In my experience an hourly rate usually either a) extracts the budget number that they have or b) gets the response of OK lets just do it hourly or c) I get sho

In my experience an hourly rate usually either a) extracts the budget number that they have or b) gets the response of OK lets just do it hourly or c) I get show to the door. In situation A it is usually because they see my hourly rate a pricy and so they give up their max budget, as a negotiating tool. In which case I tailor the solution to that budget. In situation B they generally have a budget in which they don't see my cost as even making a dent in. Finally in C generally we would have never had a meeting of the minds in the first place. I don't compete on price, there was a point where I had the price shoppers filtered out of my sales pipeline, but as we are bringing on new clients again, we do end up in situation C from time to time.