I’m enjoying Seth Godin’s latest book, Linchpin: Are You Indispensable?. In his chapter on “Becoming the Linchpin”, he has a great diagram on page 52, which I’ve reproduced here. His linchpin discussion is a good illustration of the variance between price and value. I always cringe when a client reacts negatively to my billing rate (which is low for the industry). If they say, “I wish I could bill my time at that rate,” I know they haven’t got it and may never “get it.” I want to ask them what rate they pay their mechanic or their accountant. It’s a question of the value contributed, not the price paid. This is the problem with people who try to do too much tweaking on the product of a good designer… they don’t understand that they’re paying for expertise and then negating its value. Perhaps they’d rather have an expert at minimum wage?
Paying for Insight
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I've always had a cynical view of companies that offer "branding" and "strategy." Both are valid, necessary, important activities which every business owner must consider, but I've seen too many creative houses that get into these lines as a way to sell creative services -- and little more. To them, it's just creative services, rebranded. The thing that gets me most is how often some of these types of shops tend to rebrand themselves, and what that means to them... the joke I never said to one of their faces when meeting them on the street was, "Hey, I saw your new brand -- very nice! Been slow around the shop lately?" I don't know where they found the time to rebrand themselves every six months and still look after clients. 
