The 30-minute pricing call for client AI builds

Every client build you order from Lumina Sales gets priced on a 30-minute call, and the setup fee, the wholesale monthly and any voice minutes are agreed on that call before anything is built. The call is included in the $49 a month plan. You show up with a client scope and a target retail price, and you leave with your cost in writing.

That is the whole mechanism. The rest of this post covers what to bring, what the numbers look like, where the call can go wrong, and what it does not do for you.

What happens on the 30-minute pricing call?

You describe the client, we describe the build, and we agree on three numbers. Setup fee, wholesale monthly, and per-minute voice cost if the build takes phone calls. Nothing gets built until you have all three.

The reason it is a call and not a price sheet is that two clients in the same trade can need different amounts of work. A single-location plumber who wants calls answered is not the same job as a four-location dental group that wants calls, a chat widget and a website. The public pricing section gives you ranges, and it says plainly that those ranges are guides to what you pay us, not what your client sees. The call turns a range into a number.

Here are the ranges as they stand on the site today.

The site also notes that the same work as Top Tier, bought line by line, runs $1,730 to $2,280 in setup. That gap is the reason bundles exist.

What should you bring to the call?

Bring the client's scope, their call volume, and the retail price you plan to charge. If you show up with only a business name, you will spend the first fifteen minutes discovering things you could have asked the client in an email.

Here is the list I would have in front of me:

• The trade and number of locations. It decides which vertical pack the build starts from and how much setup is real work.
• Which lines the client wants. Phone, website chat, website, missed-call text-back. Each one changes the tier.
• A rough monthly call count and average call length. This is the number that moves your cost most, because voice is billed per minute. Ask the client for their phone bill or call log. Guessing is how you end up wrong in either direction.
• Texting needs. If the build sends texts, carrier registration comes into the timeline. Twilio's own vetting FAQ says A2P 10DLC registration takes up to 5 business days for standard use cases, and the $15 verification fee is not refunded if a campaign fails vetting. Know whether this build needs it before you promise a date.
• Your target retail monthly. Say the number out loud. It is much easier to pick a tier when you know the price you are aiming at.

The intake side, meaning what you collect from the client after they sign, has its own list in what you need from a client before the build starts. The pricing call comes first and needs less than intake does.

Why do voice minutes get their own line?

Because they are the only part of the bill that scales with the client's behavior instead of your scope. Setup is one-time. The monthly is flat. Minutes move.

For reference on how much per-minute pricing varies across the market, Retell's pricing page lists pay-as-you-go voice agents at $0.07 to $0.31 per minute depending on the speech model, voice and language model you pick. It also states that billing covers the full call duration, including silence and hold. Different vendor, different stack, but the lesson transfers. A cost per minute is a range until someone specifies the components, and long calls cost more than short ones.

On Lumina builds the voice rate on the Top Tier is $0.35 per minute, and you pay it on top of the monthly. If a client's phone rings 600 minutes a month, that is $210 on your side. If it rings 1,500 minutes, it is $525. You want to know which of those you are in before you set a retail price, which is why the call asks for call volume and why I keep repeating it.

We cover the market-wide numbers in what a voice AI agent costs per minute. The short version is that a minute is small and a month of them is not, so look at the total.

How do you turn the wholesale number into a retail price?

You pick the retail price. We never see it and never set it. Whatever sits above your wholesale cost is your margin.

Here is a made-up example, clearly not a real client. Say you agree on a Top Tier build with a $400 wholesale monthly, and the client's call volume works out to about 600 minutes. Your monthly cost is $400 plus $210 in minutes, so $610. If you retail the build at $1,200 a month, you keep $590 before your own costs. If you retail at $900, you keep $290. The setup works the same way. If your wholesale setup is $1,250 and you charge the client $2,000 to start, you keep $750 on day one.

I would not read those figures as a promise about what any market will pay. They are arithmetic, there to show the structure. For a longer walk through the structure, see what you actually keep on a white-label AI client, and for the argument about whether to charge a setup fee at all, should you charge a build fee.

Should you book the call before or after you quote the client?

Before you send a firm quote. That is my recommendation, not a rule on the site. The site says client builds are priced on the call and that numbers are agreed before anything is built, so nothing stops you from quoting first. But if you quote at $750 a month and then learn on the call that the wholesale monthly plus minutes is $700, you have a $50 margin before your own costs and a signed contract.

A cleaner order looks like this:

1. Run the demo and get a verbal yes on the idea.
2. Collect the call volume and the list of lines.
3. Book the pricing call and get your cost.
4. Send the proposal at your retail price.
5. After signature, order the build and start intake.

If a prospect is moving fast and you do not want to wait, give them a price range and tell them the final number follows once scope is confirmed. People accept that. What they do not accept is a number that changes after signature.

What the pricing call does not do

It does not write your client contract, and it does not set your retail price. It also cannot predict a client's call volume better than their own phone records can.

A few more limits worth knowing before you rely on it.

The ranges on the site are guides. The number you get can sit anywhere in the range or reflect a scope that does not fit a listed tier, and you should not promise a client a specific wholesale cost until the call is done. If your whole plan depends on landing at the bottom of a range, that is a plan built on a hope.

Thirty minutes is thirty minutes. A simple build fits easily. A multi-location client with unusual integrations might need you to come back with more detail, so show up prepared and not hoping to work out scope live.

The call prices the build. It does not scope your client relationship. A written scope between you and your client is still your job, and it matters more than most new agencies think. One agency-management guide puts the rule well: "If it's not written, it is negotiable. If it's written, it's not." Put what the build includes, what it excludes and how change requests work into your own agreement.

And this is not for anyone who wants a fixed menu price they can quote from a website without talking to anyone. If that is you, the ranges above will feel frustrating. The tradeoff is that you pay for scope that matches the client, not a flat price that fits nobody exactly.

FAQ

Is the pricing call free?

It is part of the plan. The site lists "a 30-minute pricing call for every client build you order" as one of the things in the $49 a month Pro plan. There is no separate charge for it.

Does the client ever see the wholesale price?

No. The site is explicit that the ranges are what you pay Lumina, not what your client pays. Your client sees your brand and your retail price. See what your prospects actually see for the full picture.

What if the final quote is higher than I expected?

Then you adjust either the scope or your retail price before you sign anything. That is the point of doing the call first. Dropping a line, such as skipping voice and starting with chat and a website, moves the build to a cheaper tier, and you can add the line later.

Do I need to do onboarding before the call?

No. Onboarding comes after the client signs. The onboarding assistance collects the logo, hours, services, calendar and lead routing under your brand. The pricing call only needs scope and volume.

What happens to the price if the client's call volume changes?

Voice minutes are billed per minute, so your cost moves with volume. Revisit your retail price if a client's volume grows well past what you quoted, and put a sensible volume assumption in your own agreement so you are not absorbing the difference.

Do this before your next close

Pull call volume from your next prospect before you send a proposal. Ask for last month's phone log, work out total minutes, then start your workspace and book the pricing call with that number in hand. Then price your proposal off the real cost instead of the bottom of a range.