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. I've got a question from Saray Dandasala who asks, do you ever mention to your potential clients that you're using value-based pricing when they ask where is that number coming from? Nope, never do. Easy question to answer. If somebody ever asks me where my price came from, it's usually a bad sign. They're kind of trying to justify to themselves that it's high. And I didn't do a very good job in the sales phase, sort of the sales interview, the why conversation and all of that part, indicating to them that I was going to be the most expensive option. So if they're trying to figure out, trying to justify your price by, for example, saying, well, how many hours do you think this is going to be? And how did you calculate this number? I immediately try to, I answer the question, I address the question, but then I turn it around and get back to the value immediately. So if they say, how did you calculate the price? My default answer is based on experience. And if they say something like, well, how long do you think it's going to take? And I would say, well, I don't know. That's why I give you a fixed price because I don't think it's fair to you for the meter to be running forever and ever when I can't calculate how long it's going to take. Do you think the amount of the price is worth, is an investment that's worth what we've decided we're trying to achieve? And then I would turn the conversation back to whatever their goals are. And their goals might be something like decreasing the bounce rate on their website, or it could be increasing the traffic to their website, or it could be improving the morale of their employees, or it could be satisfying their customers with some new customer portal, and that's worth something to them. It might be tangible or intangible, but if they're asking you how you calculated your price, they're probably trying to justify it to themselves or maybe compare it to some other competitor or answer a question from some advisor that they have that just doesn't understand how it could be so high. Obviously, they think the price is high. They wouldn't ask you how you calculated the price if they thought the price was low. So yeah, so easy answer. So just to recap, if they're asking you that question, it's a bad sign that you, or it's a sign that you've got some work to do in your sales process to let them know that you're going to be expensive, so don't be surprised, and turn the conversation around back to the value of the business outcome that they're trying to achieve and stop talking about the sort of plumbing of how you price your work. It's not really their business, honestly. All right, hope that helps. If you have a question, you can hashtag AskJonathan on YouTube, Twitter, or LinkedIn, and we'll get to it as soon as we can. See ya. Would you like to learn how to get paid what you're worth? How about selling your expertise, 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 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.