How to confidently price your products or services.
Are you charging what you’re worth?
Check out our free download: What You’re Worth: The Guide to Powerful Pricing.
Are you creating your own gender wage gap? Statistics show that women business owners regularly pay themselves an average of 28% less than their male counterparts, and 20% believe they have to charge less than men to get and keep clients, according to research conducted by accounting company, Freshbooks. (If you want to hear me go off on this, check out Ep. 73 of The Brazen Podcast: Why Is It So hard to Talk About Money?)
Pricing your products and services is much more than just a dollar figure. It’s what allows you to survive as a business, pay your employees well (and offer benefits), give back to your community, and provide you with the freedom that you’re seeking as a business owner. Also from the customer side, your pricing reflects on the quality of your product. Even if you’ve created the highest-quality product possible, pricing it way below your competitors will give the impression that it’s low-quality. As a coach, I have also seen significantly more success with my clients now at my current pricing vs. when I first started out. The higher price of coaching means more investment in the process from my clients, ultimately leading to much bigger success.
You should look at your pricing a couple of ways:
The detailed view: Spend time going over the true cost of running your business - including everything (e.g., trips to the post office, marketing, copywriting, supplies, rent, payroll, etc.).
The overview: How much do you need/want to make and how many products can you make or hours can you work? For example, if you are a consultant and can only see a max of 10 clients a week when you factor the time spent doing business tasks, but want to make $4,000/week for your business, you will need to charge each client $400 for a session. You will then need to ensure that your service fits a $400 price tag in terms of quality for your client. If not, how can you get there? (Note: Be careful with this exercise. In working with hundreds of women, I find that women usually go the other way and offer way too many extras for the price tag. While I believe in offering an incredible service that really sets you apart, you will end up losing if you are offering so many additional things for free as part of the price.)
Remember why you started your business: to have more flexibility in your schedule, have more control over how much you’re able to make, and to be able to make a difference to the causes that are important to you. All of this starts with looking at your pricing.
Homework: Take a look at your own pricing and answer the following questions:
(1) How many products do I need to sell or how many clients do I need to see in order to make a comfortable living at the price?
(2) Can my business survive at this rate?
(3) Is this rate getting me closer to my personal and professional goals?
(4) What are others charging for similar services or products? Do I want to be seen as accessible (knowing that I will have to sell much more to make a comfortable amount) or high-end (which means I will have to offer a high-quality product) or somewhere in between?
(5) Am I taking into account ALL of my experience, whether it’s in my current field or not? (Remember that all experience counts for something).
(6) What is holding you back from charging more?
If you need more help, I encourage you to check out this free exclusive guide: What You’re Worth: The Guide to Powerful Pricing.
-Valerie