It’s so easy to put your head down, do your work and never internalize how amazing you are. If you can set up a WordPress website and install a few key plugins, you’re way ahead of most people around you.
If you can help someone refine their marketing message and really speak to their customers, you have the power to transform their business.
These are all examples of what we call client value: the visible and unique benefits you offer your customers. The more aware you are of your own client value, the greater your ability is to attract new clients and charge what you’re really worth.
If it’s so easy to forget how awesome you are, what can you do to help yourself see the immense value you offer your customers? Start by working through these four value pricing questions. As you explore these points, look at the real clients you have — putting a face to the people referenced in the questions below will help make these exercises real to you.
1. What are the urgent needs of my clients?
We start by focusing on your clients because your business should be all about providing them with value — if you aren’t doing this, your relationship with them will not last very long.
What are the biggest struggles your clients have? What keeps them up at night? If you work in marketing, then maybe your clients have an awesome product, but have no idea how to tell their clients about it. Their urgent needs would be greater clarity in their messaging and developing a fuller understanding of how they can help their customers (this gets pretty meta, huh?).
Once you’ve identified these urgent needs, you can begin to optimize your marketing material and value pricing model to speak to the crucial needs your customers have.
2. What are the 5 compelling desires my clients have?
In the last step you meditated on the urgent needs of your clients — the things they need to fix or change right away. Now it’s time to think about what they really want — and in many cases, dream of.
For some, it will be the impact they have on their customers. One of my clients helps people have awesome marriages, so their compelling desire is to give spouses the tools they need to have strong relationships for decades to come. Of course, the only way my client can do this is by finding those people that need help — so their second big desire is to find people that need the relationship council they offer.
Their third desire is to speak effectively to those prospects about their relationship needs so that these married couples will want to partake in the resources my client provides and begin working towards a better marriage with them. We can take this further into their desire for a proactive plan for better marriage conduct and a method for resolving conflicts when they arise.
Mapping out 5 compelling desires will help you paint a clear picture of what your client value should look like and better understand the client profile you service. It will also help you move from general to specific in comprehending your clients’ needs. This is key to the value pricing strategy.
3. What are the biggest results I provide?
Now it’s time to focus on yourself a bit — specifically what is it that you can do for your clients — what is your client value?
If you’re a designer maybe you help your clients by creating a website for them that converts their leads into customers. If you’re in marketing, your benefit should be helping people clarify their message and determine the best way for them to deliver this message to their customers so they can generate more sales.
In my case, as a consultant, my client value is that I help people figure out what type of business they want to run and the life they ultimately want to live. I help them connect the dots between that desired life and their business aspirations.
When your leads hear the big results you provide, they should instantly say to themselves: “I want those results too!”
I show prospects my big results when I introduce them to a client who went from their decent 5-figure job to a 6-figure consultancy in one year as I coached them. That’s my big picture/macro-level result, but you should also make a point to show prospects the micro results you got these clients, which ultimately got them to where they are now. These are points like: increased recognition, more sales, growing their email list, and more leads in their pipelines.
4. What are the core benefits my clients experience by working with me?
It’s time to dive a bit deeper into the unique specifics of the client value you provide to your customers.
In my consulting practice I have helped numerous clients automate much of their work so they can get back to the things they’re best at, instead of wasting their time on little tasks that drain their energy. This is a unique thing I do, and it ties directly into the “find your niche” advice we often hear.
While any consultant can tell prospects that they’ll help them succeed, you have your own unique hand-full of high-level skills and areas of expertise that customers may not find anywhere else. When you have a specific vision for your clients’ success — one that differs from the generalities of the other guys, your services will capture attention.
How are you different from your competitors — what can you do that they can’t — how does your background make you uniquely qualified? You need to leave no doubt in your clients’ minds that your services are unlike anything else in your niche.
Value pricing is a winning approach
Once you have these 4 questions answered you can start to look at your marketing material and see if you truly speak to the needs and desires of your clients. Look at your website and make sure that you’re showing your prospects the big results and benefits that you provide upfront in the form of case studies, testimonials, and action-driven copy.
If you do this, you will see a noticeable increase in leads because you’re speaking directly to what your prospects want. You will also notice that value pricing gives you the confidence to charge new and even long-standing customers what you really want to charge them for your services.
Clients will always be able to go to other people and pay less, but they won’t get those exclusive client value benefits that only you can provide. This is what they’ll get hung up on — and this is why they’ll choose you time and again.
Curtis McHale
Guest Contributor
Curtis is a business coach and speaker. He focuses on helping businesses build effective processes for vetting ideal clients and building a business that doesn’t take every hour of every day to run.
