Are You Pricing Yourself Out Of The Market

Three clients have brought issues about pricing this week.

The first wanted to sell her regular coaching service to a different target audience, at a 15% discount. Well, why not you might say. But think about it, here are a few more facts; the target audience wouldn’t be paying for the service directly an organisation would. Same service different price? I don’t think so.

The second and third questions were both posed by women who had issues around not knowing how much to charge. They had both carried out some essential research regarding what their competitors were charging and both of them felt they couldn’t charge ‘that much’. Why?

My inkling is that they aren’t 100% certain of their worth and yet these women are both experts in their field. If you aren’t feeling confident about the price you are quoting then your customers and clients will pick up on this. Comparing yourself to others isn’t favourable, my recommendation is to focus on what makes you unique, what makes you stand out from the crowd, what differentiates you from the herd and allow that message to come over in your customer conversations. After all who is making the objection here?

Of course you do have competitors but look on that as a healthy sign that your service is in demand. And if they charge less, does it necessarily follow that they are providing a better service? Of course, whilst you can create a business by offering the lowest price in your area it’s not a sustainable business model.
I think your expertise and experience governs how much you can charge. Heres a well known story to illustrate the point.An engineer gets called into a factory to mend a vital piece of machinery. The factory is loosing money because production has been stopped. Within just 10 minutes, the engineer has fixed the problem. He gave the machine a good kick and everything proceeded to run smoothly again.
The managing director was elated until he received the invoice for the engineers work. The charge was for £1000 "the engineer was only here for 10 minutes and all he did was kick the machine. How dare he charge £1,000?” The manager called the engineer and asked him to explain how he could charge such a ridiculous fee. The engineer confidently responded, "Kicking the machine: £50. Knowing where to kick the machine: £950".