How to Raise Your Rates
One of the biggest challenges almost every business owner faces is knowing how to raise their rates. But with the proper knowledge, experience, and strategies that I am going to share with you, you’ll be able to raise your rates with confidence and make more money overall.
Here are three things you can do, so you can actually charge more money and still land the best clients.
Position Yourself as an Expert
Positioning yourself as an expert is essential because this is how you change your marketing strategy from chasing your clients to them coming to you and be willing to pay more because they want to work with you.
So the question is, how do you position yourself as an expert in the marketplace?
When you teach more, you step up as a leader.
To give you an example, I did this exact strategy in the past when COVID hit. I looked around, and I saw panic in people.
It was during this time that I saw two reactions from people. Some were putting their heads in the sand and pretending nothing was happening. Others would stop moving forward because there was a lot of uncertainty. And I told myself that neither one of those options was healthy for a business.
So rather than going in the same direction as everyone else, I told myself that now is the time to invest. Now is the time to be active in your business. And this is when I decided to put together a summit where people could come and talk about marketing tactics you could implement while COVID was happening.
Instead of freaking out, I stepped up as a leader and found great clients and amazing opportunities. I was able to build great relationships, which helped me position myself as an expert in the industry.
So if you want to improve your position in the marketplace, you need to step up as a leader.
Start asking yourself, where do you want your industry to go? What’s your vision for your clients? And how can you help your clients achieve their goals, so they can get to where they want to be?
If you want to be able to increase your rates, the first thing you have to do is improve your position in your industry. You can do that by simply teaching and leading people.
Provide More Value
The next thing you can do is provide value.
If you want someone to pay you 2x, 4x, 10x, or more, they will have to see a return on their investment. They will pay you any amount you desire if you are clear on the ROI.
This is especially true for service-based professionals that provide something that isn’t directly linked to sales.
A good example is in public relations. I’ve worked with many public relations folks who work with a lot of marketing where we do x-thing, and we think it translates to sales, but in reality, there’s no direct correlation.
You have to do the bridge work for your client, so they clearly understand that when we do x-activity, you make this amount of money. You should be able to show them what they’re getting in return for their investment with you.
If you do that, you can increase your rates, and your clients will pay more confidently because they clearly understand the return on their investment.
You can do this by practicing what I call value-based pricing. This is where you charge based on the shift or outcome of your client’s experiences. Most people charge based on cost or how much time it takes to deliver a service. And that’s how you get basic minimal pricing.
If you want to charge a premium rate, you have to start switching to what is the result. What is the shift that my client experiences? That’s where you should base the amount you charge.
So if you help your client make $100,000, you can ask them, are you willing to pay $10,000 to get that result? Would you pay $20,000, or probably up to $40,000?
Before you start saying this is getting kind of pricey, I want you to know that as long as you’re focused on the outcome and result, you will have the trust and confidence of your potential clients.
Increase Lead Generation
The last thing you have to do is increase your lead generation.
If I take you back to elementary school and ask how is price determined? You would typically answer supply and demand. When you increase your lead gen, you increase the demand for your products and services.
So if you can be more consistent and more powerful with the number of leads coming in, you can raise your rates confidently, knowing that you’ll be able to fill your pipeline and still achieve your sales goals because you have enough leads.
I always tell my clients that if they’re hyper-focused on a single client, you don’t have enough leads coming in. You should be able to take consistent sales calls or get constant traffic to your lead pages, and funnels. Because if you’re not, that’s when we get concerned. It’s where we start compromising on our price.
If you want to confidently close more deals at a higher level, you have to get more sales calls, which means you have to get better at your lead generation.
Conclusion
If you want to raise your rates, you can start doing these three things right now. When you do, you’ll start seeing results. And the longer you do this, the more you get better at it. The better you are, the more results you deliver for your business. This is where your business will start to grow and scale to the next level.
If you want more support around this, and you want help implementing this in your business, this is what we do every single day with our clients inside the Built to Scale program. We work with companies, helping them get the right systems and foundations to scale and have the lifestyle they have always dreamed of.