How to finally charge what you’re worth

When you’re deciding how much to charge for your time, product or service are you making the decision based on research and a solid pricing strategy or are you basing these prices on self-doubt, a lack of confidence and fear that no-one will buy?  Answer honestly….

You’re not alone. These limiting beliefs often stem from a negative money mindset, which you might not even realise you have. These money mindset blocks can come from our family, friends and/or your past experience. ‘Making money is hard’, ‘If something is fun or easy I shouldn’t charge for it’ and ‘I shouldn’t charge more than X person’. These are just some of the ways your money mindset might be affecting your ability to charge what you’re worth.

Charging what you’re worth is so important and can help you prevent burnout from working ALL. THE. HOURS. If you stick with low fear-based pricing your income will suffer as will your self-esteem and confidence. You may even begin to feel resentment towards your clients and your business.

Often our pricing is tied to our self-worth. A reflection of our thoughts and beliefs about the real value we possess. Pricing shouldn’t be anything to do with how much you like or don’t like yourself. Or indeed whether you value yourself. Do your clients value you? Do you help the people around you? Do you add value to their lives? 

Changing this negative money mindset

How do you change these engrained thought patterns? Well, simply by being aware that these are negative thoughts with no real value. This is the first step.

The next step is to focus on the results. What results or transformations do people experience after using your products or experiencing your services? This is what you need to communicate in your pricing. By focusing on the transformation you’re able to price the vehicle which created this transformation more appropriately. A course might only have taken you 4 hours to create. It might not have been tricky or mentally challenging for you, but if it reliably results in your clients securing their dream job or losing 5 stone, then it’s worth a great deal to your clients.

Money does not always correlate directly to the effort/time used to create it.

Often we think we’re not as good, as talented, as experienced as our competition. However, by focusing on the results we can see our worth more objectively and realise that we don’t have to lower our prices to justify ourselves.

‘People need to put skin in the game’

How many times have you signed up for free training, or a free ebook and not even looked at the material? I’m guessing many times. Me too! We don’t always value what’s free and even if we do the urgency to complete it isn’t there. If we pay for the training or the ebook we’re going to pay more attention and try to complete it.

‘The transformation is in the transaction’

Think about the people you want to attract to your products and services and price accordingly. If people are serious about solving their problem they will be willing to pay for the results. You don’t want tire kickers.

‘Those who pay, pay attention’

Be upfront with your prices

If you offer services then share the prices on your website. You don’t want to waste your time with a lot of back or forth to find out the person is never going to pay what you charge. By putting your prices on your website (note for bloggers working with brands I advise not to do this) means that you’re only attracting qualified leads. Make sure you review and update these prices regularly too.

Don’t project

It can be easy to project your own money issues and mindset onto our ideal clients. ‘My audience won’t pay for that’ or ‘they can’t afford that’. How do you know! You can’t make a financial decision for your idea clients and you shouldn’t try. If people want it enough they will find a way to afford the transformation you can offer.

Cheap is often seen as sub standard

Also when devising your pricing strategy remember that pricing yourself too cheaply can sometimes backfire. People often believe that something too cheap cannot have any real value. We naturally associate cost with the potential benefit or value.

Except from Robert Cildini’s book Influence.

“The story involved a certain allotment of turquoise jewellery she had been having trouble selling. It was the peak of the tourist season, the store was unusually full of customers, the turquoise pieces were of good quality for the prices she was asking; yet they had not sold. My friend had attempted a couple of standard sales tricks to get them moving. She tried calling attention to them by shifting their location to a more central display area; no luck. She even told her sales staff to “push” the items hard, again without success.

Finally, the night before leaving on an out-of-town buying trip, she scribbled an exasperated note to her head saleswoman, “everything in this display case x 1/2,” hoping just to be rid of the offending pieces, even if at a loss. When she returned a few days later, she was not surprised to find that every article had been sold. She was shocked, though, to discover that because the employee had read the “1/2″ in her scrawled message as a “2,” the entire allotment had sold out at twice the original price!”   

Why? Because people believe you get what you pay for. We assume there’s a positive correlation between price and value.

The key is to detach your self-worth from your pricing. Focus on the results to create your pricing strategy and finally start charging what you’re worth.

Do you have issues with pricing? I’d love to know, leave me a comment and I’ll try to help.