“I have no idea how to price my services.”
This is the most frequent statement I hear from women regardless of whether they are launching their business or have been in business for a while. It’s even a bigger issue in today’s business climate, especially if you are reworking your business model needing to find a new target market or reposition your products.
If you have read my earlier blogs, “3 Tips to Help You Rediscover You Customer,” “3 Tips to Help You Rework Your Business Model,” and “4 Tips to Help You Update Your Product Positioning and Target Market,” the next step in the process is reevaluating your pricing model to adjust to your new target market and product offerings. For example, if you are now delivering your workshop series online, do you need to revamp your pricing?
Since you typically can’t just go to Amazon and find out what other companies are charging for their “Communications Audit,” it can be challenging to figure out the market rate for the new services you will be offering.
Below are my 3 tips on how to reevaluate your pricing model: (hint: these tips still apply even if you are just launching your business)
- Put a stake in the ground. Do your research as best you can, but give yourself a deadline for collecting data and committing to your rates. Avoid analysis paralysis, you can always revise your prices. No pricing decision is forever.
- Track your time. Frequently I hear, “I bill my clients on a project basis, so I don’t need to track my time.” Of course you do, especially if you are launching a new program or list of services. Just doing that single thing every day can help you determine how much money you are making per hour and what services are making you money and what services are costing you money. Here is a link to “The 14 Best Time Tracking Apps of 2020,” published by HubSpot.
- Validate your business/pricing models. Take some time to prepare a spreadsheet to help you estimate your revenues. List out the services you plan to offer, how much revenue you expect them to drive per/each and how many you believe you can deliver in a month. Also estimate the number hours it will take to deliver those services and calculate your basic “hourly rate.” Then answer the following question, “How many hours do I need to work at this rate in order pay my bills?” Start there and continually reevaluate it. As you track your time for new projects, use that data to reevaluate your findings and adjust your rates and products/services accordingly.
It’s important not to undervalue your expertise and experience even if you are branching out into a new product line or list of services.
Here is a short video on this same topic.
Additional videos are also available:
“Reworking Your Business Model”
“Positioning and Target Market”
You can reach me at julia@herahub.com if you’d like more information about joining our growing community and the many programs we offer to help you build your business.
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