Ditching Hourly

Hello and welcome to Ditching Hourly. I'm Jonathan Stark. Today I've got an audio excerpt from an answer I provided on my YouTube channel. You can check it out at thejonathanstarkshow.com and it'll redirect you to YouTube if you're into watching videos. Otherwise, you can just listen to the audio here on the podcast. Enjoy. Hey, Jonathan here. Tisa Yun asks, can one possibly get the benefits of value pricing without positioning and branding oneself as an expert? Those, the positioning and branding and value pricing, they do, sort of, there's a force multiplier effect. Having both increases your profits more quickly because you can attract bigger clients, they have more trust in you, they've got bigger budgets, money means less to them. So positioning and branding and attracting lots of leads and bigger leads, so more better clients, will definitely help you with value pricing. It'll help you with your profitability and the amount of money that you can charge. But value pricing will work for anybody. The fundamental mind shift between value pricing and like cost plus pricing or time and materials pricing is that you're thinking about the transformation that the client wants instead of thinking about how much work you're going to do. So that can be beneficial immediately. The numbers aren't going to be as high as they might be if you're world famous for building whatever WordPress websites, but you can build both things at the same time. You can start getting better at value pricing and you can also start branding yourself as an expert, not branding yourself, I mean being an expert, like doing the stuff an expert does and like getting the branding benefits from that, not pretending to be an expert. So the way that it would work, so let's say you're completely unknown, somehow you get a word of mouth referral, somebody says, hey, I understand that you do web design. We need some web design. Can we talk? Yeah, that'd be great. Let's talk. We'll see if there's a good fit. And when you get on the phone call, instead of just talking about how many pages it's going to be and what's going to be in the nav and what colors they want and what other websites they like the design of and thinking about how long it's going to take you to execute all of this, instead of looking for scope in the phone call, you just let them exhaust all of their ideas about the project. That'll take maybe 10 to 20 minutes. And then after that, you start asking, okay, I can do all of those things. Thank you for sharing all that. It's very interesting, but I'm going to have to make a lot of decisions as I'm doing this project, as I'm doing this work. So rather than constantly bug you with questions, I need to know the bigger context of the business. So I can do these things in a million different ways, but there are probably only a few correct ways depending on where you're trying to go, what benefit you're trying to get out of this, what transformation you're trying to make with your business. So when you start talking about that stuff, now you've really made the shift into talking about their hopes, dreams, fears, and nightmares, and you can get from them an outcome. It might be intangible, it might be tangible, but it's some needle that they believe is not where they want it, and they want to move it to a place that they do want it. So they can measure it. They're looking at something that's not working. It might be their sales. It might be the morale of their team. It might be churn and their sass, but there's some reason they contacted you to do this kind of work that they believe is going to move this needle for them. But they are making a huge assumption that whatever it is that you do is going to move this needle if you don't talk about it with them. So they usually won't bring it up. Usually the client will never talk about, oh, and the outcome of this we expect to be X, Y, or Z. You have to uncover it with them and work through it. So if you're a relative unknown, this conversation is still beneficial to you and to them because you'll set better prices. And after you set the prices, then you'll set the scope, which is another whole video. But when you talk to them about what they're trying to achieve, then you have a sense of what it's worth to them. So you're not going to set a price over what it's worth to them. You're not going to set a price even probably at what it's worth to them. You're going to set three prices that are less than what it's worth to them, probably 10% of what it's worth, 22% of what it's worth, 50% of what it's worth, roughly in there. And then you'll say, all right, what could I do for these different prices to move this needle that the client told me they want to move, that I believe that I can move? I can move it more or less for them, or I can take more or less responsibility for moving it. I can share the responsibility with them for the lower options and sort of take control of it in the higher options. So all of a sudden you're thinking like a business person, and you're going to totally differentiate yourself from any other unknown freelancer out there by having a business conversation instead of a tell me what you want me to do and I'll do it type of conversation. But yeah, I mean, so you can start value pricing immediately.

But having a good marketing game well positioned as the go-to person for some particular thing or for some particular problem or some particular vertical or some particular psychographic being positioned well and known as the person for something or someone is just going to multiply all of your marketing. It's going to get you more leads. You can be pickier. So you're gonna end up with better clients and you can value price them. And it's like this virtuous cycle. So they do work together. So positioning and value pricing work together to increase your overall profits. But you can start them independently. Okay, hope that helps. I'm Jonathan Stark. And if you have a question for me, you can hashtag ask Jonathan on LinkedIn, YouTube, or Twitter, and we'll add it to the queue and I'll answer it as soon as I can. Bye. Would you like to learn how to get paid what you're worth? How about selling your expertise and not your labor? We work through all of this together in the pricing seminar. Pre-registration starts soon, and you can sign up to be among the first to know when early bird pricing is announced at thepricingseminar.com. That URL again is thepricingseminar.com. Hope to see you there. Hey, Jonathan again. Do you have questions about how to improve your business? Things like value pricing your work instead of billing for your time, or positioning yourself as the go-to person in your space, or maybe productizing your services so you never have to have another awkward sales call or spend hours writing another custom proposal. Book a one-on-one coaching call with me and get answers to these questions and others in the time it takes you to get ready for work in the morning. Best of all, you're covered by my 100% satisfaction guarantee. If at the end of the call you don't feel like it was worth it, just say the word and I'll refund your purchase in full. To book your one-on-one coaching call, go to jonathanstark.com slash call, C-A-L-L. That URL again is jonathanstark.com slash call. Hope to see you there.