Information isn't free, despite what many believe to be an inexorable truth in the Age of Google.

When you want a strategic advantage in business, you need quality information, new methods, and other intellectual insights that come from outside of yourself and your firm.

Often, we turn to consultants, and increasingly to coaches, for these tools, and we have to pay them.

But consultants are facing a crunch down in pricing. Clients are resisting what they perceive to be high fees, and the typical consultant's power to raise fees is practically nonexistent.

This downward pricing pressure entered the picture when large organizations started to manage travel expenses with a razor sharp pencil. Post 9-11, seeing actually how much it costs to feed, house, and then to pay people who are roadies, many companies cut travel budgets, and then cut consulting budgets, as well.

Less and less are they seeking experts from far away, opting instead for homegrown versions, at a fraction of the price. Like Bud Light, there is a slimmer helper you might think of as Consultant Light, and that is the coach.

Coaches are generally light on education and expertise, but they make up for it in enthusiasm and experience, and they're less expensive.

Today's full-time consultant on the road has to charge $3,000 a day and up, to cost-justify the time it takes to fly to and from assignments and to recuperate. Add travel costs, and you're possibly up to $4,500 for that one-day visit, or more, to confer with a top gun.

A local coach, on the other hand, might bill out at a rate of $4,500 for the month. Now, of course that doesn't mean you'll see him for 20 days, but probably for 2, distributed at about 4 hours per week, presuming all of his billable work is performed on-site.

Many coaches will have off-site preparation, telephone coordination, materials development and other time they'll need to bill for as well, but so will a consultant.

Here's the key.

Whether you call yourself a coach or a consultant, your universe of potential clients will be correlated with the perceived fees you charge.

Big companies will be less daunted by $4,500 for a day than small ones, and certainly, when you quote $4,500 for a month to the small fry, you'll open your practice to millions of potential prospects, and not have to limit yourself to mainly serving the Fortune 1000.

A big part of being profitable as an advisor is staying busy with billable time, striving for fractional downtime.

Coaches have an advantage in pursuing this objective because they seem like more of a bargain to more potential clients.