Pricing For a Professional Speaker

John Ray: [00:00:00] Hello. I’m John Ray on the Price and Value Journey.

John Ray: [00:00:03] Kyle Maynard was born with a rare condition called congenital amputation, which left him with arms that end at his elbows and legs that end near his knees. While those circumstances might seem debilitating, Kyle has lived an extraordinarily full life as an entrepreneur, bestselling author, and award-winning extreme athlete. He was the first man to bear-crawl to the top of Mount Kilimanjaro that’s 19,340 feet, the highest mountain in Africa, and to the summit of Argentina’s Mt. Aconcagua, 22,838 feet, the highest peak in both the western and southern hemispheres. Now, I barely made it to the summit of Mount Rainier that’s 14,400 feet on two legs and two feet, and this man bear-crawled to the summits of the highest peaks on two different continents, extraordinary isn’t even an adequate word.

John Ray: [00:01:07] So, Kyle is also a keynote speaker. So, let’s imagine for a moment that I’m booking him for a conference I’m running. After reading Kyle’s story, my thought is most likely to be something along the lines of, wow, this man will light up our group big time. I can hear the robust applause after Kyle’s speech in my head. I can imagine the enthusiastic reactions I’ll read through both comments and after conference surveys that I’ll get for this speaker that I booked.

John Ray: [00:01:39] Now, all those thoughts represent perceived value, and that perceived value is quite high, wouldn’t you agree? As a professional services provider like Kyle, when you price your services, you basically have two choices. One option involves listening to the voices in your head, or those of maybe well-meaning friends or colleagues on how you need to keep your fees low, because “others don’t charge as much”, or you don’t want to price yourself out of range, whatever that means, or you can ignore those voices as Kyle has, and price relative to the value, both perceived and tangible value now that you deliver.

John Ray: [00:02:26] Kyle was profiled in the book Tribe of Mentors by Tim Ferriss, and here’s what Kyle had to say about the worst advice he’d ever received. He says, “The worst advice I’ve ever been given was to not increase the fee I charge to give a keynote speech. I was told I would price myself out of the market. I didn’t have enough recent media coverage to compete against well-known speakers, blah, blah, blah. I decided to raise my price anyway, incrementally at first, and then I doubled it. Now, I have twice as many inquiries and people even negotiate with me less. I wish I had done it earlier. It’s given me much more freedom. As I write this, I’m spending a week on a yacht in Croatia and the rest of the summer traveling through Europe. Time is the only thing we can’t get back. Hopefully, by the time you read this, I’ll be on my way to doubling it again.”

John Ray: [00:03:28] Now, you don’t have to have crawled up Mount Kilimanjaro to price adequately. Whatever your superpower, have a value conversation, determine the tangible and perceived value that you’re offering to that client sitting in front of you, and then price to receive a slice of the value that you deliver.

John Ray: [00:03:49] I’m John Ray on the Price and Value Journey. You can find past episodes of this series at pricevaluejourney.com. If you’d like to send a note directly, you can send one to john@johnray.co. Thank you for joining me.