Consensus Growth Partners: Build a business that can charge for what it delivers

Who you would be working with

Two operators, no bench

You deal with the people whose names are on the door. There is no junior staff to hand you to, because there is no junior staff.

Dan Patnode

PARTNER · SELLS AND DELIVERS

13+ years in MSP sales, operations and partnerships. Sold enterprise technology into Fortune 500s in regulated industries.

Jon Braught

PARTNER · METHOD AND DELIVERABLES

15 years in enterprise technology sales at a national value-added reseller, from hunting to running a team generating $20M+ a year.

What's changing

The old price is getting harder to defend

It shows up differently depending on how you bill today, and it arrives on a different schedule. Both versions end in the same conversation.

This is not a forecast. MSPs already using AI in service delivery are reporting 15% to 25% gains in technician productivity and 40% to 70% reductions in ticket resolution time. The work is getting faster now, in firms that look like yours.

Robin Ody, head of MSP research at Omdia, in Channelholic, March 2026

If you bill hours or projects

The bill shrinks as you get better

Every hour that comes out of the work is an hour you can no longer invoice. When a five-hour task becomes a one-hour task, your customer gets the benefit and you absorb the loss. Doing the job better earns you less, and that is not a market you can out-work.

If you bill per seat or per device

Nothing happens, and then the renewal does

In the short run the economics improve: the same fee arrives and the work behind it takes less effort. The exposure is the next renewal. Ticket volume is down, your customer can see it, and "why am I still paying per seat?" is hard to answer with a price list.

What has to be true

You can't sell an outcome you can't measure

Pricing on results sounds like a sales decision. It isn't. A firm can only price on an outcome it can do four things with, and only one of them belongs to sales.

DefineBaselineDeliverMeasure

Define it, so both sides know what was bought. Baseline it, from a number already in your own systems, so there is something to move from. Deliver it repeatably, not heroically. And measure it, in a way your customer can check without taking your word for it.

Those four capabilities are spread across the whole revenue engine. That is why this is an operating problem before it is a pricing one, and why a new rate card does not fix it.

STAGE 01

Customer Acquisition

Focused enough that the same outcome shows up more than once, instead of every deal being bespoke.

STAGE 02

Sales

Discovery that captures a number the customer already owns, so you sell against their baseline rather than your rate card.

STAGE 03

Pre-Sales

Scoping calibrated against what things actually cost, so what you promised is what it takes to deliver.

STAGE 04

Delivery

Margin visible by contract, so you know what an outcome costs to produce before you agree a price for it.

STAGE 05

Retention

The result reported back to the customer, so the renewal is a conversation about what you delivered.

The blocker

None of it survives if it runs through one person

Most firms that can't price on outcomes aren't unwilling. They are unable, for a reason that has nothing to do with pricing.

The scoping judgment sits with the founder. The margin picture lives in one person's spreadsheet. The customer relationship that could report a result is a relationship with a name, not with the company. Every one of the four capabilities runs through the same few people, so none of them can be promised to a customer in writing.

This is the work we have always done. The reason to do it has changed, and the reason is now worth more than it used to be: a firm whose revenue engine runs without its founder is also a firm that can sell on what it delivers, and get paid properly for it.

Your next pricing conversation won't be about hours or seats. It'll be about proof.