I’ve had a few conversations recently about pricing and objections.
Pricing is one of the hardest things to do in business.
You want to help people and make money, and many of my clients say they don’t want to be too expensive.
They think that discounting their services or reducing their prices will make it easier for people to work with them.
If it worked like that, everything would be top quality and cheaply priced. But it doesn’t.
There is a customer for every price point
Lots of people want things because they’re expensive. They want the best and in their mind, the best means the one that costs the most.
Pandora, Chanel, Louis Vitton, Birkin bags; these things probably wouldn’t be half as popular if they were half the price.
Jeff Bezos is quoted as saying “Lowering prices is easy. Being able to afford to lower prices is hard” . Look at your costs. Can you afford to earn less money right now? I know I can’t.
Pricing will be an ongoing problem for business owners because of these things;
- They lack confidence in themselves and their expertise
- They lack in their products or services
- They don’t appreciate or can’t fully see the power of their services and the difference they make
- They find it hard to explain the value of their services and the difference they make to the people they work with
The risk of under charging
There are downsides to underpricing. You may think you’re helping people but often when something is cheap people aren’t motivated to take action or do the work. How many freebies have you downloaded and never looked at?
People who pay, pay attention.
Undercharging also causes people to under-appreciate and under-value your time. They may assume that because it’s cheap you don’t know what you’re doing because “an expert would cost more”.
It’s not right, but it happens.
If you want to make more money and charge higher prices that doesn’t make you greedy. It makes you a sensible business owner. You can’t help people if you can’t keep the lights on at home. You can’t help anyone if your business fails.
Charging confidently starts with understanding the value.
If all your customers care about is the price it’s because you haven’t given them anything else to care about. If you want other people to value your work and your time, you have to do it first.
- Remember why you’re doing what you’re doing. Your knowledge and skills are valuable. You know what other people don’t know. You don’t need to know everything to make a difference.
- If you don’t believe in yourself, read your testimonials. Your clients believe in you.
- Look at the ripple effects of your work. It doesn’t just help the people you work with, it impacts their friends, employees and families too. And the impact isn’t just immediate……you’re changing how people think and behave for the rest of their lives.
- Make peace with the fact that not everyone can afford to work with you. If it’s you they want to work with they’ll save up and come back.
And finally……practice saying no.
A few years ago I was on a discovery call with someone who said that they really wanted to work with me on my 1:1 content marketing mentoring but they felt that it was expensive.
They asked “will you coach me and my husband at the same time?”
This would effectively have made it half price.
I’m good at what I do but I’m not so good that I can mentor two people, running two different businesses at the same time.
So I said no.
I’ve said no lots of times. I’ve also said yes when I should have said no.
Saying no has always made room for more rewarding work with someone who was a better fit. And worked out better for both of us. Saying yes when I should have said no has never turned out well.
Pricing has to work for you and your client.
If you undercharge you’ll end up resenting your clients and you won’t enjoy the work you do. Undercharging also leads to burnout and impacts the quality of the work you can do.
My name is Clair Stevenson and I work with coaches who want to run awesome coaching businesses.
If you need help growing your coaching practice drop me an email at clair@upwriteonline.co.uk and lets talk.