Pricing Your Services With Confidence

As a solo entrepreneur with years of experience, you’ve built a foundation for a business that works. You have happy clients, you deliver great results, and you know your services make an impact. But when it comes to pricing, doubt creeps in. You’ve seen signs that you COULD be making more money, but you’re not sure how to manifest it.

Yes, you’re not alone, we ALL think about this from time to time. Here’s our very common conundrum: you need to make more money, but you’re worried potential clients will just look for the cheapest option.

Pricing isn’t just about staying in line with what your competitors charge—it’s about the WHOLE PICTURE – the value you bring, your long-term profitability, and the kind of clients you want to attract.

1. Price Based on Your Unique Value

Your pricing should reflect the expertise, experience, and results you deliver.

Your experience and skill set: Years of personal history, knowledge, certifications, and training all add up to an unbeatable YOU.

Your process: Do you offer a structured, caring, unique or streamlined service that ensures a great experience for your clients?

Your client’s transformation: The result of working with you improves your client’s life or business, and gives their situation a transformation over a one-size-fits-all approach.

Clients aren’t just paying for your time; they’re paying for results. Instead of comparing yourself to the cheapest provider, highlight the transformation you bring.

2. Align Pricing with Profitability

Even if you hate Math, it’s time to drag out the calculator or spreadsheet. You have personal and business expenses that need to be met before you can consider yourself profitable. Charging more isn’t about being greedy—it’s about sustaining and growing your business. If your pricing only covers your time but not overhead, marketing, taxes, and personal income goals, you’ll struggle financially.

Here comes the calculator – calculate your real costs: factor in business expenses, software, taxes, and the time spent on non-billable work.

Set an income goal: How much Gross Revenue do you need to bring in annually? Bump that against your expenses. Then, work backward to determine your rates based on how many clients you can realistically serve.

Consider value-based pricing: If your service generates $10,000 in value for a client, pricing it at $500 may be undervaluing your impact.

3. Attract the Right Clients

Your pricing signals who your services are for. If you undercharge, you may attract price-sensitive clients who don’t appreciate your expertise. If you price too high without a strong value proposition, prepare to struggle to convert leads.

Instead, focus on pricing that aligns with your ideal client:

Not just the wealthiest clients, but the best fit: Who benefits most from your services? Who is aligned with your values and personality? Who is most likely to appreciate the value, move forward and invest? If you spend time explaining over and over how they would benefit from choosing you, it is not an ideal client. Some folks just don’t “see the light”, and it’s simply a sign they are not for you.

Communicate clearly: Share case studies, success stories, testimonials, and content that shows potential clients that you’ve already created transformations for others – and you’re ready to do it again for them.

Offer options: If your service is high-touch, could you offer a lower-tier option with less customization to meet different budgets while maintaining profitability? Have those budget options in your back pocket and only bring them out when you feel it’s the right solution.

4. Avoid Over-promising

A common mistake is packing too much into your service just to justify a higher price. I used to think, “what are all the things I could possibly offer them to quote a high price?” Well, it worked, but then I realized that fulfilling my promises were tough! While you want to deliver value, offering too many extras can lead to burnout and inefficiency.

• Focus on delivering the best results, not the most features.
• Factor in the time commitment. If a service takes 10 hours per client, charging a high price won’t help if you can’t take on enough clients to be profitable.
• Create scalable options with different ways to deliver a meaningful result for your client.

5. Test and Adjust

Pricing isn’t set in stone. If you’re consistently booked out, it may be time to raise your rates. A friend always says, “if you quote your price and they quickly say ‘yes’, there’s a good chance you can easily raise your price.”

Instead of a drastic rate increase, test the waters with slight increases during set time intervals. Do look around at what others in your industry are doing. While you don’t want to copy them, simply knowing what others charge can provide insight into where you fit in the market.

Remember to Consider the Whole Picture

Confident pricing is about knowing your worth, structuring your business for sustainability, and attracting the right clients. By focusing on value, profitability, and realistic service structures, you can create a pricing model that supports your business and helps you thrive.

This is just a taste of the incredibly value-packed discussions we have at our GROW Women’s Business Development Club. Pricing is such a crucial element of your business success – don’t leave it to your own thoughts to try and figure all of this out. This is a job for working with guides and a peer advisory board.