One weekend at an NSA meeting I met an executive coach and we found ourselves swapping success stories. After I told him three separate stories about clients who I convinced to raise prices who ultimately had huge successes, the coach asked me, “Why? What did you do that convinced them?”
I started to talk about my process when he stopped me and said, “No, why didn’t they do it before you got involved? Surely they knew they were worth more without you telling them!”
Brilliant insight!
I had to think hard about it. There were likely many reasons, but the single biggest reason had to be fear. Each one of them knew more about their markets and buyers than I did, but they needed me to point out the obvious. They needed me to walk through their value with them.
I’ve thought about that conversation a lot since then.
Fear of Change Affects Your Ability to Grow Your Business
Changing a price is scary. Changing a pricing strategy or a pricing model is absolutely terrifying. It’s so much easier to stick with the status quo. If we don’t change anything, bad things won’t happen (we hope) – we won’t get fired, we are safe.
But the tradeoff for that is that you won’t have big wins. You won’t get promoted. Your company won’t become what it could be. Neither will you.
One reason you’re scared is you’re uncertain. You’re not confident about how people will respond. The more you understand pricing, pricing options, and the decisions your buyers make, the more confident you become. If you knew for a fact that you could double your price and make more money with less work, would you do it? Almost certainly. You don’t do it because you’re not confident you can. Confidence is the opposite of fear.
Please don’t think I’m saying this is possible for you, but one of my clients doubled her prices and doubled her income. You just have to understand your market and then… have the confidence to try.
