How confident are you in your skills? In your knowledge and your abilities?

Are you confident enough to price yourself – your time and your services – as you should be?

The truth is, learning how to value yourself and your work is not an easy task – but as an entrepreneur, business owner or coach, it’s something that you absolutely need to learn.

And the sooner you do, the better for your business and dare I say, your life in general.

The reason I wanted to talk about this is because it’s actually a very common problem amongst entrepreneurs, particularly when it comes to service-based niches. It’s something that I’ve noticed with many of the clients I’ve worked with over the years and even noticed it with myself, back when I was just starting to work directly with other entrepreneurs.

Which is why I think this is something that a lot of you will relate to.

After all, how many times were you speaking with a potential client and they were saying that your prices were too high?

Or complaining that they weren’t sure that they were getting enough out of what you were offering them?

And in many cases, this isn’t necessarily about you personally: it’s simply that they have a limited budget and even though they might know they need what you’re offering, they’re just not sure that this is the best way to spend their money.

This scenario will likely happen time and time again.

And because of that, it’s up to you to convince your potential clients – and even recurring clients in some cases – that they really need your services and that you’re the best person to help them.

Not only that, but you need to know how to properly value the services you offer and price your work accordingly; and if you manage to do that, you will:

• Reduce low-paying work that takes up too much of your time and not giving you enough return
• Upsell more products and services and increase your income
• Work fewer hours while earning more – which, I think, is a goal many of us have but don’t believe that we can achieve

So, the question now is, how do you learn how to value yourself and your work? How do you manage to raise your prices to generate a positive effect for your business?

Work on your self-confidence

How confident are you in yourself – and what you’re offering your potential clients?

In order to better value your work, having confidence is key: which is why it’s one of the first things you should be working on.

Confidence in yourself – and in your business and what it has to offer.

How do you do that?

• Learn to appreciate the value you bring to the table: make a list of what you – and your business – bring to the table. How do you help your clients? How does your product or service make a difference: what results does it help your clients achieve? What pain points does it help with?
• Look back at your results: think of your past work and consider your achievements; you can even check out your testimonials: they’re not only great for increasing your conversion rates, but even to give you a bit of extra motivation!

Discover what makes you unique – or better

Whatever niche you’re in, chances are it’s a crowded marketplace with many businesses offering the same services, so what makes you unique? What makes you better than your competitors? What do you bring to the table that no one else doesn’t (or doesn’t do it as well)?

This is something that you can use to promote your business, but also to demonstrate to your clients why you’re worth more.

But in order to achieve this, you first need to find out what these qualities, skills, or benefits are.

This exercise is not necessarily about competitive research (although you definitely need to do that too!) but rather about looking inwards to find out what you offer that you can use to differentiate yourself – and grow your value.

Invest back into your business and keep growing

I’ve noticed over time that a lot of entrepreneurs are reluctant to invest in their business, even when they say they want more out of it.

It’s so easy to get comfortable when things are going well enough but if you want to keep growing and keep evolving – and your prices along with you, then you need to invest back into your business.

And there are so many ways, both big and small, that you can use to increase your value and start earning more:

• Learn a new skill so that you can offer something that makes you unique in the marketplace and offer more value to your clients
• Grow your personal brand: from writing for top-tier publications to speaking at conferences, you can leverage all of these different ways to grow your personal brand and become an authority or even an influencer in your niche
• Invest into your services or products: are there any ways that you can improve your services or products? And if so, can that help you grow your business?
• Develop new services and products: one of the keys to growing a successful business is offering a variety of products and services, both low-ticket (cheaper, entry-point) and high-ticket (more expensive, but also offering more value). This will also allow you to upsell to your clients, as well as target multiple audiences and increase your income

Determine how much your services are worth

And now you’re probably asking… but how do I that?

This is something that many entrepreneurs struggle with because pricing is an extremely important decision.

It affects how much you’ll work and how much money you’ll make for your business.

So yes, a lot rests on this decision.

For some, there’s the immediate instinct of going low and overtaking the competition this way.

But that’s not the best strategy for the long-term; unless you grow your sales volume a lot, it’s almost impossible to start earning more by selling very cheap services. After all, we all have 24 hours in a day and as much as I hate it sometimes, we really need sleep.

Instead, you need to not only aim to earn more for your services but also find ways to upsell to your clients.

With that in mind, here are a few tips to help you price your services at a rate you deserve:

• Make a list of all of your costs to find out how much it costs you to offer your services (don’t leave anything out!)
• Consider the time you’ll have to invest: it’s not just about how much it costs you, but also how much time you’ll have to spend. “Time is money” might be a huge cliché, but especially in this niche, it’s extremely true. So, consider carefully how much time you’ll need to invest (and don’t forget about the time you’ll spend speaking over calls, email, skype, text and so on)
• Take a look at your competitors and find out how much they’re charging as well as everything they offer for those prices
•  Consider your customers and their spending power, as well as their needs and wants
• Determine how much you believe you should earn for a project/hour of your time – aka, your profit

 

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