You ask yourself this question every day or with every new client: How can we get paid what we’re worth?
It’s critical to answer because that’s how your small or solo firm survives.
Here are the 5 steps to get paid what you’re worth.
Step One
Change the goal. Instead of aiming to get paid what you’re worth, set as your goal to get paid for the changes you create in your client’s lives.
This is not semantics.
This is the difference between arguing about your worth and having the client choose what is meaningful to them and then paying for that.
I understand the desire. You’ve worked hard, accumulated knowledge and expertise and done all the things required to own and operate a business. That feels like a whole lot of “worth.”
Yet the buyer doesn’t care about that. They care about how their life will be different (better, most likely) after choosing you.
This self-centered mindset will work to your advantage once you understand it.
The next 4 steps are the natural sequence of steps once you’ve set the goal of getting paid for the life changing differences you create for your clients.
Step Two
Learn to ask clients and prospects what life changing differences they want. This occurs during your discovery call with prospects and during regular conversations with clients you already have and want to continue working with.
Some ways to ask this: “When you thought we should talk, what kind of changes to your life were you thinking about/” Or “You told me X is a problem you’d like to solve. How would your life be different once we solve it?”
Don’t overthink this question. Use your natural language and curiosity to invite the client to describe how some facet(s) of their life would be changed.
Please note, these are not quantitative results. They are qualitative outcomes (IMPACTs) that follow the results.
If you focus on quantifying your results, people will argue about the value of that number. But they will not argue with the impact of that number because they told it to you.
Step Three
Design three customized options for them using their own words as a guide. Build the one with the most significant IMPACTs first (IMPACT PLUS) and then reduce that one for IMPACT. The third option is IMPACT Light, and it can either be a further reduction from IMPACT PLUS or it can be somewhat different and less significant. For example, I designed an IMPACT PLUS option to help a trade contractor achieve general contractor licensing in 5 years. The IMPACT Light option was to create repeat business from existing trade contractor clients.
Customization is the surest way to get paid for the life changing differences you create for your clients. Customization is exactly what they need, want, or desire. Not what you think they should buy.
Step Five
Include unlimited access to you via phone, text and email during normal business hours. Answer the calls, emails and texts as soon as you can (you do not have to promise instantaneous, just quick). Keep the project moving along towards the IMPACTs. Celebrate accomplishments along the way and at the end of the period of performance. More communication helps the client feel heard and seen, which is priceless.
Shortly after I switched from hourly billing to a form of fixed fee pricing, a vice president of a small government contracting firm called me for my expertise. I told him that I would do whatever was needed to achieve the goal. At the end of the project, I asked for his comments. The first thing he said was “you were here whenever we needed you, just like you said you would be.” When they learned several months later that they won a $1.1 billion contract, he called and reiterated how much he appreciated that I was devoted to their goal and helped them in many ways.
These 5 steps to getting paid what you’re worth will help you if you commit to following them.
First change the goal to getting paid for the life changing differences you create (not deliver) for your clients and then adopt the practices in steps 2-5.
If you have questions, you’re welcome to schedule a meeting with me here.
