Pricing Confidence

Confidence in your pricing is something that some people find a challenge - I have found that women, in particular, find having confidence in their pricing is tricky. I want to encourage people to start thinking about growing confidence in their pricing, and part of that is thinking about who are you selling to. Are you clear about who you are selling to and what you are selling? Do you have a niche? Can you niche down a bit in your industry? 

You all know by now that I'm an accountant, but there are millions of accountants out there. There are also lots of management accountants, which are accountants that work in your business but do not complete your year-end accounts and tax. That's quite a difficult sell because nobody knows what one of those is. I niched into pricing because for most small business owners, pricing is a big problem. And by niching, I have made it really clear who I'm selling to. 

I get asked to speak at events, guest blog, be a guest on podcasts, etc because I'm an expert in pricing not because I'm an accountant. And that's important. Be clear about having a niche and don't be afraid to niche. It's not something you need to worry about because the more you niche down, the more you talk to people who have that problem. 

Make sure you're speaking to the problem that people think they have and not the problem you think they have. For example, for me, that is people who have trouble with their business numbers but actually their big problem is pricing. It's a good hook if you like. Think about what you can do if you're a generalist VA, could you be a tech VA and therefore put your prices up? Can you sell those services very specifically? And look at what results you get. What do you do for people? Do you save them time? Do you save them money? Do you make life easier? What is it that you do that means that you get the results that you want? 

I always say package your services. I know some people say it's really hard, but you should package your service, and packaging your services does not mean changing what you offer. For example, if you offer coaching services, you might do six sessions at £100 a session, £600 total. What I want you to do is think, we will have six sessions but there's also some prep work that goes into these sessions. So, you would create a package price that covers this. It might be that you stick with £600, but it is a fixed price of £600 and then if the prep work becomes quicker for you to do, or there is less prep work with one client than another client, you are still charging a fixed £600. When I'm looking at work I do for clients, I will say it's a fixed amount to do. And then it's up to me how long that takes me to do the work. Hopefully, you get quicker and you can outsource some of it. Don’t think that you have to change a lot to do a package, packages just move into a fixed price rather than an hourly rate, daily rate system. 

When having confidence in your pricing, it is really important to understand that some people won't buy and that's okay. If you are in a niche where people don't have loads of money, then know that you will not be able to sell very expensive things. If you want to move up, you’ve got to find an audience that has more money. Understand that you'll be too expensive for some people, and you won't be expensive enough for other people and that’s ok. I also want you to dig around and think about why you feel you're not worth the price that you are putting out there. And remember what I say, which is go out with a price and then be quiet. Don't say anything, wait for them to talk about the price and then talk about the value that you bring. 

If you want help with your putting your packages together, check out my masterclass Packages Masterclass.