The Happy Pricing Podcast

Getting paid what your worth isn’t about accurately itemising your time.

It takes acknowledging what your customer says they want, understanding what they need, articulating why they need it and helping them figure out how valuable that is to them.

The same outcome can be of different value to different people. And it can be of different value to the same person at different times.

Pricing based on value is art that requires skill and an understanding of the science.

On this episode Ben and I cap off our 3 part mini-series by talking about authentic and ethical Value-Based Pricing… or what we like to call the Happy Pricing way.

Most projects a priced based on people's time.

The proposal, as well as containing lots of justification for choosing you as a supplier, is essentially a shopping list of project member's time and how much their hourly rates are.

This is helpful in terms of being transparent and making feel the client is informed.

But IS it really helpful?

More information doesn't necessarily mean more power.

Unless your client is empowered to make a choice and believe that the price you're giving them is worth paying then it doesn't matter how granular and transparent you are about your pricing it won't help them.

In the end you're providing a number and your client needs to able to make sense of that number and explain it to others.

Also, when it comes to doing work that includes some inherent uncertainty, such as creative work or developing an innovative app, then defining price based on time isn't necessarily helpful either.

More than anything clients want certainty about what they're going to get and what they're going to spend in order to get it.

And they want to avoid any regrets about how much they spent (i.e. they want to feel good about spending more money).

They want definite outcomes without feeling like they've been conned.

They want solutions and good feelings.

How does you project pricing help create these?

Earlier in the week I found this article on Medium entitled "What to charge as a freelancer: does value-based pricing live up to the hype?"

You can read it here - https://medium.com/free-code-camp/what-to-charge-as-a-freelancer-does-value-based-pricing-live-up-to-the-hype-1af1d4d88ef7

It's a really interesting take on the challenges freelancers face when it comes to pricing.

What Benek talks about applies to most people in the service industry, particularly if you do work that can't always be easily packaged and defined.

Creative work.

In summary, Benek says hourly pricing is the easiest way to go because everyone does it. Customers understand it and there's a level of clarity that comes from "you pay for what you use".

However, this can also mean that you either count every minute you work or you lose out by doing some work for free.

Hourly based pricing can also put you into the commoditised category of "selling time". Everyone can sell time and so it's easy for customers to go for the cheapest rate.

Another challenge with hourly based pricing is there are only so many hours in the day and so your income has a natural ceiling.

What are the alternatives?

Project based and value based.

But they also have their pros and cons.

Listen to this episode as Ben and I explore the idea of "selling our time". It's the first part for a 3 episode series. The next episode will be about pricing projects.

Do you want to make money while you sleep?

That's the promise of passive income.

And anyone who doesn't make as much money as they'd like selling their time is attracted to this promise.

According to Tim Ferris’ Four Hour Work Week passive income brings promise of freedom, adventure, ease and wealth.

But is this always the case.

Does pursuing a passive income model actually bring less you happiness because you then become a slave to click funnels and spreadsheets?

And, given your interest in pricing well, what does it take to find the right price for a passive income product?

On this episode of Waking Up To Money Ben and I covered a couple of core ideas.

Firstly, what's your intention for starting your business?

Is it purely about creating a passive income business?

If so, your only metric of success will be money and your focus will be about maximising passive revenue.

However, if your intention is to maximise impact then creating a  product or course that many people can get value from without the need for your time might be the best way to go. And so passive income could be your revenue model of choice.

But in this latter case you'll be focused on the impact and not just the income.

Pricing well is about understanding what your customers consider valuable.

This requires you to be in conversation with them. But this doesn't have to be just one-to-one.

This can be done at scale through your marketing. Particularly through social media.

Then the job of marketing isn't to just tell people that you have something to sell.

But to engage with people you want to work with and listen to what they think is valuable.

You can then set your price accordingly.

And to get to the right price you need to iterate by putting a price out there and then changing it (or your target audience or your offering) if no one is buying.

Pricing for serviced based businesses is such a dark art and many agency owners, coaches and consultants have had to learn it the hard way.

But why should it be so hard?

There should be more courses about this stuff out there teaching things like:

• What is a good price?
• How do you know what your competition is charging?
• Do you charge by day, by the person or by value?
• How do you write/build a proposal?
• What split is there between services and product? Premium and mass market?
• How does that work across territories?
• Do you charge differently online vs offline?

These are the words of David McQueen, executive coach and public speaker, that he shared on LinkedIn over the summer.

We thought it would be a great opportunity to talk about what such a course could do for people like him and what is it that might be stopping people from seeking out this kind of help.

David McQueen is a speaker, coach and advisor who is passionate about leadership. Over the last thirty years he has honed his experience in leadership. This includes leading teams in his early career, starting his own companies, sitting on the advisory board of companies across all sectors and his work with organizations across the private, public and third sector.

David is the host of Leadership Decoded, a podcast focusing on leadership communication,  and is also writing his first book on the power of leadership coaching.

Focussing on pricing in isolation isn't going to help you get customers.

If you don't align how you price with how you market you can waste a lot of time selling to the wrong people.

On this episode we talk about how pricing, marketing and selling can fit together and why that's important.

Here's a summary of the points that we cover:

• pricing well is only one component of getting people to buy from you
• how do you think about the journey of your customer to you?
• how clearly do you understand who you’re selling to?
• don’t waste time selling to skeptics
• sell to the converted and reserve your energy for the people who are aligned
• talk about the good feelings and solutions people are looking for not only when you sell but also when you market
• connect the what of what you do to the good feelings and solutions
• don’t try to persuade people to do things they don’t want to do
• understand your customer through dialogue (through useful conversations on social media)
• selling isn’t a battle of wills with a single winner
• selling isn’t about needing to be liked
• recognise that it doesn’t matter how good at selling you are if the person isn’t ready to buy
• selling to the right people is key to running an effortless business
• how does our relationship and need for money influence our interaction with customers?
• the extent we feel the need for money can undermine how we talk about the value of what we do
• how can the exchange of money be a sign of a commitment to the outcome?
• always price from the outside in as the most important person in the conversation is the customer and their perspective
• pricing well is about having a choice about whether you want to work with a customer or not
• how do some businesses sell the same thing for so much more?
• timing and context can have an influence on the value of the same product or service
• value is subjective and when someone buys something from you there are many motivations that influence whether they buy
• price is an important signal that links to an emotional driver in the buyer
• how does the love for your work influence its perceived value
• how do you make sure that you’re not over-pricing or short changing yourself?
• don’t let your customers benchmark your prices
• invest your time in understanding your customers motivations to help you define value
• the lower limit is define by what you need to live the life you want to live
• most people are worth more than they think and their customers will agree

On this episode we tackle the challenge of trying to earn more when you don't like talking about money.

The bad news is that it's impossible.

The good news is that while you can't get away from ultimately talking about money you can start by talking about clarity and commitment.

What is it that more money will help you do?

It isn't about the money in itself it's about what it can help you to achieve.

Picture a vision of the change and impact you want to make and be clear about how the money will help.

You then need to commit to making that change. Not only intellectually but you've also got to feel like it's something that you really want to happen.

You don't need to know exactly how it's going to happen but you need to be motivated enough to push through whatever obstacles come your way to make it happen.

Once you're clear and committed you'll be more likely to have the difficult money conversations and understand how to talk about money in away that helps you move towards your intentions.

We also share some thoughts on how to get clear and committed.

On this episode of Waking up to Money we were joined by Nicola Forristal, a People Talent specialist.

She has a service that weaves the threads of her corporate career as a People & Talent professional, her therapeutic career and her passion for energy psychology and medicine into a programme that will support and help people languishing in the workplace.

Given the current situation where employees are being invited to come back to work she believes employers could make this transition more energising and less scary by focussing on their wellbeing.

She has developed workshops to address this specific issue as well as ongoing wellbeing needs but is trying to work out how best to price these offerings.

With the support of Ben Johnson we explore how she can go about tackling this challenge and offer strategies for her to price that is powerful, authentic and allows everyone to share in the value.

Welcome to the new season of Waking up to Money.

This episode is the first one after our break following the second Happy Pricing course we ran in April.

We learned a lot during that course. Not only about how to run it even better but also about the challenges and struggles you face.

During this episode we share some of our learnings from the last cohort and also talk about why it's important to make yourself easier to buy (and how).

Ben and I talk about what we've learned about pricing by launching a course about pricing.