Imagine sending a proposal and getting an immediate yes.
Before you’ve even enjoyed winning the work, you’re wondering how much money you just left on the table.
The client accepted your price. Somehow, you’re still negotiating with yourself.
Pricing can do that to you.
You want to earn the business, and you want to be paid fairly.
You can look at what someone else charges and find yourself questioning a number that felt perfectly reasonable ten minutes earlier.
Part of the difficulty is that several questions are hiding inside “How much should I charge?”
There’s the question of what your time requires.
There’s what the client might gain.
There’s what people are willing to pay for comparable help.
Those answers can point to different numbers.
You have to bring them together into a decision you’re willing to live with after the proposal is signed.
Account for the work you’re agreeing to do
Start by looking at the entire commitment.
Speaking is an easy example because the most visible part of the work might last an hour.
Around that hour, though, there may be preparation, conversations with the client, and travel in both directions.
Follow-up takes time, too.
An engagement that occupies one hour on the agenda can occupy considerably more of your life.
If you price only the time onstage, you leave much of the commitment out of the calculation.
In Procrastinate on Purpose, I teach a concept called the Most Valuable Priority of Time, or MVOT.
You calculate it by dividing your annual income by the number of hours you worked during that year.
That gives you a starting reference for what an hour of your working time has been producing.
Then estimate the hours an engagement will require and multiply them by that reference rate.
Treat the result as useful information.
It gives you a way to examine the economics of a commitment, and it can help you see why a fee that initially sounds generous might feel very different once you account for everything involved.
You also need to consider what accepting the work will take you away from.
A weekend speaking engagement carries an additional cost for me because it means time away from my family. An engagement during the week takes me away from my business.
As that business grows, the decision to spend time elsewhere has greater financial consequences.
Your circumstances may be different. The question still applies: What are you giving up to make yourself available?
Answer that before you send the proposal.
Once you’ve agreed to the work, the client has every reason to expect your full commitment.
Understand what the client is buying
Your time gives you one way to evaluate a price.
The benefit to the client gives you another.
Someone hiring you for advice is trying to accomplish something.
The value of your help depends in part on the difference it could make in their situation.
Understanding that desired result helps you evaluate your fee from their perspective.
Keep that assessment grounded.
A possible benefit deserves careful consideration, and the client still has to do the work required to achieve it.
You should be able to explain how your help contributes without promising an outcome you can’t control.
Then look at comparable services.
What are people paying for the kind of work you do?
What experience and evidence do providers at those prices bring?
How closely does their offer resemble yours?
Those questions make the comparison useful.
You can learn very little from a price alone if you don’t understand what comes with it.
For speakers, relevant evidence might include experience in front of audiences or a body of work that establishes credibility on the subject.
The goal is to understand what buyers are responding to and where your own experience fits.
You may discover that you have more support for your price than you thought.
You may also discover that you need more practice or stronger evidence of the results you can help people achieve.
Either discovery gives you something concrete to work with.
Let your price develop with your business
Your fee can change as your experience and demand grow.
When you’re beginning as a coach, for example, you might choose to work with a small number of people for free.
You get to practice your process and learn how your content helps someone in a real situation.
That experience can also create opportunities for testimonials and referrals.
Make it a deliberate, limited commitment.
If you decide to offer three free spots, you know what you’ve agreed to.
Once those spots are filled, you can establish a price for the next group.
That progression gives you room to learn while making a clear decision about what comes next.
Capacity becomes part of the calculation as well.
You have a finite amount of time to serve people.
As demand grows relative to the space you’ve made available, you have reason to revisit your fee.
You don’t have to solve pricing for the rest of your career today.
You do need a reason for the price you’re quoting now.
That makes future changes easier to explain and helps you avoid changing your fee simply because a particular conversation made you nervous.
Choose a fee you can stand behind
One of my early speaking mentors, Eric Chester, gave me advice that has stayed with me.
I asked him how much I should charge.
His answer was simple: “Charge whatever makes you feel good.”
There’s a lot of judgment inside that sentence.
Eric explained that when you charge too little, you can walk into the engagement feeling taken advantage of.
You’ve agreed to a price, but now you’re carrying frustration about what the work requires.
At the other extreme, you can charge an amount you feel unable to justify and spend the engagement feeling guilty about it.
Both are uncomfortable ways to serve someone.
Those feelings are worth examining.
If you resent the commitment, look at whether you accounted for the time and what you would give up.
If you’re uneasy about the amount, look at whether you can explain the value and the basis for your fee.
Sometimes you’ll find a pricing problem.
Sometimes you’ll find that you haven’t thought the decision through carefully enough to feel settled about it.
Doing the homework gives Eric’s advice its substance.
You’ve considered the commitment, looked at the market, and thought about the benefit to the client.
Now you can ask whether you feel good about accepting the work at that price.
Before your next proposal, write down what the engagement will require.
Give yourself an honest estimate of the time involved.
Consider what the client hopes to accomplish and look for relevant comparisons.
Then picture the client saying yes.
Would you be glad you agreed?
You can always learn something that informs your next proposal.
For this one, you want to be ready to honor the commitment you’re offering.
When the yes arrives, you should be able to enjoy it and hit the ground running.
