We spent the first eighteen months running free discovery calls. Half-hour, no pressure, see if there's a fit. The conversion rate to a real engagement was, generously, six percent.
Then we tried charging $499 for a five-day technical audit. Same intake, same engineers, similar deliverables — just gated by a Stripe checkout. Conversion to a $30k+ engagement jumped to roughly twenty-two percent.
What charging actually changes
The obvious answer is "filters out unserious inquiries," and that's part of it. But the real shift was on our side, not theirs.
- Audits became a product, not a sales tactic — we wrote a scope, a deliverable shape, a five-day timeline. The whole thing got better.
- Our engineers stopped resenting the discovery work. They were billing for it, so they did it properly.
- Prospects who paid showed up prepared. They sent us repos, AWS access, and a list of questions before the kickoff call.
The five-day shape we converged on
Every audit follows the same arc, regardless of platform or scope. The dates are calendar days, not work days, so the whole thing fits inside one business week:
- Day 1 — Kickoff + access provisioning
- Day 2-3 — Deep read of the codebase, infra posture, data model
- Day 4 — Internal review with a second senior engineer
- Day 5 — Written report + 60-minute walkthrough call
What's in the deliverable
A typed-up document, usually 12-20 pages. Production-readiness scorecard, infra cost projection, twelve-week migration plan with milestones and price ranges, three or four open-question callouts for things we can't answer without a deeper engagement.
“They leave with something useful — a plan they can hand to another team, or use to negotiate with us. The audit is the deliverable, not the lead magnet.”
Why it converts higher
The audit forces a real conversation. By the time we get to the proposal, the client has seen us think — what we caught, what we didn't, where we pushed back, what we recommend. The proposal is rarely a surprise; it's a continuation.
Free calls flatter both sides. Paid audits create accountability. That's it. That's the whole thesis.
Founder. Sets the engineering bar. Runs every audit and signs off on every migration plan.