What Exactly Are You Selling?
What Exactly Are You Selling?
If you are selling your services, one of the things that often get in the way of clear pricing is the belief that what you charge is related to your value as a person. Wrong! It has nothing to do with you.
For example, a client will often ask, “How much do you charge for a web site?” or “How much do you charge for a brochure?” They ask these questions as if they are buying shoes or tomatoes.
In fact, if you were selling shoes and a customer asked, “How much do you charge for these shoes?” you wouldn’t say, “I charge $100 for these shoes.” You would say, “These shoes cost $100.”
It’s the same with creative or professional services. It has nothing to do with what “you charge.” It’s not about you, and it never will be. You must shift your mindset to think instead about what the product and the process costs. So when someone says, “How much do you charge for a web site?” take the “you” out of it and respond with, “A web site can cost $X.”
Clear pricing is based on a clear idea of what you are really selling. You may believe that what you are selling – and what clients are buying – is time. As a result, you price by the hour.
Pricing your services by the hour is easy. It’s clean, it’s orderly and it doesn’t require much math. But when you price by the hour, you are cheating yourself, especially in the long run.
You get better at what you do—sometimes a lot better—with time. A 10-page brochure might take you five hours today when, two years ago, it may have taken twenty. But if you charge by the hour, as you get better and spend less time, you will earn less instead of more. Does that make sense?
Also, yours is probably a creative process. Not only is there no standard for how long it should take; there is a lot of “creativity” and inspiration involved. You have no idea how long it will take for your best ideas to come. They could take several hours of doodling and thinking and whatever you do for inspiration; or they could come right away. Should you be paid based on how long it takes for your ideas to gel? Is that how you should determine how much money you earn?
The answer, of course, is no. Because you are not selling your time. What you are selling is your years of experience, the effort you’ve expended developing your skills and talents, and your resulting expertise.
What you are selling is your brain, your attention and your creative imagination applied to a client’s specific problem, and that has a value. It’s not an objective value; in fact, it’s highly subjective, which makes it challenging to quantify.
Ultimately, what you are selling is peace of mind. You see, your clients may not understand exactly what you do. They don’t know what they’re buying, and they know they don’t know. So it’s your job to make them comfortable and safe in the knowledge that you do understand and will take care of everything. If you do that, the good clients will choose you, even if you’re the highest bidder.
What Exactly Are You Selling - To learn more about this author, visit Ilise Benun's Website.
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Independent professionals spend an inordinate amount of time fretting over how much to charge. But there is no right or wrong answer when it comes to pricing. It’s all completely subjective and dependent on a wide variety of factors, including what the market will bear, geographic location, timing, aggravation factor (or lack thereof) and your level of desperation (hopefully low to non-existent), just to name a few.
If you are selling your services, one of the things that often get in the way of clear pricing is the belief that what you charge is related to your value as a person. Wrong! It has nothing to do with you.
For example, a client will often ask, “How much do you charge for a web site?” or “How much do you charge for a brochure?” They ask these questions as if they are buying shoes or tomatoes.
In fact, if you were selling shoes and a customer asked, “How much do you charge for these shoes?” you wouldn’t say, “I charge $100 for these shoes.” You would say, “These shoes cost $100.”
It’s the same with creative or professional services. It has nothing to do with what “you charge.” It’s not about you, and it never will be. You must shift your mindset to think instead about what the product and the process costs. So when someone says, “How much do you charge for a web site?” take the “you” out of it and respond with, “A web site can cost $X.”
Clear pricing is based on a clear idea of what you are really selling. You may believe that what you are selling – and what clients are buying – is time. As a result, you price by the hour.
Pricing your services by the hour is easy. It’s clean, it’s orderly and it doesn’t require much math. But when you price by the hour, you are cheating yourself, especially in the long run.
You get better at what you do—sometimes a lot better—with time. A 10-page brochure might take you five hours today when, two years ago, it may have taken twenty. But if you charge by the hour, as you get better and spend less time, you will earn less instead of more. Does that make sense?
Also, yours is probably a creative process. Not only is there no standard for how long it should take; there is a lot of “creativity” and inspiration involved. You have no idea how long it will take for your best ideas to come. They could take several hours of doodling and thinking and whatever you do for inspiration; or they could come right away. Should you be paid based on how long it takes for your ideas to gel? Is that how you should determine how much money you earn?
The answer, of course, is no. Because you are not selling your time. What you are selling is your years of experience, the effort you’ve expended developing your skills and talents, and your resulting expertise.
What you are selling is your brain, your attention and your creative imagination applied to a client’s specific problem, and that has a value. It’s not an objective value; in fact, it’s highly subjective, which makes it challenging to quantify.
Ultimately, what you are selling is peace of mind. You see, your clients may not understand exactly what you do. They don’t know what they’re buying, and they know they don’t know. So it’s your job to make them comfortable and safe in the knowledge that you do understand and will take care of everything. If you do that, the good clients will choose you, even if you’re the highest bidder.
What Exactly Are You Selling - To learn more about this author, visit Ilise Benun's Website.
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Dave KurlanDave Kurlan is the founder and CEO of Objective Management Group, Inc., the industry leader in sales assessments and sales force evaluations, and the CEO of David Kurlan & Associates, Inc., a consulting firm specializing in sales force development. Dave has been a top rated speaker at Inc. Magazine's Conference on Growing the Company, the Sales & Marketing Management Conference and the Gazelles Sales & Marketing Summit. He has been featured on radio and TV, including World Business Review with General Norman Schwarzkopf, in Inc. Magazine, Selling Power Magazine, Sales & Marketing Management Magazine and Incentive Magazine. He is the author of Mindless Selling and Baseline Selling – How to Become a Sales Superstar by Using What You Already Know about the Game of Baseball. He created and wrote STAR, a proprietary recruiting process for hiring great salespeople, and he writes Understanding the Sales Force, a popular business Blog and is a contributing author to The Death of 20th Century Selling and 101 Great Ways to Improve Your Life, Volume 2. - Visit Dave Kurlan's Website |
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Linda RichardsonLinda Richardson is the Founder and Executive Chairwoman of Richardson, a global sales training and performance improvement company. As a recognized leader in the industry, she has won the coveted Stevie Award for Lifetime Achievement in Sales Excellence and she was identified by Training Industry, Inc. as one of the “Top 20 Most Influential Training Professionals.” Ms. Richardson is credited with the movement to Consultative Selling and is the author of ten books on selling and sales management, including Sales Coaching — Making the Great Leap from Sales Manager to Sales Coach, and Stop Telling, Start Selling. She teaches sales and management at the Wharton Graduate School of the University of Pennsylvania and the Wharton Executive Development Center. Linda is a frequent speaker at industry and client conferences, has been published extensively in industry and training journals, and has been featured in numerous publications, including The Wall Street Journal, Forbes, Nation’s Business, Selling Power, Success, and The Conference Board Magazine. Learn more about Richardson's sales training and performance improvement solutions at http://www.richardson.com web - Visit Linda Richardson's Website |
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George LudwigGeorge Ludwig is a recognized authority on sales strategy and peak performance psychology. An international speaker, trainer, and corporate consultant, he helps clients like Johnson & Johnson, Abbott Laboratories, Northwestern Mutual, CIGNA, and numerous others improve sales force effectiveness and performance. Though it's George's strategies and processes that help corporations increase productivity and performance, it's his tremendous energy and dynamism that spark the transformation. Again and again, clients remark on his amazing ability to unleash human capacity and inspire men and women to break out of their comfort zones. The result is a whole new type of salesperson. His customized presentations teach achievers to make stunning advances in their lives. From helping salespeople realize cherished dreams to helping corporations exponentially accelerate revenue streams, George Ludwig leaves audiences and individuals empowered, emboldened, and clamoring for more. George is the best-selling author of Power Selling: Seven Strategies for Cracking the Sales Code and Wise Moves: 60 Quick Tips to Improve Your Position in Life & Business. - Visit George Ludwig's Website |
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John PowerJohn Power, founder of Biltmore Franchise Consulting, has extensive experience developing and marketing franchises and business opportunities. He has been in and around franchising for over twenty years. From 1980 through 1990 he conceptualized, organized, and developed the American Video Association. He grew AVA to 2,000 national members, before selling the company it 1990. It was later merged into another home video marketing company. From 2000 to 2005 he worked as a contract marketing and human resources consultant to several local and national companies. In 2005 Mr. Power began working as a franchise development consultant on a full-time basis. Since that time he has helped more than three dozen companies initiate and develop their franchising program. He notes that there are many companies interested in developing a franchise program, and who need his specialized assistance. Mr. Power is a “hands-on” franchise consultant. He said, “I am the ‘nuts and bolts’ person who tends to the details for my clients.” Mr. Power holds a B.S. degree with a major in Marketing. See: www.biltmorefranchise.com You may contact Mr. Power at: jpower@biltmorefranchise.co - Visit John Power's Website |
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Staging DivaDebra Gould, aka The Staging Diva®, is President of Six Elements Inc., an internationally recognized home staging company. Inspired by many requests from aspiring home stagers wanting to start similar businesses, Gould created the Staging Diva Home Staging Business Training Program. Gould has trained over 1000 Staging Diva Graduates worldwide to start staging businesses. Buying decorating and selling six of her own homes in four years lead to an interest in real estate staging which she turned into a career with the launch of sixelements.com in 2002. Since then she has staged hundreds of homes in addition to teaching home staging training. Gould is the author of several home staging resources including a series of popular ebooks made up of a Design Guide, Color Guide and Portfolio Guide. For more information about Debra Gould visit stagingdiva.com. - Visit Staging Diva's Website |
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Jay Kubassek(Jay's Full Bio: EvanCarmichael.com/jaykubassek) In five years, Canadian-born entrepreneur Jay Kubassek went from selling mufflers at a Midas franchise to revolutionizing Internet marketing with the 2004 launch of CarbonCopyPRO, a online marketing education company, now worth over $20 million with customers in over 160 countries.
As an independent film producer, his upstart film fund Aliquot Films is currently producing a films with Spike Lee and Abel Fererra (starring Ethan Hawke and Dennis Hopper.)
Jay's entrepreneurial spirit is irrepressible. He’s the owner of five companies, a professional speaker and trainer, international real estate developer/investor, extreme sport enthusiast and emerging philanthropist. Jay resides in NYC with his wife Jamie, son Milo and dog Cooper. Visit Jay's official website: www.JayKubassek.com - Visit Jay Kubassek's Website |
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