Defining the billable event before the rate is the right order, and the nine questions make that concrete. Success predicate, boundary, evidence, reversal and dispute handling are exactly where pricing arguments start once real invoices go out.

The example of twelve cents per attempt becoming almost three dollars per net outcome is worth showing to any buyer. It explains why per attempt pricing looks cheap in a proposal and expensive in a quarterly review. Dispute costs being higher than inference is the bigger lesson. A vague definition of done costs more than the model does.

The procurement quote about boring, predictable pricing matches what we hear on client work. Buyers rarely want a clever meter. They want to know what they are paying for and when it counts as delivered. We get there by fixing the scope to one defined outcome with written acceptance tests, then pricing that piece as a whole.

Which of the nine questions do customers push back on most often?