Price should not be a guessing game

Without knowing your price, clients will do two things.

You might know how I’ve been talking about figuring out the positioning for my newsletter. I’m renaming this to ‘Room for Marketing’ because no matter how small your team is - specifically, if it’s just you - you should still make room for marketing your business😉

As you might’ve gleaned from the previous newsletter, telling your price can feel like a game of pin the tail on the donkey.

You’ve gotten a call booked, shout in excitement, prepare for the call by doing a bit of research, try to guess what their budget could look like and during the call, all you’re thinking is, is my price even in their budget?

It would either end up with me blind-guessing their budget and trying to match it to their expectations or saying my price and getting reactions all across the spectrum.

Yes, this was how I conducted my discovery calls until May of this year. A little too long to be learning this.

But things changed when I began displaying my prices on my website.

Some people think I’m a little crazy for doing this - but think about it, if you’re buying something, you’re going to want to know the price.

And if the price isn’t available on the website, you’re going to do a bit of a guessing game in the back of your head, without even knowing the market rate - a price that will never actually be the right price.

Without knowing your price, clients will do two things: either estimate that it’s going to be way out of budget and not book the call. Or book the call and balk at how much it costs.

It’s a guessing game that ends with only one loser.

Both scenarios are something I don’t want - so I took the guessing game out of the equation.

This way, the leads who do book discovery calls already know my process, how much it costs and the call can be spent doing the more valuable thing - helping them figure out if this is something they need right now and how I can help them.

Another benefit is that the leads who do book the call are more serious about the entire process, because they know it’s in budget. In fact, in the week I chose to update my pricing on my website, I got three leads - the most I’d booked in a single week up until that point.

The best benefit however? Not feeling compelled to advocate for your worth - something you’ll have to do even if the client thinks it’s cheap because, “Hey, aren’t you a freelancer?”

End Notes

Now, it’s difficult to assign the right price-tag to your work. Although it does help to position yourself as an expert and understand what other people charge for a similar project - which, again, can be a spectrum of wildly different numbers.

My goal with displaying my prices is to receive the easiest ‘yes’. None of that back-and-forth, none of that circling around the budget topic and certainly, none of that guessing.

However, when you do hit a point where you’re charging the equivalent of a few Dior dresses is when you can stop having it on your website. Because chances are, you’re booked out for months and don’t need to bother with it.

What about you? Is setting expectations for the price something you struggle with?

Happy marketing,
Maria

Ps: I did end up killing about seven plants. So much for seven being a lucky number.

Here’s my Website & LinkedIn, if you’d like to connect.

Read the previous edition:

I told both of them the exact same price.