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Do you offer money back guarantees for the consulting you provide, too? Or does this advice only apply to products?

• patio11 13y ago
  I was occasionally asked for that. My response was typically along the lines of "The model for consulting is typically that I'm guaranteed my rate and you're guaranteed all of the upside. If you want me to take on the downside risk for this project, I would want to share equitably in the upside. My sense of equitable is that if I double your sales I end up owning half of the company." That typically achieved the laugh I was going for. But seriously, if my contracts included a no-fault do-not-pay-Patrick option, my rates would be positively Rumpelstiltskinian to compensate. There's many ways to de-risk potential offerings. Back when I was consulting, a money-back guarantee was not one which I needed to fill my engagement calendar. Customer references, a bit of a brand name, case studies, and a history of doing pretty much exactly what I get paid to do in a pretty public fashion mostly sufficed. I can also very easily think of situations where that would have been personally catastrophic to me without any fault of my own (e.g. six months down the line client X exits line of business I consulted on, triggers guarantee on our $50k contract after I've already used that money to pay for my wedding). That strikes me as not a great idea, at all.