Pricing: It?s Never Really About Price
How to Confidently Price Your Services?
As service-based entrepreneurs one of the biggest challenges we are faced with is pricing our services. The reason why is because it is never really about price.
Are my prices too high? Are they too low? Am I in line with my competition?
It’s easy to second-guess your pricing when you only focus on the actual price of your services.
When pricing services, there are 3 things to consider:
- Who is the ideal client for this service?
- What is the value you offer?
- What is your guarantee?
Who is your Ideal Client for this service?
Identifying who your ideal client is for the services you offer is the first step in confidently pricing your services. “Why is this important” shouldn’t you be working with anyone?
ABSOLUTELY NOT!
Working with everyone might be a way to generate a lot of clients, but it is short lived. And clients who are not your “ideal clients” will be the clients that will never be happy, even if you give your services away, and you will never feel fulfilled like you always have to prove yourself.
Knowing who your ideal clients are is the foundation of your business. It will also give you a clear idea of who you are marketing to and where to market. It also helps in determining how to price your services.
To help you determine who your ideal clients are, I have created a free downloadable PDF, Finding Your Ideal Client Worksheet, which walks you through step by step in identifying who your ideal clients are.
What is the Value you offer?
The value you bring to your business is what differentiates you from your competition. It’s never about price because you may win a price war but someone else will eventually come in even lower.
You have special gifts & talents. This is your Unique Selling Proposition (USP).
Your USP only you can offer your clients, this is what separates you from everyone else.
To determine your USP you can ask yourself:
- What do I offer that no one else does? What do I pride myself in? (Is it in accreditations, the team you have created, your attention to detail, track record, the results your clients receive.)
- Why should my ideal client choose me over someone else?
- What are your strengths?
Your USP should get your ideal client to say, “She gets me!”. This is the added value that regardless of price is so important to your ideal clients they will pay more for it.
What is your Guarantee?
I hear from my clients all the time “I don’t have a guarantee”. If a client is dissatisfied with the service you provided do you offer money back? Do you stand behind your work so as to fix any errors or issues that pop up after the job has been done? Do you fix it until they become a satisfied client?
Then you offer what I call an, invisible guarantee. It might not be printed on a brochure or published on your website (hopefully until now), but it is what your clients believe you will provide to them. This unspoken, unpublished, undeclared verbal guarantee takes the risk off of your client and allows them to rest assured in the guarantee of your service. That value is more prized than a price tag!
Make this your visible guarantee. You put all that hard work into exceeding your clients expectations, you need to shout it from the roof tops and print it everywhere. Say it loud and say it proud! Just in this step alone you will gain more clients because it takes the risk off of them and they know you will make sure the job is done right.
When you identify and work with only your ideal clients it becomes about the added value you offer by identifying your Unique Selling Proposition and the visible guarantee you provide. If you focus on the added value you provide your ideal clients, you realize they are getting a value far greater than money. They are getting relief. By placing attention on that “relief” rather than on the price tag, you can confidently price your services every time.
Is added value important in pricing your services?
Oh, absolutely, YES! The value that you bring to your ideal client is more than just the sum of the pricing. What you are offering to your ideal client is so important that they are willing to pay more to have it. If you struggle with pricing your services, it’s time to re-examine and re-highlight what you’re truly offering. Remember to download my “Finding Your Ideal Client Worksheet” so you can begin confidently pricing your services and maybe even find out you deserve a raise.
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