The Rate Card Nobody Follows

Every business I walk into swears they have official pricing. Most of them even do — a real rate card, built carefully at some point, sitting in a shared drive somewhere.

Almost nobody actually quotes from it. Reps quote from memory, or from “what we charged the last guy who did something similar,” or from a gut sense of what a customer will tolerate. The rate card exists as a historical document, not a working tool — technically true, practically irrelevant.

I get it. Rates go stale, costs shift, nobody wants to be the one holding up a quote to go check a spreadsheet. But that gap — between what's official and what's actually happening — is exactly where Leak #4 lives, and it compounds quietly, job after job, for years.

When's the last time anyone at your company actually opened the official rate card before sending a quote?