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Raise Your Fees Overnight!
Do you want to make more money? Yes, I guess that is a rhetorical question. Everybody wants to make more money, but oftentimes we are not willing to do what needs to be done in order to make it. For example, I'm not willing to work an 80-hour per week job to double my income. I have a husband and a 1 ½ year old son - I want to spend time with them. I want to take vacations and visit my parents on the weekends and host dinner parties for my friends. I am not willing to swindle little old ladies to make more money, nor am I willing to lie, steal, or be otherwise dishonest. I am not willing to work for a boss that demeans me, nor am I willing to work in an environment that is discriminatory, unfair, or just plain dull. So, putting all those things to the side, what AM I willing to do to make more money? I AM willing to develop products and services that business owners want and need. I AM willing to work regular business hours Monday through Friday with some evening/weekend work when needed. I AM willing to face my fears and try new things to market my business like public speaking and approaching big joint venture partners. I AM willing to listen to my clients' feedback. And, I AM willing to ask for what I'm worth. In a service business, that last one is key. Believe me if you don't ask for it, you won't get it. So how do you figure out what you are worth? It sounds like a relatively direct question that has a "right" answer, but it is not. Worth is a value judgment that you, your prospects, and your clients make independently. You might think your services are worth $60/hour, and by choosing to hire you, your clients are saying that they agree that you are worth that amount. But, what if you raised your rate to $120/hour? Would they hire you then? How about those prospects who choose to go with someone else, even when you are offering your $60/hour rate? They obviously don't think your services are worth $60/hour. So, who is right? The answer is everybody is right. Each one of us has our own unique set of criteria for determining the value of any offering. We evaluate every offer we are made using that criteria whether we are consciously aware of it or not. So, in evaluating your worth, let us start with what you are charging now. How did you come up with that figure? Did you pick it out of the sky? Did you find someone locally who was offering a similar service and find out how much they were charging? Did you do extensive research to determine the national, regional, and local average hourly rate for your industry? No matter how you came up with your currently hourly rate, do not forget that you are the one the only one - with the ability to increase it. No prospect is going to say, "I know you usually only charge $60/hour, but I was thinking of paying you more along the lines of $85/hour. Would that be okay?" And, no client is going to call you at the end of the year and say, "I was thinking you do such a great job for us. We would like to start paying you $100/hour starting on January 1 just to show you our appreciation." It just ain't gonna happen! I was reminded of the importance of this message when I talked to Alexandra last Thursday. Alexandra owns a leadership development company providing team-building workshops for mid-sized corporations. Instead of charging an hourly rate, she charges a daily rate of $1,500. Prior to starting her own company, she worked for another small firm delivering similar programs. Only when this other company sent her out on jobs, they charged the client $4,000/day. Yep, that is right. Same workshop - $2,500 more. Now, how could this be? A client that would pay $1,500/day for her services might have been willing to pay $4,000/day if only she had asked? Now, perhaps, the firm she worked for had built up some brand recognition that Alexandra did not yet have when she went out on her own. But, the bottom line is, there were companies out there willing to pay $4,000/day for her skills. It was just a matter of who was making the offer and how the offer was being presented. So, the real answer to 'what are you worth?' is a combination of how highly you value your own abilities, how confident you feel in communicating that value, and how well that value meets the needs of a specific market. If somebody is willing to pay $120/hour for your services, you are worth $120/hour to them. Are there enough 'somebodies' to generate a sufficient income for you? That's what you need to find out. Take a look around your marketplace. If you market to a local audience, look at your competitors' newspaper ads, press coverage, web sites, etc. If you market to a national or international audience, do your research online. Make some phone calls posing as a prospect, if necessary. How much are they charging for services similar to the one(s) you offer? How do they present the service's benefits? How do they package the service offering? How do they position their company as a whole? What can you learn from the companies that are charging more for providing the same service you provide at a lower rate? After you have done your research, take some time to re-evaluate how you are packaging, positioning, and branding your business. Then, determine if you can deliver the value that warrants raising your rates. If you want to make more, you have to ask for it! About The Author Kimberly Stevens is the author of the ebook series, *The Profitable Business Owner: A Step-by-Step System for Starting & Running a Successful Service Business*. Download Sample Chapters & get her free MiniCourse, *The 10 Most Common Mistakes Business Owners Make & How To Avoid Them* at: http://www.askthebizcoach.com/ebooks.htm
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Careers and Employment Snowflakes Improve Holiday Sales Snowflakes are beautiful! Increase Your Sales Accept Credit Cards, Part 2 In part two we will discuss overcoming objections, which credit cards to accept and using the check paying option. How Many Salespeople Should I Hire? One of the most asked questions I get is how many sales people does it take to get the revenue numbers needed. Personally, I believe in large sales forces because in highly competitive situations the largest army wins. That doesn't mean, however, that you can go out and hire 100 sales people if all you can possibly sell this year is a million dollars if everything goes right. So how do you decide how large a staff you need? Generous Donor Refused (how qualified business slipped away) Generous Donor Refused Sales Plan? Whats a Sales Plan? In the past, if you said the word "plan" to me, I would bolt and run. I'm the "creative type," a former ballet dancer and choreographer-I'm terrible with details. When I was dancing professionally, all the details were taken care of; all I had to do was show up and dance. Even when I was choreographing, as long as I met my deadline for when the dance needed to be complete, I could go with the moment, go with the impulse and see where the dance led. Ten Awesome Ways To Incease Your Sales In Holidays Everybody thinks that the businesses will slow down a bit in holiday seasons. Ofcourse everybody thinks that people don't want to start new ventures in holidays too. A Real CRM Strategy or Just Tracking Customers? Exactly what is CRM 3 Ways to Increase Your Sales Last week I got a call from Jose, who was looking for help improving his ads. He'd been running the same ad in four local papers for two months and only gotten one response. He was understandably frustrated. 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Almost all of these people have absolutely had it with corporate life; they feel burned and unappreciated. They realize that there is no such thing as job security. If a franchiser sales team gets the lead in time, they may still have good credit. If not, these laid off employees will have spent their savings on family crisis type emergencies and day-to-day living expenses. They will have either taken a job for less pay somewhere else out of necessity or be in a line of work totally foreign or unrewarding. Once this happens, they may no longer be in the market for a franchise. How Do I Manage Workplace Conflict? Workplace Conflict What Is A Proposal? And Why Do You Need One? Do you know anyone who regularly wins bids? Or can boast a balanced relationship between doing the hard work of producing proposals and regularly winning the business? Want to Increase the Amount of Business that Your Firm is Getting? Business development is important for every business and refers to the action of bringing in customers or clients that are likely to make positive contributions to a company's bottom line. Business Development is all about establishing relevant and subsisting relationships in the market place. Producing Premium Performance One of the major issues that arises in managing a small or medium size business is in the area of employee performance. Many business owners are frustrated with the poor performance of their team or some individuals within their team. No matter how hard they try, they don't seem to be able to create a sustainable improvement in performance. The tendency is to blame the employees for poor performance. However, more often than not, the problem stems from not establishing an effective performance management framework. Run a Productive Business From Your Car-Office The way we do business has changed dramatically over the past 10 years. More products and services are now being offered outside traditional premises. You no longer have to go to a bank to complete your transactions or home loan applications. Insurance brokers visit your home or office; retailers deliver products directly to your home. This change in distribution methodology has meant many of us now run a car-office. How to Sharpen Your Sales Message with Do-it-Yourself Focus Groups - Small Business Power Tools You've probably heard of focus groups. It's a tool that the big guys use to quickly test a new product or service or to get fast feedback from potential customers. Focus groups do not provide real, actionable information but are great for what I call "clue hunting." For example, I once sat through a series of focus groups on a new camera-related product. After three focus groups, we were able to pretty well conclude there wouldn't be much of a market for this particular product, and the idea was dropped. The three focus groups probably cost this advertiser around $5000 vs. the hundreds of thousands of dollars that would have been wasted had they put the product into manufacturing. Change in Sales Organizations Starts with Me Question: What do the following have in common? Small Business Marketing: Overtaking Your Competitors Few businesses keep tabs on competitors, yet such knowledge can give you a distinctive competitive edge. Building a file on them, looking at everything from the customer's viewpoint and asking suppliers and employees what they know about them can be worthwhile. Keeping a jump ahead of the competition means knowing precisely what they are up to. Here are some tips to help you stay one, if not several, leaps ahead. Energize Your Organization No matter what you do, it seems, your employees do only what's absolutely necessary to get along. You've handed out raises across the board year after year. You've been as generous as you can be with various incentives. Now you are at wits end. You ask in frustration, "What will it take to motivate my employees?" The Achilles Heel of Management Coaching While heading home at day's end, you begin reflecting on a coaching meeting you had earlier that day with an employee, Chris. You hope that, this time, you finally succeeded in getting her to understand the importance of spending less time in disruptive socializing in the office and more time elevating her performance. If not, you feel that your only remaining alternatives are to give her a poor performance evaluation or demotion or may even fire her. You're reluctant to do either of the first two things because you know these would disrupt the positive work relationship you've had with Chris. And you don't really want to fire her. On the other hand, you are running out of patience; this is the fourth time you've said something to Chris about the situation. Admittedly, the first few times, your comments may have missed the mark because you gave her only some casual feedback. But about a month ago, you held a formal coaching meeting with Chris, in which you discussed the situation in depth and came away thinking that she understood the need to change her behavior. In fact, she did change. But after a week or so, she was back to her old behavior.
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