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The discovery session proposed seems to be just the thing to fill the gulf between what clients want (a reasonable ballpark estimate) and what the consultant is

The discovery session proposed seems to be just the thing to fill the gulf between what clients want (a reasonable ballpark estimate) and what the consultant is comfortable supplying... While $1000 might be a little high, I think charging for that period of time where requirements are really chiseled out is the fix here... Then you can return after one of those meetings after doing some investigation with a hopefully somewhat reasonable estimate

basseq 10y ago
Depending on your business and your services, $1,000 might be insanely low. (That's like 4-5 hours at a reasonable consulting rate... can you build out functional requirements in that time?) The point is to give your client more data and an off-ramp, and works well for frank discussions (and ghosting your competitors): "As you know, websites can be $1k or $1M. Based on this, I think you're in the $100k range. But until we get down into the details of exactly what you want to do, it's hard to say for sure, right? So I could do what a lot of firms do and bid $100k: if I'm high, I keep the difference. If I'm low, I surprise you with a change order. That's not how I do business. So if we're in the same range, let's start slow, figure out exactly what you want to do, not lock you into some giant contract with me, and give you better data to move forward with confidence."