Stop Benchmarking to Competitors—Benchmark to Your Potential
In business, especially in B2B services, it's easy to fall into the comfort zone of benchmarking against competitors. You look at what similar firms are charging. You compare their B2B pricing models, billable rates, and team structures. You assume that if you stay in line with them, you’ll stay competitive. Safe. Reasonable.
But here’s the hard truth: you’ll never outperform the market by mimicking it.
If your aspiration is to build a category-leading business—or even just a highly profitable and fulfilling one—you need to stop benchmarking against others and start benchmarking against your own potential. This is especially true when it comes to designing your revenue model and B2B pricing strategy.
The Limits of Traditional Benchmarking
Let’s be clear: benchmarking isn’t inherently bad. It can offer valuable reference points. But it should never be the ceiling. Too many B2B companies think:
“Everyone else is charging $200/hour, so that must be what the market will bear.”
“Most firms in our space bill by the hour, so we should too.”
“Competitor X has 12 people and $2M in revenue, so we must be doing okay with 10 people and $1.5M.”
This kind of thinking feels logical—but it’s fundamentally limiting. You’re designing your business around what’s already been done, rather than what could be possible.
The Problem with Billable Hours
Nowhere is this more obvious than in the obsession with billable hours. It’s the default in many industries—law, consulting, marketing services—and it’s rooted in the outdated belief that time equals value.
But here’s the issue: when you bill by the hour, you cap your own upside.
You’re saying: the only way to earn more is to work more hours, or charge more per hour. Both strategies hit natural limits—physical, economic, and market-based.
Even worse, hourly billing encourages inefficiency. If you're faster or better, you make less. If you're strategic and deliver results quickly, the model punishes you.
It also sends a subtle message to clients: You’re paying for our time, not our outcomes. That may have worked in the past, but it’s not where the future of B2B pricing is headed.
Introducing Revenue Capacity
Instead of focusing on billable hours or competitor benchmarks, consider a different lens: Revenue Capacity.
Revenue Capacity is your business’s potential to generate revenue when operating at full strategic and creative output—not just maximum hours worked.
This shift changes the conversation from:
“How many hours can we sell?” to.. “What’s the full value we can deliver—and how can our pricing model reflect that?”
This isn’t semantics. It’s a strategic mindset shift.
When you start designing around Revenue Capacity, you ask better questions:
What value are we truly capable of delivering to our clients?
If we ditch hourly billing, what strategic or scalable offers can we build?
What is our full potential to generate revenue, impact, and freedom?
In other words, instead of playing the same pricing game as your competitors, you start creating your own rules.
Unlimited Potential Requires Unlimited Models
Revenue Capacity thinking pushes you beyond linear growth.
Traditional B2B service businesses grow like this: more clients → more hours → more staff → more revenue. But that model eventually breaks. It gets slow, complex, and hard to scale.
With Revenue Capacity in mind, you start asking nonlinear questions:
Can we productize our intellectual property?
Can we introduce performance-based pricing?
Can we build tiered offers to serve multiple segments efficiently?
Can we create licensing models, value-based pricing, or recurring revenue systems?
These are powerful ways to unlock your B2B pricing potential—and they rarely show up when you’re stuck in billable-hour thinking.
Benchmarking Against Your Potential
So how do you shift from competitor benchmarking to potential benchmarking?
1. Start with Outcomes, Not Inputs
Define the results you deliver best. Then, ask: What are those outcomes worth to our clients? Design services and B2B pricing around that value—not the time it takes to deliver.
2. Audit Your Capacity—Creatively
Don’t ask, “How many hours can we sell?”
Ask, “How much value could we create if we applied our expertise in smarter, more leveraged ways?”
3. Kill the Sacred Cows
Just because “everyone bills hourly” or “no one charges that much” doesn’t make it right. Challenge assumptions. The highest-performing firms usually do.
4. Price for Potential, Not Parity
Stop using competitors as your pricing ceiling. Use your client’s gains and your full capacity for value delivery as your benchmark.
5. Build Revenue Systems, Not Just Projects
Recurring, scalable, and value-based revenue systems will help you grow beyond trading hours for dollars—and fully activate your B2B pricing power.
In Summary
Benchmarking to competitors helps you fit in.
Benchmarking to your potential helps you stand out.
Billable hours might feel safe.
But Revenue Capacity is how you build a scalable, meaningful business—free from time-for-money limits.
The shift begins with a mindset: What could we earn if we truly unlocked all the value we’re capable of delivering?
Adopt that mindset, and your pricing, business model, and growth strategy will evolve with it.
So ask yourself: Are you trying to keep up with the market—or redefine it?
If it's the latter, stop counting hours. Start calculating your Revenue Capacity—and reimagine your B2B pricing for what your business is truly worth.
