Emma: If I had a dollar for everyone who asked me the question, How do I price my services, Emma? I would be very rich. I know it's the number one thing that people really stress about. Money mindset comes into it. how we are going to value our clients in that, how we price An offer that works, how we don't overprice, underprice, undersell, undervalue ourselves.
So many questions come up for us.
I like to work with value based pricing and a value based pricing strategy is where the product or service is set primarily based on the perceived value of the customer or the client, rather than solely on the cost of production or historical prices. Um, this approach allows our customers and consumers to understand the benefits, the value that it adds.
And also the problem that it actually solves. For example, , a company might charge a premium price for a product with unique features or branding that consumers perceive as highly valuable, even if the production cost is relatively low. You think about Nike, you think about Adidas. There you go. Uh, , and so one of the things that you might want to do if you'd like a book recommendation is read a book by a gentleman by the name of Alan Weiss.
And his book is called value based fees. And in it, he talks about making sure that you're charging your value and that you're also working with clients longterm to provide them with value, full transparency. I will never ask anyone to drop their pricing. I also won't ask for a discount. That is just not my thing.
I don't think that's supporting business. [00:02:00] and if it's something that's truly out of my budget, then I'll let them know that. And then we go our separate ways. What I will do though, is if I feel like there's not enough value in what you're asking, you're asking prices, I will ask you to what I would call stack the value.
And that means actually adding more things in. That would be beneficial to your client or valuable to your client. And I'll talk to you about how I do that for one of my programs as well. Um, see stacking the value means that we have an offering and we have so much value in there that no one even queries the price.
Of course you need to deliver on the value, right? You can't just stack the value, sell it, and then move on. You actually need to deliver what you say you're going to do. But more and more, I'm watching women who have been in business a little while, or just coming into business, and they're not making enough revenue.
And they're not making enough revenue because they're charging an hourly rate. Where an hourly rate is helpful is when you're thinking about What do I need to bring in as revenue for my business? And also what does my family need? So if you think about your first or second year in business, let's say you need to bring in revenue of 100, 000 a year.
Then my next question would be how many weeks in the year do you want to work? Let's say you want to work 40 weeks in the year. And then I say to you, how many hours a week do you want to work? Well, you want to do some school days, school hours, et cetera, et cetera. So you want to work 30 hours a week. So then you work backwards to determine what your hourly rate is.
We don't sell hourly rate, but we still need to know what our hourly rate is to make sure that we're making enough revenue and profit. And as you get bigger, your expenses get bigger. So you need to make sure that you're covering your costs. You're making enough revenue so that you can pay yourself really important and also pay for all the other things that it costs to run a business.
Right. So then. As soon as you start charging an hourly rate, you cap yourself because you can only [00:04:00] work those 30 hours. So I talk to my clients about creating an offer and stacking the offer with so much value that it's a no brainer for people. So what do you need to do to make sure that you're stacking the value and how do you work out your pricing?
I cringe when people say I asked my business buddies about my pricing. And the reason that I cringe is because you don't know what type of money mindset issues they have. You don't know what type of money mindset they have necessarily. They might think you're too cheap, not expensive enough. They might be comparing you to them.
They might be comparing your five years in business to their first year in business. That's not a great way to know. How to price a product. You need to do the heavy lifting and thinking for yourself on actually what is this worth? What do I think it's worth with my breadth of experience and expertise that I bring?
And then you need to price it accordingly and you need to make sure that you're valuing yourself in that as well. When I first started coaching, I did just literally one on one coaching and that was a session a month. , we would meet, we would do the bits and pieces. They might send me an email in between and then , I'd see them the next month.
You Sounds good. Easy, simple, clear, cool. But I felt like there wasn't enough. So, , now we're seven years later, I still offer one on one coaching because I'm a dinosaur, not really. I, I love one on one coaching. I love the results that it gets. I love it. The intimacy of the relationship. Uh, one of my strengths is relator.
So I really like to just work with people very deeply. So when you sign up to work with Emma McQueen in a one on one capacity, you get one on one coaching. Great tick. That's the bare minimum that you get. What you also get is a strengths assessment and a debrief on that strengths assessment. You also get a questionnaire to fill out.
So we know what we're focused on. You get access to me in between sessions. You get to come to any of the Emma McQueen events as part of the package. , and you get to get first dibs at anything that I'm offering. then I just stack the value, right? I'm doing some of those things anyway, [00:06:00] but also I want my clients to be part of a community.
And even if you just need one on one coaching, being part of a community does amazing things. So I wanted to make sure that I stack the value with enough things that helped them feel like they were getting really good value for the price they were paying. It's interesting what my clients love the most out of the one on one coaching is not the one on one coaching.
The thing they love the most is a video messaging app we have called Marco Polo. If you haven't seen it, feel free to check it out. I'm also a Marco Polo ambassador just for full transparency. Marco Polo is an app that helps you get on video and talk about what the things are. So I now encourage my clients in between sessions to try something and tell me how it's worked on Marco Polo or how it's failed on Marco Polo so that I can see, that they've trying some things that they're not saying stagnant that in a month they're going to have more things that they've done and then kind of go from there.
Very recently, we've added to value stack with a 30 or a 60 or a 90 day plan. So after each, each session, they get a plan of the things that they actually need to do. Everyone loves that because as you're talking, you get to capture the ideas in different bits and pieces. That's just, we innovate as we go.
The other thing that happens when people sign up for one on one coaching is they get a beautiful box delivered with some beautiful things in it. I don't sell that as a selling point. That is the surprise and delight of working with Emma McQueen. They might get something for their birthday. I'm taking a few people to a, , comedy show in a couple of months.
And so that's the value that you stack. Sometimes you tell everyone what the value is and they Other times you leave some little bit to surprise and delight. Let me get back to pricing. So let's say you've got an idea in your head. So I had an idea in my head last year and it was to help women get above the 100, 000 mark.
So what we know is that 92 percent of women make less than $100,000 a year in their own small business. Now, what I also know is living costs are through the roof. , so we [00:08:00] really need to push that hundred thousand up. Once that hits 200, 000, it's a bit safer and it's a bit more sustainable as a business.
So I wanted to create a product that was light touch, that was in a group or a community, and that was The cheapest way to work with me basically. Yep. And so I looked at. Who is my target market? What are their needs? How can I close the gap?
And then I went out and actually went, okay, how do I test this? How do I stress test this? So I went out into a few Facebook groups and I asked people if I could have 15 minutes of their time, I had a set of questions that I asked to qualify whether or not this service would even be useful.
Then I created all the bits and pieces that I needed, landing pages, a masterclass to put in front of it, some different bits and pieces. And what came out of that is my revenue raiser program. So you can look that up on the website, but basically it has, A stack of inclusions in it. So it's got monthly masterclasses with me.
It's got monthly, ask me anythings. It's got an accountability buddy once a month. It's got a Trello board that you can take with you after our six months together. It's for a six month program. And then it's got all the recordings And you have access to me through the Marco Polo app at a very reasonable price.
I don't tell you this to sell it to you. I'm just telling you this because I stack the value so much. By the time I looked at it, I went, would I buy it? Hell yes. And if that's the response you get and you're convicted by that, then you put it out to market. If you sit there and go, it's a bit meh, you need to do more value stacking.
It's not about the price. It's about adding the value. So it's about having the core offer and making sure that you can. improve the core offer as you go, which might be improving efficiency or customer experience or incorporating new technologies, whatever it is to make the experience better. And then you add in your different services.
So for revenue raiser, there might be some other things that we add in for [00:10:00] people. There might be books, there might be experiences. If you create websites, for instance, are you also running a web hosting service? That would be an easy addendum to the actual offer. Yeah. So we want to make sure that we're providing enough value.
In the offer that we have getting clarity on your offer is the number one thing that people need to get right. If you've got clarity on your offer, then you can go out and do your copywriting, your landing pages, your marketing, send it to your list, all of those kinds of things. And if you can bundle up a number of services so that you're offering a holistic solution to your clients, it increases their trust in you as well.
And they feel like. It's a stack of value because it is a stack of value and it simplifies everything, which I love. So just to recap, you need to work out what is missing. What's, what's the gap in the market that you can help with. So that looks like identifying our client needs, our client preferences, Then you need to create a core offering and make sure that you stack the value with other services, and then you need to bundle those services up. Now. There are times when sometimes the service can't be bundled. That's okay. No problems at all. But I always aim to have some services bundled. So for me, for thriving women, for example, thriving Women is its own program, does its own thing, but they also get my Go-getter days, and they also get business with the queen.
And they also get all the other things. And so I like to just stack the value because I want people to feel like when they come into the MMR queen family, that they can do a range of things. They don't have to, but they can do a range of things. And it really shows the value. I want to tell another story about value.
I had a client, let's call her, uh, Sarah and Sarah was coaching with me one on one. Um, And it was her coaching session and I do 55 minute sessions once a month. And she jumped on and she had a very [00:12:00] specific question for me. she was struggling with an offer and we clarified the offer. We were on that call for 13 minutes.
And at the 13 minute mark, she surprised me. She said, Emma, I've got what I needed from our session today. I'm going to go so I can use the rest of our time together to flesh this out and get going on this. And I was like, hang on, hang on. we haven't finished. She said, we're finished. Yeah. You, you helped me with that.
Now she saw immense value in that 13 minutes. Some people would have just stayed on the call for 55 minutes cause that's what they had, but Her point, she was like, I've hired you because you're a really good business coach. You get results and you ask me the questions I need to get answered. So me spending 13 minutes with you here is so awesome.
Now I've got to spend 40 minutes implementing the things that we've spoken about. Could I have done that without experience? Years of experience? No. Could I have done that if I hadn't have seen a lot of different business models and a lot of different women in business and a lot of different organizations in business?
No. If I had charged an hourly rate and then at the 13 minute mark, she hits a bang. How does that even work? So that's why I don't charge hourly. Hourly caps us. And also when you get really quick at things, hourly doesn't make sense. Then people need to be paying for outcomes versus an hourly rate.
So, question for you. Is there something you need to think about around how you're pricing your offers? Is there something you need to do to change your offers? Is there something you need to do? to really drill down into your numbers. I hope that this has helped. I hope listening to a story about how you stack the value works.
Remember the first sale is always to yourself. And if you look at it and you think, meh, you need to do some more work and stack the value a bit more. Let me know how you go and let me know what you think. [00:14:00] Bye for now.
