When I began my business almost 11 years ago, I didn’t command premium pricing. At all. I wasn’t ready for it or didn’t even know it was a possibility for me. I had talent and was good at my work even then, but didn’t have the confidence and felt that my “track record” wasn’t good enough yet. The truth is, I was mostly wrong.
The services I was offering were as high-quality as what I offer now. Sure, the process has evolved and improved over the years, but the benefits my clients are getting are still pretty big.
What I have learned in my years in business is that going into a price war is a battle that is lost from the beginning. There are ALWAYS going to be people and businesses that charge less than you do. If what you offer is high-quality, there’s absolutely no reason whatsoever you should spend one more minute in business charging less than what you are truly worth.
Tweet ThisI know it can be scary raising your prices. When I made the jump in my own business I was full of doubt and fear. I would think:
Is anyone really going to hire me?
What will my old clients say?
Is my work really worth this much?
It took making the decision and making key changes in my own brand and business for me to take the plunge. And the first client I charged my current rate to, made back her investment within 2 weeks of launching her brand. So…yeah…that definitely gave me the confidence to never look back.
I’m going to share with you 6 steps to building a brand and business that command premium pricing so that you can charge what you’re worth and make more money! As a special bonus, I’m also giving you a free Premium Pricing Checklist. You can use this as a guide that will help you in the process of charging what you’re worth and your clients will happily pay exactly what you ask them!
clearly identifying your strengths
It all starts with knowing and understanding what your strengths are and making sure you are using them to your advantage. You see, no matter who you are and what you do, there are things that you are the absolute best at. There are aspects of you or your business that are completely unique and impossible to repeat by anyone else. You want to define your strengths by analyzing four key aspects:
your story
your skills
your experiences
your process
Look at your business as a whole: what parts of your story, personality or experiences, make you different from everyone else? In my case, my story from living all over the world in places like Brazil, Venezuela, Spain, India and the US were a huge part of it. Another part of my story that made me strong was sharing about how I had to relaunch my business from scratch in 2015 and how in less than 1 year, I built a multiple-five figure business. These stories are looking to connect with your audience. They establish your experience and your ability to achieve what they are hiring you for.
In the case of your skills and your process, you want to clearly define and communicate how what you do is different from everyone else. Is there a process that no one else does? Maybe you have a unique technique that no one else can do the same. What certifications do you have? What do you know how to do remarkably well?
In my business, I give my clients a 20-30 page guide that’s ALL about determining the foundation of their businesses. It’s a blueprint that NO ONE ELSE DOES and it comes from my experience, MBA, studies, courses, etc. I have had clients literally say that just the guide was worth the price of working with me.
What do you offer that nobody else does?
understanding what your audience needs
The next step to charging premium pricing is understanding exactly what your audience needs. Putting offers out there that aren’t solving their needs won’t allow you to charge what you are truly worth. This is why it’s CRUCIAL that you understand exactly what your audiences’ pain points are.
If your ideal audience is made up of unemployed college graduates, it might be difficult to sell to them something that is high-end. You want to make sure that you are selling to people that have the need you will be fulfilling.
One thing I like to do is going into defining what I call “the before and the after.” This means determining what position your audience is BEFORE they come to you first. Going deep into understanding what their pain points are, what they are struggling with, and what keeps them up at night. Then, you go on to defining the AFTER. This means, if they work with you or buy your products, what does this mean to them? How will their lives change? What impact are you creating in their day-to-day?
Understanding this will enable you to get even more clarity about the value you are truly giving them and the worth of your offer instantly increases.
Remember to download the free checklist where we cover all the things you need to have in place in order to command premium pricing.
positioning yourself correctly
Once you are completely clear on the value you are offering, it’s ESSENTIAL that you position yourself correctly from the very beginning. This means that every encounter your audience has with your brand needs to be high-end and full of value.
Make sure you are clearly communicating the TRUE benefits of what you offer. Don’t focus on the features or basic elements of your offer, but focus on talking about the emotional and deep-rooted results they will get.
So, for example, if you are a business coach, it’s not that you are helping people make more money. What you are REALLY doing is helping them feel validated. What if a client of yours were to go from making $1k to $10k in 30 days? How would this impact them emotionally? It’s really about freedom, about independence. So, it’s vital that you are positioning yourself as a high-end coach. Makes sense?
The second part in terms of positioning is making sure that your brand looks the part as well. I will talk about that in another point in more detail, but for now, know that visually you could make an INCREDIBLE big impact on your business by looking high-end everywhere.
I’ll give you an example to illustrate what that means. Madina is an Image Coach that came to me struggling to get high-end clients. When I looked at her website and communication, I instantly understood why. Her brand was lacking credibility. She was talking about her incredible services, but not showing her true worth. This is what her website used to look like:
When we redesigned her brand, communication and website, we did it making sure that it truly built her up like she deserved. Her communication was now also based around her real value. What she really does. About being ready for the next great moment in your life while making an impression that impacts. This is what her brand looks like now. See how much her credibility has increased?
social proof
The next step into building a brand that commands premium pricing is sharing and showing all the social proof you can. This applies to whatever it is that your business is focused on. The more testimonials you can share and show on your website, the more people will feel inclined to buy from you. Their thinking? Well, if other people are paying this price, it must be worth it. Make sense?
Having reviews and testimonials is *so* important to building the proof around your business. It’s why a lot of people look for reviews on Yelp before going to a restaurant. “Is it really worth my money?” You want that answer to be always YES and you do it by validating your work.
Another great way to do this is by publishing a book or sharing case studies. If you have a lot of success stories with clients getting great results, share them as much as you can! Explain the process and what situation your clients were before they worked with you and how your work impacted their business.
Finally, getting endorsements from influencers is an extremely great way to get social proof. It’s why Beats headphones were on EVERY famous person. It’s all about building the brand and looking for the endorsement from people that your audience already trusts.
creating a high-end brand
Finally, you ABSOLUTELY want to make sure that your brand looks high-end. It’s almost impossible to sell your services at premium pricing if your business does not look high-end too.
It’s like having a restaurant with paper plates and plastic silverware and having the best food on it ever. Sure, the food might be amazing, but from the outside? It will look sketchy. Your brand is the image of your business.
Look at it this way, your brand identity is like your storefront and your website like your menu. If it doesn’t look good, people won’t come in, let alone pay premium pricing for it.
And it doesn’t take a genius to look at a brand and notice if it’s premium or not. It takes seconds for you to see it and realize that it’s worth every cent.
One of the clients I worked with, Rococoa had exactly that problem.
This is what their brand used to look like.
They wanted to look high-end because they had brought a chef that had worked with the best pastry chefs in France. So, building a brand that reflected the new quality of their food was extremely important for them. Once we did the redesign of their brand to make sure it looked high-end, everything in their business changed. To the point of them opening more locations in Florida. This is what it looks like now:
However, you don’t have to be in business for years before start looking high-end. This is something you can do from the very launch of your business. Take Global Investment, a firm that just opened up in 2017, looking to attract investors and multiply their earnings. Their brand had to look high-end from the beginning because they wanted to make sure they were attracting the right people.
Maria Vargas is another client who was just starting her own business, even though she had over 10 years of experience working in Human Resource Consulting. Building a brand that reflected the quality and value of her work was essential for her to be able to charge premium pricing. Just 6 months after the relaunch, she has had over 15 clients paying exactly what she is worth.
As you can see, building a business and a brand that commands premium pricing is something that you absolutely can do and SHOULD do if what you offer has great value. It’s about identifying your strengths, defining the needs of your clients, positioning yourself correctly, having the social proof to back your work and finally, making sure you have a brand that looks high-end.
Remember to download my free Premium Pricing Checklist so you can start taking action today and charing the price you are really worth.
