His Fixed Fee Quietly Pays for the Client’s Delays
Corning Data International implements, upgrades, and provides managed services for its clients’ ERP software. Erik Peterson priced that work as a fixed fee, and then found that every day a client takes to answer a question is a day he is paying for.
October 19, 2026
·
1 min read
He said it in a session about outcome pricing, while other founders were describing what works. He described what does not.
The questions he waits on are small ones. What data do you want on screen. How do you want to see this report. Is this what you were looking for. None of them is a delay anyone would notice on its own, and across a project of 8 to 18 months they are most of the overrun.
He is looking at writing response times into the contract, with some penalty attached, and he was straight about the state of it: he has not figured out what that penalty should be, and he is hoping to start in 2027.
Why it matters to you.
Most founders move to fixed fee to stop arguing about hours, and the move does what it promises on the work their own team controls. The part nobody prices is the waiting, because it does not look like work. It looks like nothing happening. That is the trap. Under hourly billing the client’s slow reply was their problem and it showed up on their invoice. Under a fixed fee it is silently yours, it never appears in a line item, and the only place it surfaces is a margin that came in lower than the model said and nobody can quite explain. The limit on the fix: a response-time clause is only worth writing if you will actually invoke it, and most firms will not invoke a penalty against a client they want to keep. The version that works is usually softer, which is that the delivery date moves when the client’s answer is late, and the scope of work says so before anyone is annoyed.
“We’re constantly waiting on our customers, and it’s one of the problems we have with fixed fee and outcome-based pricing, and date-driven pricing. If somebody doesn’t get back to us for 4 days or 3 days over the course of 8 to 18 months, that can add up to a problem. - Erik Peterson, CEO, Corning Data International”
Your one thing.
On your current largest fixed-fee project, add up the days you spent waiting on the client for an answer. Multiply by your daily cost to serve. That number is the discount you gave without deciding to.
Collective 54 is where boutique service firm founders go to make more money, scale with less friction, and build a firm worth buying.
See if it’s a fit →