How Access Fees Change the Game

Advisory firms often position their fees based on who the client will work with. A senior advisor costs more, a junior advisor costs less, and the fee flexes depending on who’s in the room. It feels logical, but it creates a few problems. It ties value to individuals, it introduces inconsistency, and it puts pressure on a handful of people to justify the highest fees.

I spoke with an advisor the other day who recently moved away from that model. They set one minimum fee for new clients, $12,000 plus gst, and apply it universally. It doesn’t matter what the initial conversation is about or who the client meets with first. The number stays the same.

They’re not pricing individuals. They’re pricing access.

Access to the capability of the team.

That’s the shift.

When they made the change, demand dropped, but revenue increased. Previously, their minimums ranged from $6,000 to $12,000 and they were constantly busy. Too many prospects, too much work, not enough capacity. After moving to a $12,000 minimum, they went from 14 new clients at an average of $7,150, about $100,000 total, to 10 new clients at an average of $14,750, about $147,000 total.

Fewer clients, higher revenue, and a client base that better understands the value of the relationship.

That’s one of the immediate effects of access pricing. It controls demand. Not just by reducing volume, but by improving alignment. The people who engage are more intentional and more likely to see the relationship as ongoing rather than transactional.

It also removes expert dependency. Under a traditional model, prospects naturally ask who they’ll be working with. What they’re really asking is how much that person is worth. The pricing model reinforces that thinking.

With access pricing, that question becomes less relevant. The expectation is that the team delivers a minimum level of value. How that value gets delivered is handled internally. It gives the business more flexibility, reduces bottlenecks around senior advisers, and creates a more consistent client experience.

The third shift is how pricing decisions are made. Most firms start with effort. They try to estimate how much work a client will require and build a fee from there. Access pricing starts with value. What does someone need to get from this relationship for it to be worth engaging us?

For the advisor I mentioned, that answer is $12,000 in year one. If that level of value isn’t there, for either side, it’s not a fit. That clarity removes a lot of the negotiation and second-guessing that comes with effort-based pricing.

This is also where most firms get stuck. I’ve had a number of conversations recently with firms exploring this model. Good firms, growing firms, doing real planning work. Many of them believe their constraint is systems or capacity. Sometimes that’s true.

But often the bigger constraint is pricing that doesn’t reflect the value they’re already delivering, combined with a model that reinforces reliance on a few key people.

Access pricing challenges that.

It moves the conversation away from how much work is involved or what a client has, and toward what it’s worth to have access to a team that can deliver comprehensive advice.

That’s a harder shift to make, but when it clicks, it tends to simplify more than just pricing.