How to earn more…without lifting a finger!
publication date: Sep 15, 2007
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author/source: Olivia Stefanino
One of the easiest ways to earn more money is – paradoxically – one of the most often overlooked! Putting your prices up can seem pretty scary. The fear is that your clients will simply walk away in order to find someone cheaper. But oddly enough, the converse is often true…
People value you in the same way that you value yourself. We all know people with poor self esteem – and sadly, they’re often the ones mistaken for door mats. Make sure the same doesn’t happen to you when it comes to charging for your services!
When you specialise as a therapist, you’re immediately perceived as having a higher value. When you’re seen as a generalist, you’re seen simply as one of the crowd. When you’re part of the crowd, the only differentiating factor becomes price. It may not be fair…but it’s true.
And the sad fact is that when people value you for what you do and charge commensurately, they listen to your advice – and follow it! By following your advice (which of course has to be good advice), they get results – and they then believe that what you did for them was great value!
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However, if you don’t charge enough, your clients won’t value your suggestions, they’ll ignore your advice and they won’t get the results! And worse, irrespective of how little you charged, they’ll feel that it was a waste of both their time and money. (And that’s really not a reputation you want to be encouraging.)
Bear in mind that even if you offer your clients discounts, you’ll still be paying full whack for your own cost of living. You wouldn’t dream of telling your landlord that you’d like to have a discount on this month’s rent – and nor would you ask your local supermarket for a “deal” on your groceries, even though you visit the shop each week…
Remember that when you offer clients discounts, you’re subliminally giving the message that you’re overcharging for what you do. Nobody likes to feel that they’ve been taken for a fool, so instead add value to the services you offer. For example, if you’re a Reiki practitioner, you could give your clients a free “relaxation music” CD when they book and pay for three sessions or more at a time.
Finally, the easiest way to increase how much you earn is to put up your fees! When I first set up in practice in a new area, I was advised by a long-in-the-tooth practitioner to lower my prices.
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Interestingly, he didn’t know what I was charging in the first place – and as it was, my fees-per-session were already far too low. Intuitively, I knew that instead of lowering my prices, I should be doubling them! That’s exactly what I did – and to my amazement, I started attracting a load more clients (and none of them even raised an eyebrow when they asked my rates!).