I recently received an email from Ciprian, a marketing coach from Romania.
“Hi Scott, I am working to become a great marketing consultant and really love your work. Lately, I am receiving requests regarding my services and I am struggling to figure out how much I can charge. I would appreciate a few ideas on how to charge in order for the client and I to feel satisfied.” |
Ciprian’s question is a common one. I am on the run but wanted to provide some quick, valuable feedback.
We teach a whole program on this but here are two important considerations to help you maximize your rates while making the client feel great about what they pay.
1) First, you want to provide marketing advice that provides measurable expected results. This is in contrast to fluffy, unproven ideas that not only make outcomes uncertain but also provide an element of risk. These “shiny metal objects” ideas here are certainly intriguing to the client. However, upon a failed outcome, you will instantly lose their trust and they will feel overcharged, regardless of how fair your fee was.
So the key lesson here is always provide proven success strategies whenever possible.
If you are a relatively new business you may not have “success stories”. In this case, you need to leverage off others that have created these results e.g. “The strategies we teach have been used by dozens of companies, including Fortune 500 companies.”
2) Second, you need to monetize the expectations and support these with proven success stories and testimonials.
By monetize, I mean demonstrating that marketing ideas you implement will provide solid return on their investment. For example, let’s say you charge $200 an hour to implement a proven success strategy. And let’s say the total cost is $2,000.
If the expected number of new customers is 20, who will generate $10,000 in profit, then the expected Return on Investment is 500% ($10,000 / $2,000).
With that said, this is the easy decision for the vast majority of businesses IF they feel certain about this outcome. Heck, who would not want a 500% return on their investment when CD’s are paying less than 1%!
The key here is to provide proof that this outcome is highly likely. This can be done by sharing actual results from other clients in the form of testimonials or case studies. The more social proof you acquire the more believable your claims will be. Then when you can show strong predictable return on investment, clients will pay whatever you ask within reason.
In our coaching division, we demonstrate the power of our profit generating systems by showing prospective clients, in a Free Profit Session, how to find at least $10,000 in pure profit BEFORE we will even speak to them about coaching. This makes it easy to charge higher fees that feel like a bargain to them.
By the way, this does not just apply to coaches. Any business that can demonstrate a superior result, especially a financial result, can charge more for their product or service.
Ciprian’s Path
I appreciate Ciprian’s question and quest to increase fees while remaining fair to clients. We have helped numerous businesses, including coaches, significantly increase their fees by 25%-100% or more. And my hope for Ciprian is that the simple distinctions I shared here will help raise these fees significantly in the near future.
