costs are plummeting because of AI, but our clients still expect deep strategic advisory. How do we apply the economics of Brynjolfsson and McAfee to justify our high rates when the actual execution work has become cheap and plentiful?

Question

Tyler Smith · Accepted Answer

As economists Erik Brynjolfsson and Andrew McAfee point out, when a technology becomes cheap and plentiful, the value of its complement skyrockets. In today's business environment, automated execution and draft generation have become cheap and abundant. This means the value of human judgment, deep strategic context, and emotional intelligence is higher than ever. If your clients are pushing back on your pricing because they know you are using AI, you are selling the wrong thing. You are pricing your commoditized execution instead of your scarce strategic value. To justify premium rates, your leadership team must realign your service offering on the V/TO®. Shift your positioning from a service provider that delivers reports to an indispensable strategic partner that interprets data and guides execution. Update your Accountability Chart to ensure your client-facing team spends their time on deep consulting, not manual data preparation. When your clients realize that your human advisory prevents them from making costly mistakes with their cheap AI tools, they will gladly pay your premium rates. This high-margin strategic relationship is exactly what buyers look for under the Step by Step Exit framework.