What To Consider When Setting Your Prices
Struggling with setting your prices? Of course you are – we all do – every day. 
- Wondering if you should lower the barrier of entry to working with you to a low cost?
- Worried about staying in tune with your competition because you don’t want to be considered the lowest or highest charging?
Typically I work with fantastic, talented, and dedicated business owners who are not owning their full value. They worry about this or that and price their services too low.
I admit, I’ve done it, too.
This is why I’ve come up with a list of 20 things to consider when deciding on a fair yet high value price. More on that later. First, let me ask you this…
Should You Match Price to Competitors?
If others label themselves with the same professional title as you do, but you worked hard to get your certification – and you pay continuously to maintain that certification – does it make sense for you to price yourself as your counterpart with no certification??
If you seem to have lots of competition, but no one delivers your service exactly the way you do, with your proprietary process, would prospects pay more for access to your special methods?
If your team consists of skilled employees personally trained by you, and your competitor uses a revolving list of local college interns – should your prices be the same?
You get it – consider all the piece parts of your business – you, your team, your processes, your education and background, etc. Throw them all together in a list and then look at the prices you’ve set. Most of us are doing ourselves a disservice by pricing too low. So why do we?
The Nonsense We Tell Ourselves
“Oh no one has that kind of money”
“Well I’m not well-known, I don’t have a huge social media following”
“The economy’s bad and no one is spending”
All of that is pure nonsense. Even in the middle of the pandemic, Amazon vans were buzzing around my little neighborhood and I doubt it was all TP deliveries!
People were still spending thousands, buying cars and houses. Realtors can tell you they had their busiest year yet!
Also, since when did you get access to a crystal ball that tells you what’s in everyone’s wallet? And what’s on everyone’s mind??
Here’s How To Fix It Today
If people don’t buy from you could it be that your price is suspiciously LOW?
If your price is low, will they have a preconceived notion that you won’t be very good?
So let’s change things TODAY!
If you offer a free consult, it should be under an hour and by phone only.
Everything else, you charge for it.
- A one-hour onsite assessment? Charge for it.
- An analysis and report of findings? Charge for it.
- A 60 minute Zoom work session? Charge for it.
Another trap we fall into is to play down the cost of those interactions I’ve just listed. The temptation is to make it really easy for the customer to buy. So you charge $50 or $100 when you in fact, you have spent hours in prep time, work time, and wrap up time.
Then when you do the math, you discover that you spent a total of 5 hours to plan, create, and deliver that assessment and have charged $85 total. Congrats, you’ve just charged $17/hour. I think you can get a job at Wegman’s and make the same.
All because you believe you’re doing the customer a favor.
We Are Transacting Business, Not Offering Favors
Listen – we’re not in business to do customers favors. We’re in business to provide a professional and transformational change to a customer’s life.
Leave the low prices to Wal*Mart. You, my friend, need to charge for value.
- The value of working with YOU.
- The value of what your customer will receive.
- The value of the whole experience of working with YOU.
The Opposite Is Just As Crazy
By the way, I’ve also seen the reverse scenario – where someone quoted me a price that was unbelievably high. Unjustifiably high. God bless them if they can get that kind of money and they’d better deliver something phenomenal to the customer. I’m not advocating the “triple your prices” mentality of setting an absurdly high price without real justification.
Do you find this confusing? We all do!
Here’s How To Start
Begin setting a better price today – book a 90 minute working strategy session with me (clearly, not free!) and when you book and pay for your session, you’ll also receive my 20-Point Pricing Checklist. This publication is not available on my website.