Oh, you say you’d never resent your clients? I know that’s a horrible thing to cop to, but think again. If you let your clients get away with paying you a much lower fee than you are worth, trust me….resentment can creep in. As much as you may hate to admit it and as really crappy as that is to feel, the down side of taking care of them by giving them the rock bottom fee is that later on when you gain more confidence….you may be a bit resentful.
It’s not your clients’ fault though. Actually, it’s probably yours. Not meaning to, you may have bought into the story of how the economy has everyone scrambling. Or you may be “in their stuff” spinning around on the concepts of how dare you ask them to pay you the full fee because of their challenging financial situation. Or just maybe you haven’t yet figured out how to determine your value so you are giving your work away at a fraction of the cost.

The reason I’m talking to you about this today is because if we get really honest, we have all felt this at times, and I want you to work with people you delight in and then give them your all. But if there is an issue because of money, it will trickle out and affect the service you provide, so let’s change that, ‘ey?
While I have been seeing this problem in my clients (and if truth be told felt it myself in the past) it became really clear a few months ago as I was working with two different people, both in the same profession. As their business coach, one of my goals and up front agenda is to come in and find the money leaks. I want my clients within a few months to be starting to see more money coming in. In fact, usually within 90 days we have made enough shifts and so they have paid for their coaching fees with new business or additional revenue. (It makes me cranky when that doesn’t happen, so I turn a bit “blood-hound” and sniff out all the places money is getting lost.)

Let me tell you about these two clients -

Client #1 really took to the concept of charging what she was worth and when we examined her fees, she easily raised them by about 25%.

Client #2 has some money mindset issues. She’s an amazing expert, been in business for years, and yet when I asked her to increase just by $10, she hit a wall. For her the wall was jumping into her clients ‘stories’ of why they don’t have the money and doing some caretaking of them by keeping her fees lower. She felt guilty raising her rates, so struggled with this request.

Dramatically different approaches, but just wait until you find out how much more dramatic their OUTCOMES were!  I’ll share those results with you as well as some questions to ask yourself so that you can make sure you’re getting the outcome you want.

You can click here to go to the next article on how mindset plays a huge part in this.

Blessings,

Therese