Pricing for a Professional Speaker
A story on value pricing for a professional speaker: once he ignored the advice he received about “pricing himself out of the market” and priced relative to the value he offered, it completely changed the trajectory of his business.
The Price and Value Journey is presented by John Ray and produced by the North Fulton studio of Business RadioX®.
TRANSCRIPT
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.
About The Price and Value Journey
The title of this show describes the journey all professional services providers are on: building a services practice by seeking to convince the world of the value we offer, helping clients achieve the outcomes they desire and trying to do all that at pricing which reflects the value we deliver.
If you feel like you’re working too hard for too little money in your solo or small firm practice, this show is for you. Even if you’re reasonably happy with your practice, you’ll hear ways to improve both your bottom line as well as the mindset you bring to your business.
The show is produced by the North Fulton studio of Business RadioX® and can be found on all the major podcast apps. The complete show archive is here.
John Ray, Host of The Price and Value Journey
John Ray is the host of The Price and Value Journey.
John owns Ray Business Advisors, a business advisory practice. John’s services include advising solopreneur and small professional services firms on their pricing. John is passionate about the power of pricing for business owners, as changing pricing is the fastest way to change the profitability of a business. His clients are professionals who are selling their “grey matter,” such as attorneys, CPAs, accountants and bookkeepers, consultants, marketing professionals, and other professional services practitioners.
In his other business, John is a Studio Owner, Producer, and Show Host with Business RadioX®, and works with business owners who want to do their own podcast. As a veteran B2B services provider, John’s special sauce is coaching B2B professionals to use a podcast to build relationships in a non-salesy way which translate into revenue.
John is the host of North Fulton Business Radio, Minneapolis-St. Paul Business Radio, Nashville Business Radio, Alpharetta Tech Talk, and Business Leaders Radio. house shows which feature a wide range of business leaders and companies. John has hosted and/or produced over 1,300 podcast episodes.
