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How to Change What You're Worth

What I want to ask you now and this is the hard part what is your percent of priceless? Pick a number if you have multiple businesses, pick a number for one of your services and it may not be the number you're currently charging. Ok? In fact, I encourage you if you're currently charging a number and you're not happy with that number you thinkyou're undervalued, I encourage you to write down the number you want to charge you want to charge and I'll share another quick story with you. When I started out and design when I left the big box retailer I was with, I started out in this is back in nineteen ninety four at sixty five dollars an hour in atlanta. As a designer, it was a pretty good rate at the time I within three months, I bounced up to a whopping seventy five dollars an hour. I raise my rates by ten dollars an hour. I lost a client who was married to the the head of legal counsel for ups. This was not somebody who should have been price sensitive, but I lost her because she was ab...

solutely unwilling to go up by ten dollars an hour and I didn't feel ethically I could do anything else in terms of have a separate rate for them that didn't feel good to may. So I had to let her go is a client it was very hard and it was very scary but it was the best thing I could have done because it freed me up to then continue to value myself higher and higher and higher until I got to a place where I charged two hundred dollars an hour and have clients readily pay that and at some point there was a builder that I met with it said I was the highest in atlanta which I thought was hilarious because I know that's not true but the reality is if you allow your clients to dictate your rates you will always be paid too little so you want to find out what it's worth to them value it the ones that are willing to invest in themselves for your services and your products are the ones you want to keep working with the ones that say no that willing to pay that if you won't come down I'm not going to work with you you have to be able to let them go you have to be able to say ok, I understand completely we're just not a fit it's hard it's scary especially when you're hungry um the reality is too that if you start discounting your services you discount your value you never want to do that you can offer a vips savings you can offer a scholarship of some denomination and you can offer maybe a christmas special holiday special you're running a birthday event. Whatever it is you can offer those that never, ever discount your services because you impair your value. So be careful about running a sale, your language around that is incredibly important, and if somebody wants to negotiate with you, ask them if they want to negotiate the results, they get two because that's the reality of this you want to step in fully and your value in that transformation that's what makes all the difference in the world? So I do want you to base your price on the value of the transformation that you deliver, and I want you to tweet us and chat room us with how much is your small percent of priceless? If you're willing to state it, many of you are under colorful names in that chat room, we don't really know who you are, so you're very safe and letting us know what that is and let us know if that number is higher than what you're currently charging. I'd love to know, so how do you charge what you're worth now? First of all, I'm hoping that in the last few minutes I have been able to significantly increase your self confidence yourself, it's deem and you're valuing properties so that you're now ready to say I am worth it and I am willing to ask for the value that my transformation delivers chris, do we have any questions on that so far? A few coming in now this one says when you ask a client what is it worth to you? Would the answer that you get to that not necessarily be their perceived value of the product? I guess how do you get a very honest answer from people when you ask what you want to do is it's not just what's it worth to you it's, you have to frame what that transformation is. So for example let's say you were working with somebody with a health product and you're focused on improving their health in some way and he said so what's the improvement of your health worth to you the good will of course my health is priceless ok, you have to frame it first if you just say you know what's what's my service worth to you what's my product worth you you're going to get a very different answer so you have to frame the transformation itself and in terms of the health, wealth or the relationship you can use other words around that. But remember those air, the three core values that you gotta work with? Yes, questions appropriate for now, please if it is not let let me know I have a real problem charging twenty four, ninety nine or twenty four ninety seven which is popular now can I just charge you twenty, five hundred bucks and not have to deal with all the you know, I hate that it doesn't feel like I'm manipulating get I get what you're saying, lisa completely yes, you can do that now I'll give you another tip though they don't make it better. Okay, it's not manipulative. It is a little bit of marketing language ing that will make sales happen better if you ask for twenty four. Fifty. Does that sound better than ninety seven or the reason being when you end something with the words fifty versus twenty four hundred? Uh, okay. It appears to be significantly less money. Ok, it is an illusion. I totally get that and lose their hearing hundred instead of fifty, I guess. Ok, yes. Ok, the nine that's when I learned really actually quite recently online. Okay, sevens are supposed to be the most, um, popular and best placed end number. Yeah, I personally would like to go with the fifty instead, but part of it depends on how you're selling your wares. If you're selling your where is strictly through an online portal, you're not having any interaction with anyone, then you might want to follow the seven or the five rule but if you're having interaction with them, which at that level you definitely are you using it's coming out of your mouth, usually in a phone call or in a in a setting private setting? Yeah, fifty is the way to go. Okay, so, um, but there's science behind seven? Yeah, they have actually studied this and it's kind of bizarre, but again, unless you're selling online products and you need to put a price everybody's going to respond to. But if you notice, you know when you go toe bed bath beyond uses ninety nine, you know, twenty nine, ninety nine and it's funny, because we seem to automatically round down, not up. I round up a lot of times, but a lot of people don't, apparently or they wouldn't use it. It would be completely moved. So there is a science and a psychology behind that, and you can look at his manipulative or you could look at it is hey there's a science here, they've done the research. I want to pay attention to that science because it's going to make my products more palatable. Ok, now the reality is, if you've done a good job of educating your client into the transformative value, the reality is you're not selling anything. They're just going to automatically jump in there and say, hey, you know what? I'm ready I get the transformative value um I don't I don't care how you're delivering it to me I just I want that transformation that's the beautiful part that's what you want to really create it the front end if you're having a wrestle over a price and hitting resistance it's because they are unconvinced of the value you did not educate them effectively into that there should be no issue on that front. The only issue may have sometimes the people going oh, is that all that's that's a fabulous thing to hear except you're going oh, I couldn't charge more it's like as a speaker the worst thing for me to hear on the other end of the found when somebody says what's, your fee for this is okay let's book it and I'm like, oh, they had more budget but they had more they could have been into this u s o you also always want to try to find out if they had a planned investment you never use the word budget, but if they had a plan investment that really does make a huge difference and we're going to go into that budget the language ing thing but I'll go into it now because it's it's not going to hurt to re emphasize it in a later segment I literally have never used the word budget in my business practice I have said this from stage in trainings for years I have had business owners come back to me, especially creatives designers have come back to me and said melissa, I took the word budget out, I changed it to investment like you told me two and in ninety days I saw a significant increase in my business. Woo that's exciting, okay, because when you ask someone for their budget, you are asking someone for their limitation. I don't know about you, but we've all been asked for a budget it sometime or other in our life. When I get asked for a budget, I tighten up in parts I didn't even know I had I don't want to share my limitations with you that's uncomfortable, that's too personal, so instead and even if a client's is well, I've got a budget of I immediately redirect them to the word investment because here's, what I want you to really understand what you're providing has a return on it, okay, a budget is a line item with a life cycle on an expense report there's no return on it, you really have got to step into that place where ok what's the investment they're making what's the return they're getting on the service or product I'm delivering okay, now in michelle's case, if it's jewelry obviously every time a woman puts on a piece of jewelry they're feeling elegant. They're feeling confident they're feeling at home and who they are, what a beautiful return in its lifetime the genealogy it's a lifetime benefit, isn't it? Ok? The mosaics that you provide are a lifetime benefit not only for a while there in the house but it's probably going to help sell the house if they choose to go do that or they decide to have you come in and cut the whole thing else and they could take it with them. Okay? And rich in your case on the staging side that's a hugely long term benefit because they get teo sell the house and less time for more money and move into the next house which if you play your cards right, they're gonna have you staging that one the next time around or they'll have you come in and stage it for living, which is a really cool opportunity to and that is an enormous impact on their living every single day. So you really want to get clear on what's the transformation what's the return on the investment what's the roo eye of what you're delivering because here's the beautiful part about an investment it can be made it any time with anyone for any reason in any amount that's a lot of unlimited nous a lot of unlimited nous a budget is nothing but a set of limitations. You getting any feedback on this? Yeah, this brings up a lot of questions about pricing. We have two questions here that are similar, so we'll try to take them both. Now what if you are just starting out? I am starting out as a freelance family lifestyle photographer should I priced differently? Because I'm just starting out? Should I have one price as the holiday season starts and then charge prices after the holidays based on what I've learned about my customers and this ties into this other question that says, what if your market value is based on how many followers you have? And if you've got enough press, does that play into your prices? Okay, we'll take number one first. No, you do not charge less because you're just starting out first of all, do your clients even know that you're just starting out? Why do they need to know that you're just starting out? Step into the talent that you have step into the dream that you have stepped into the skill set that you offer and don't focus on what you don't have and g I haven't been around for five, ten, fifteen years focus on what you're delivering just because you're new at it doesn't make you less good excellence from the begin. Exactly. Be it excellence from the beginning. That's. Exactly. Exactly right. Thank you, rochelle. And yeah, you can run a holiday special. The tricky part to that is I would almost want to charge a little more at the holidays because that's going to be a super busy time of your potentially for you that's going to be a time where everybody's wanting your services, but again, it's, how you frame what you're delivering, frame it, package it in a juicy way that gets them really excited. And if you run a special, make sure that part of that is going to be collecting testimonials. We got segments coming up on that, but you're gonna want to collect those testimony is because next year you want the same people booking you again, and you want them telling all of their friends and family so that you have an amazing holiday season and that launches you right into what you can do for the year ahead. So you've got a lot of creative options there deadlines during the holiday you, khun, bump up your prices if you can deliver with a certain amount of time deadlines make it really easy. In fact, that's a really good point deadlines are one of the first things I ask my clients for. You've got to have a deadline to work against to get them on board no matter what you're doing if you don't have a deadline, if they don't have a deadline, create one, come up with one ask what's going on in their lives asked why they want your services at this particular point in time if they don't have a deadline it too much, much harder to create the relationship and to get the investment in the door and you don't ever want to leave a proposal out there indefinitely. Every proposal you submit should have a deadline of anywhere from seven to thirty days on it so that your price can go up after that because your workload probably will have shifted in that seven to thirty days. That makes a big difference too, right? On the second question, what if your market values based on how many followers you have or if you've got enough press? Is that something where as you get more followers you can charge? Yeah, yeah, absolutely it is truly based on that and that that's a really interesting question in a very rare place to be because I've always been of the mind it's not how many it's, how hot they are, so there are certain interviews that are paying a lot of attention, I think, undoing inappropriate attention to the number of followers because it's such a slippery metric um, I mean, there's, a lot of very famous people out there with millions of followers and a third of those are completely dead, you know, they're dead names, so it's dodgy, but yes, absolutely if that person's value perceived value perceived, not real, but perceived values based on that for every x number of milestones they hit, and they should create that sheet now, while we're in class, create that, okay, once I hit one hundred thousand once I hit a half a million once I had a million. What are my rates going today? They say that they're musician, they're doing music performances and they're building a following that way. Oh, you know what they need to do. They need to go watch amanda palmer's, ted video that will rock their world she was the first one to break the crowd sourcing limit on what she was able to raise. She was expecting to raise a couple hundred thousand, she broke a million, and she did it in a very unique way. She has an extraordinary story of how she gave everything away for free, and her fans came back and supported her by pouring money into her crowdfunding. It was really incredible, it's it's an amazing, amazing story of getting by giving first and as a musician, she is a musician that person really needs toe you know go check out amanda palmer on ted because it's a fabulous video it's about twenty minutes long and she will rock your world she really well whether or not you want to crowdfund there's a valuable lessons there and how to pay it forward and build relationship with your fans in a very true sense peter hollands is another musician that I'm a huge fan of and peter is incredibly gracious I follow him all over the place and he's another good one to take a look at but a man is the one who has the ted the tax talk so really cool about cloud and and their influence and all you can sleep well cloud doesn't actually influence cloud is miss measurement of influence measurement it depends on the industry you're in and some corporations the major corporations do look at those metrics when they're looking at where they're going to sponsor and where they're going to put their money's um there's just as many people know nothing about clouded all don't have a clue about it it completely depends on your market so I am on cloud my score goes up and down based on how much time I have to devote to social media I used to try and and game so to speak and what am I going to do to raise my clout score and I learned it was just a zizi tio ignore it completely, it's going to bounce up and down a little bit and, you know, be active or not, be active, whatever suiting where I'm at at the moment, and my clout store is still in the in the top percent off, so it measures engagement and across the multiplicity of platforms. But it's, not important to a lot of people, truly isn't don't get bogged down in that. Well, we've got a whole social media mastery segment coming up. We'll dive into some of that van, but, yeah, I don't want anybody getting bogged down and think, you know, I you know, I need a higher klout score, not less. You're dealing with significant corporations that are going to be sponsoring you, or that would be buying your goods and somehow distributing them to their audiences. Don't worry about cloud, and elements like that will dive into the social media in a later segment.