John Ray: [00:00:00] Hello, I’m John Ray on The Price and Value Journey. In my work, I find that the problems low and small firm professional services providers have with their pricing often starts with the narratives that they carry around internally.

John Ray: [00:00:18] Pricing for services providers is a very personal thing. When the factory floor is essentially between the years, it gets personal. You’re not pricing a can of green beans. You’re pricing yourself whether you’re a web designer, an accountant, or a consultant. Pricing yourself by pricing the service you produce draws that more emotions than just what’s on the surface. Services providers can be affected by self-limiting beliefs that are a result of the narratives which have been poured into their head, sometimes all the way back to childhood.

John Ray: [00:00:56] Here’s one example, “I’m not good enough.” Maybe you heard that from a parent or a teacher or some other adult authority figure in your childhood, and it’s shouting at you today. Maybe you’re even hearing it today from a spouse or some other person in your life that you listen to more than you should. You’ve internalized that messaging and it feels like it’s deep in your bones, because it is.

John Ray: [00:01:25] Then, while you have enough confidence to go ahead and start your business, you do so with the notion that you need to discount to attract clients. You’ll be able to put up your prices later, you think, when you’re “established”. Well, that strategy doesn’t work out the way you thought it would, and the business stalls out. You end up attracting clients who aren’t the best fit and you don’t know what to do. Maybe it gets to the point where you start blaming yourself and reinforcing the negative self-talk that was there to begin with.

John Ray: [00:02:02] So, what’s the solution? Well, I think it starts with value pricing. Value pricing is setting your price to capture just a small piece of the value that clients recognize for themselves and are therefore willing to pay for. Understand that value pricing has nothing to do with what you believe your service is worth. It’s not about you or what you consciously or subconsciously think. It’s about the client and their perception of the value of the outcomes you deliver.

John Ray: [00:02:34] One way to think about value pricing is that it allows you to evade and cancel out whatever self-talk hold you back. Shifting instead toward a client-based perspective on the worth of your services. That shift takes you from what you do to what the client needs, hopes, dreams about for themselves in their business and their family.

John Ray: [00:03:01] And then, if you and that client work together and bring about that lasting change, what’s the value of that transformation? When you price to receive just a small piece of that perceived value the client has visualized and agreed to, then you’ll invariably end up with better pricing for your service’s business. And your confidence changes because you’ve shifted toward allowing clients to determine your value instead of the voices in your head.

John Ray: [00:03:33] I’m John Ray on The Price and Value Journey. Past episodes of this series can be found at pricevaluejourney.com. And I’d be honored if you’d subscribe to the show, you can find it on all the major podcast platforms. You can also email me, john@johnray.co. Thank you for joining me.