Note: at this time transcripts are automated and unedited, which means errors may occur. But we hope you find them helpful!

[00:00:00] Viv: Pricing is one of those things that can feel really, really icky. I mean, we’ve all been there where you really don’t want to say your price out loud to your client cuz you just feel really icky about it and maybe it’s such a big number and who’s ever gonna wanna pay? Well, I get that. So in this episode, we are gonna help eradicate those kind of, of dilemmas and feelings.

[00:00:29] In this episode, you are gonna learn the two different ways that you can price your services. So how to arrive at that price, how to feel confident in your pricing, and how to get perspective clients to see that. Price you’ve come up with is an absolute bargain and totally, totally worth it. So let’s dive.

[00:00:52] Pricing is one of those things that can feel really, really icky. I mean, we’ve all been there where [00:01:00] you really don’t want to say your price out loud to your client cuz you just feel really icky about it and maybe it’s such a big number and who’s ever gonna wanna pay? Well, I get that. So in this episode, we are gonna help eradicate those kind of, of dilemmas and feelings.

[00:01:21] In this episode, you are gonna learn the two different ways that you can price your services. So how to arrive at that price, how to feel confident in your pricing, and how to get prospective clients to see that the. Price you’ve come up with is an absolute bargain and totally, totally worth it. So let’s dive.

[00:01:49] You’re listening to Marketing Without Social Media with me, Viv Guy, the podcast for people who want more clarity, connections, and cash in their business. I’ll be [00:02:00] sharing with you proven techniques from leading entrepreneurs and experts from across the globe to help you to market without social media and to grow your business in a.

[00:02:12] Actually feels good to you.

[00:02:22] You’re sitting on your sales call. You’ve done an amazing job working through with the prospective client, and then you get to that moment where you have to say your price out loud to another human being, somebody that might actually want what you do. And you start to freak, you get whole hot and sweaty.

[00:02:44] You feel really nervous, and then you just blurt it out and then suddenly you’re like, But I’m also gonna throw in this extra freebie. Or Actually I’m gonna do this discount. Or you can do this, you know, And you start, or you start justifying your price. [00:03:00] All things that I have encountered and heard from many people through the years that these are some of the things that happen on sales.

[00:03:10] And they absolutely bottle it when it comes to articulating and communicating their price. So they end up charging less than they really wanted to. Or what usually happens is the prospective client says, No thanks. They come up with a bundle of excuses. You don’t really know why they’re not going with you, um, and why they’re not saying yes given they seemed absolutely sold on what you do.

[00:03:36] Well. That is all to do with your confidence. Okay, but how do we get to that point where we feel really confident about our pricing so that we are not discounting, we are not justifying that we feel that we can stand strong in our belief and our decision that this is, this is the right price, this is a fair price.

[00:03:59] [00:04:00] This is a just price for the transformation that I am helping my clients. And the value I am bringing to their life, to their business, whatever it is that you do. So let’s talk about the first thing here. Okay. The two different ways that you can price your services. So for the, the practical amongst you here who are listening, there’s a really simple.

[00:04:28] How much do you want to make in a year from that service that you deliver? So let’s take a dead easy figure. I like working with round numbers here. Let’s say you want to make a hundred thousand pounds of dollars in a year. That’s that easy number, isn’t it? So let’s work backwards. How many clients can you work with in a year?

[00:04:54] And I want you to be really clear with how many you can work with. [00:05:00] Burning the fuck out, how many hours you can work with clients, and I’m not just talking FaceTime, I’m assuming you support them, that you have communication between between calls or between meetings where you are supporting those clients.

[00:05:14] Maybe you’re doing prep work if you do like corporate training, so you’re actually writing. Programs and training programs. So what is it that you do? Maybe you’re a designer, so how much time you spend on design work doing it, take, uh, passing emails back and forth for, for, for sign off and things. I want you to think about all of that.

[00:05:32] If you’re a coach, you know, like me, how much time do you spend with clients supporting them between actual sort of FaceTime calls? So I want you to really be clear on what that looks like, because that is your client delivery. That is all your client hours. So let’s be really clear on what that looks like in a year, in a week, in a month.

[00:05:54] Okay. Start with what that looks like on a weekly basis. Is that realistic? Okay. If it’s [00:06:00] not, you need to go back and reduce the number of clients. If you kinda go, that’s great, and it leaves me a good. Let’s say 40% of my week to work on my business, on developing my business. Um, I like to kinda leave a, a good 50%, but at 50% of my week to work on marketing, to work on, on my business, on developing new things, on connecting with people, you know, all those things that you want to do.

[00:06:27] Make sure you’re leaving yourself enough time to continue working on your business. Because what happens, um, is that so many of us, we get to capacity, and I’ve done this myself in the past. You absolutely are slammed as clients. So, and we talked about this in my, my three day workshop last week. What happens is you take your foot off, off the gas, you stop marketing, you stop working on the business because you’re so busy with client delivery, and then those client contracts come to an end and holy fuck, you have [00:07:00] got no clients.

[00:07:02] You have got nobody in your pipeline, You have no hot prospects or hot leads there work for you. So you need to ensure that you have that balance of time, the balance between serving clients and working on the business and on your marketing, so you never hit dry wells. We are in a, a state of consistent flow, I would say, like that baling blow book.

[00:07:26] It’s calm, it’s really cool. You know, it’s not these peaks and troughs. Which we want to avoid. So we know this now, so we know how much we wanna make. We’ve worked out, yes, this is actually how many clients I can serve in a year. Then it’s dead easy. Take that, that income that you wanna make, divide it by the number of clients that you can work with in a year, and that is gonna give you how much you are going to charge.

[00:07:51] Per client. So let’s say it’s, I wanna make a hundred thousand pounds in a year. I can work with 16 clients. That [00:08:00] gives me a unit price, a program prizer, whatever you do of 6,250 pounds. That’s what it tells me. I’m going to. Charge people. Okay. So think about that. How does that feel? I really want you to kind of go, Yeah, that’s freaking bargain.

[00:08:16] Or Oh my God, are you kind of freaking out going, Fuck that seed so high. I can’t ever possibly charge that. Okay, let’s just take that moment and to see how we feel about that figure. Okay. Right. So let’s move on. So that’s the practical way, and you might be like, That’s freaking cool. Yeah, I can absolutely.

[00:08:36] Articulate, like the value behind that. I can totally get on board with that. I totally think that’s a great fair price, but you might be having a little internal freak out and going, I, I couldn’t, I couldn’t possibly charge that. So here’s the book. It doesn’t feel right if it doesn’t feel right, and you don’t truly believe that the investment you’re asking people [00:09:00] to make is worth it.

[00:09:03] Then people will not buy because sales is 90% about confidence. People are buying your confidence that you can get them results. Your belief that you can get them results, and if you are wavering in your confidence about the value of your service. Okay, and you don’t think it’s worth this price point, then that is gonna come over when you get to the pricing part, and this is where you’re gonna lose the sales.

[00:09:27] So if you’ve done an amazing sales call, they are sold on what you do. They love it, they want it. And then you come up with a price and it’s maybe, it’s a big, it’s a big figure. A big investment. So 6,250 might be like, that’s freaking really, really, really a lot of money from where I’ve been. I’ve been charging 500 pounds for six months or whatever it might be, 1500 pounds.

[00:09:49] You know, that feels a big leap. I get it. And that’s okay. I’ve got you covered. Okay. So how do, what do we do? What do we do if we kind of go, I’ve been way under charging, but this feels [00:10:00] too big a leap from where I’ve been at. So from 1500 pounds to 6,000 pounds. Okay. What I want you to do first and foremost, okay, to overcome this issue is pick a figure that feels really easy to say.

[00:10:15] So say you’ve been charging 1500 pounds for your six month coaching package, and it’s really easy for you to say, Go, Yeah, 1500 pounds. I’m getting plenty of clients at that price, but I feel like I’m not earning enough. I’m feeling some resentment maybe. Okay? So ask yourself, Okay, am I feeling resentment serving at that price?

[00:10:34] I’m struggling to make ends meet myself. I feel like I’m giving so much. Um, and actually I’m, I’m only making like 300, 250 pounds a month. Okay. If the answer is yes, then I want you to pick a price. Okay? A, a number that feels like a stretch. Okay. A stretch. I don’t mean like it’s out of the, this, at like out of the atmosphere.

[00:10:58] 6,250 pounds. If [00:11:00] that was feeling like, fuck, that was like, Can’t even imagine that. Then I want you to pick a number that feels like a stretch. Might make you wanna do a little sicky in your mouth. Okay, So we know that that’s a little too far right now. Okay. What is that number? Is it close to this, you know, actual, this is what we wanna be baking, 6,000.

[00:11:20] Pounds figure is it, Is it not? It’s like saying 4,000, making you kind of wanna go right now that feels like I can’t even say it. If that’s happening, that’s totally fine because we’re gonna work up in increments to that price point that feels that is right. That is the price you wanna be be at. Okay, so you’ve had the little sticky in your mouth.

[00:11:42] The, you’ve got the, I feel resentment serving at this price. What I want you to now, Find a number in the middle of those two, A number where you go, Yeah, this feels good. I, I can, you know, I feel good serving at this price, at this time, at this moment in time. And I can say this with [00:12:00] confidence. I really feel that, you know what I do, the transformations, the results I get are absolutely worth this money.

[00:12:07] And I can say this with confide. And that is how to, to arrive at a, a price point so you can start working up incrementally and then make a decision, Okay, how many clients, um, how many sales calls and clients am I gonna get on? Okay, Am I gonna book in at this price before I make an incremental increase?

[00:12:27] And it’s okay to do this. You speak to so many coaches and people out there. I did it. I did it myself, but I went up in. Kind of chunky incurrence. There are people that went up like 50 pounds, 200 pounds. Um, so like every two, two clients, they booked, they go around, I’m gonna go a little bit more, gonna go up a little bit more.

[00:12:47] I went in bigger, bigger leaps. Um, but that’s because I’ve always felt and believed in, in the value of what I do. And just go back and listen to the previous episode. You can hear from my client, Jenny, you know, [00:13:00] the return on investment she’s got. You know, I absolutely know that what I do gets that return on investment, so I feel more confident.

[00:13:05] But in the early days, you know, when I didn’t have the, the client feedback and case studies, that was really difficult for me to get on board. I needed to kind of be working with people and really seeing the results I was helping people achieve for me to feel really confident and more into that. So you’ve gotta start somewhere.

[00:13:23] Awesome. So you have now got yourself to a point that you feel cool. Okay. One really, really freaking awesome transformational tip that I got from my, my, one of my previous coaches, Greg Fon, was all around the weight. I said the price. So he listened to a sales call of mine for kind of give me some feedback, which was awesome.

[00:13:49] Um, And what happened was when I said the price, my voice went up, so I’d go, So it’s like, so it’s [00:14:00] 6,000 like a question. Um, what do you think and I didn’t even know I was doing this. So again, just the intonation and the way I was delivering the, the investment, the figure to prospective clients was absolutely, Undermining all the confidence I’d had through the call in that one delivery

[00:14:26] It took me a while. I’m sure there were a few calls after that where I was like, that it. 4,000 pounds trying to keep my voice really like monotone. It’s 4,000 pounds. Yeah, so it was, You won’t hear me say it like that now, but yeah, it was a really big thing I had had to become really aware of because maybe I wasn’t feeling confident.

[00:14:48] Now I’m absolutely like way more confident. In fact, to the point when I started selling my group program, which I don’t offer anymore, Which was like half the [00:15:00] price of my, my one-to-one coaching. I could sell one to one coaching like that, like so easy, and yet my one to one at my group, I just. I didn’t feel as confident because I know when I get to go deep with people, they get fucking tremendous results and return on investment.

[00:15:21] So when I was going through with like my, my initial group program and selling that for the first time, I found it much harder to sell because I’d not, yes, I’d take people through that transformational journey on a one-to-one basis, but I’d never done it on a group. So when I was lacking confidence and I.

[00:15:36] So often, uh, in a community I’m part of with other, other coaches and the program I’m part of where they kind of have this whole like shit in themselves. This is what they’ve done for years and years. They know what they’re doing, but suddenly pa packaging it up, selling it as a group offering was, is becomes, you know, we lack this confidence and it’s something we have to be really aware of with our, with our sales process.

[00:15:59] So [00:16:00] let’s move on. Okay. How do we get clients to see the value in what, you know, in what we do and in the investment when it gets to that part? So it’s, you know, there’s a whole process here in terms of the sales call. So let’s just say, okay, we’ve got, we’ve done an awesome sales call. You’ve really. Worked through kind of where they’re at, what’s going on for them, what their goals are, kind of what’s getting in their way.

[00:16:22] You’ve really gone through all of that and got really clear on like that diagnostic of like, what the fuck’s going on? Because you can’t decide whether you can help someone until you know, and you’ve diagnosed like what’s going on with them in their life. To see what you do actually is, is a good fit.

[00:16:37] Okay. You’ve now kind of gone through, this is how I worked, da, da, da, and they’re like, This is really, really cool. Okay, so we’ve talked about this. We’ve talked about the pricing. Okay. But how do we, you know, so, so how do we get them to, to really buy into this, this figure that you’re gonna, you’re gonna ask for, Will we wanna get, do this before we ever get to, to talking about [00:17:00] the investment?

[00:17:00] Okay. And this is where it’s like the, the science of pricing, like, and there’s, there’s an art and a science behind pricing. And the science is so much fucking easier. Okay. Dead practical. Okay. And I like this cause I’m really practical in this. So it’s the difference between, for example, like, and this is for bi, so there’s an art and a science of pricing and this is really gonna be useful for people where your service includes, you know, involves helping them make more money.

[00:17:35] So it’s the difference between like what they’re making now. Okay. And what they, and what we can reasonably get there by the end of our work with them. So for example, if someone says, I’m earning 2000 pounds a month, but I wanna be making 5,000 pounds a month. Okay, that’s a 3000 pound gap. Okay? And that compounds, this is the big thing we wanna [00:18:00] articulate for every like, Like over the time, you know, over a year, over six months or whatever the time that you’re gonna spend with me.

[00:18:10] With you not earning 5,000 pounds. Okay? That’s a 3000 pounds difference. So in the time, like we would be working together, that’s an 18,000 pound loss. Okay? 18,000 pound loss that you are making by not making this investment. Okay? By. Getting on board with this. So when we look at it and we say, Okay, right, you are earning 2000 pounds.

[00:18:37] Now you wanna be at 5,000 pounds. That’s a 3000 pound gap, okay? The cost okay to you of not taking action, okay? Means that figure is gonna just compound. So actually over the next six months, if you don’t take action, that’s 18,000 pounds that you are are worse. Okay. So that’s one way of doing it is [00:19:00] really getting to see what that gap is of not taking action, of not getting to these 5K months.

[00:19:04] That’s a figure. Okay. Then you can talk when you get, uh, to the price. Okay. Or before that, and they start going to price. Yeah. So you can start saying, um, Yeah, so I help my clients typically, Get a two and a half times return on their investment or whatever it is. So work outs, if they’re gonna make potential 18,000 pounds, you’re gonna help them bridge that gap in the time they’re with you.

[00:19:29] So if I say, Okay, I’m gonna help you make a, a two times return on investment. So that means if you sell up 4,000 pounds, your package, your offer, they need to meet, make eight k on that program, okay? In order to get their return on investment, they’re two times return on investment. So I want you to look at what are people generally making if you do something that re uh, results in a financial gain.

[00:19:55] And this does not have to be something like, you know, a coaching program. This could be brand design. [00:20:00] So what were they at before and what are they at afterwards because you’ve helped them uplevel their brand, for example. So really think about that. He could be a training provider. So I have a client who offers training services and what we talked about.

[00:20:12] Yeah, like it’s all around transformations in terms of like having difficult conversations and, and da da da da. But the bottom line was it’s gonna help retain staff. So actually, what is that like? Improvement in their bottom line as a business, in their profit margin as a result of the work he’s doing.

[00:20:33] So getting that figure, getting that data is really important. So you can, again, talk about what that, that, um, return on investment is for that company. And when people start looking at return on investment, that’s a really great way, um, for them to, to start kind of buying into, this is really great value to me.

[00:20:51] And this is all before, you know, we even. Have got to that point of talking about what it, what the investment with you is. So we’ve also got this [00:21:00] compound effect of not earning, you know, the, the figure they want over the coming months and year. And what does that figure come outta that? So we’ve got return investment and the compound effect there.

[00:21:11] So that’s really the science of it. Okay. Which is so easy to speak to, but you might not work in a service that offers, you know, a, a financial. So we need to really look at the emotions here. Okay. What is the cost for them emotionally staying in the state they are in, in the status quo that they are in right now.

[00:21:37] Okay. We need to really dig into like the emotional side. Like what is the cost to you on like a scale of one to 10 of not taking action on this. We want people to kind of put this on a scale, and why is it that number? Like, why have you picked nine? Why have you picked eight? Okay. What is the significance of that number for you of not not taking [00:22:00] action, not making change, and then maybe remember, you know, they, they can be cast.

[00:22:05] So if it’s someone that’s got, you know, uh, marriage. What is the cost? Cost? Does that potentially end up going through a divorce? What’s the cost of a freaking divorce? So there is actually a cost there and a return on investment as well as that emotional side. So I do want you to be able to think about, you know, is there a, is there a financial gain as well in here?

[00:22:23] Um, or is it a sort of, is it an emotional transformation? And what is the cost then of not taking that action? Because when we understand that people buy with emotion, You know, the science, the logic is all there, but fundamentally, people buy with emotion. And this is where I always say, you know, we need to speak to the transformation, okay, To the tangible transformation that you are helping people achieve versus the deliverables, the logistics, you know, how many sessions they get, what they get access to.

[00:22:54] Nobody gives a shit about that. They want to know that what you can do is change their life. [00:23:00] That is what people are buying, and I want you to believe that what you are doing gets that transformation that makes a real difference to their life, and you have to believe in that. So all of this around pricing, you have to believe.

[00:23:14] And if you don’t believe, then we need to go back and ask what is it that needs to change for you to believe in the value for you to be able to see that what you do is a real. So there we have it. Folks. That was a lot longer, shorty. I was going for a shorty episode, but that was a lot longer. But when you get into it, there is so much around pricing to really look at and think about.

[00:23:38] But I want you to really think about how does this feel and can I articulate this confidently? Yeah. Can I help people see the return on investment they’re getting either on a financial level or an emotional? So there you have it, folks. I hope you’ve enjoyed this episode of Marketing Without Social Media Today and feel [00:24:00] inspired to take action in your business, whatever that looks like for you.

[00:24:05] And as always, thank you. Thank you. Thank you for tuning into another episode of this podcast, and if you haven’t done so already, please do subscribe to the podcast so you don’t miss an episode. Speak to you soon.