96. The Value Triangle: How Much Should You Charge for Advisory Services?

Let me ask you something. Have you ever quoted a price for your services and then instantly regretted it? Have you ever felt that stomach tighten and your throat dry up? And even though you know that your advisory services are going to change their business, you went, "Do you know what? I'm going to lower the fee just to get the S." If this is how you feel, you're not alone. Welcome back to the Business Advisor podcast. I'm Amanda C. Watts and today we're diving into one of the most uncomfortable but most important topics for advisors and that is how much should you charge for your advisory services. So it sounds like a simple question, right? But not having a clear answer, that is what keeps most advisors stuck. If you keep guessing and undercharging or following what everybody else is doing, three things start to happen and these things are going to cost you big time, not just in money but in your freedom which you're looking for, energy, which if you don't have energy it's a disaster and your confidence is going to erode if you don't do this. First of all, you get trapped in the time for money cycle and you might find yourself working harder and harder, working a little bit later, having work creep in to weekends and saying yes to everything. However, no matter how much you do, it never really feels like enough and your income never grows, it just completely stays flat and your calendar gets more and more full and you feel more stressed and not successful at all. I call it overworked and underpaid, right? So you tell yourself it's okay, it's just a busy season but deep down you actually know that it's not. You're building a business that needs you to work more just to survive. Secondly, when you get this wrong, you attract the wrong clients and you lose the right ones. When your prices are too low, high value clients don't take you seriously. They actually want results and they want to feel confident when they make a buying decision and they want to feel like they're making a smart investment so if you price your advisory services too cheap, they assume that your service must be too. So what happens is they walk away and you're left saying yes to smaller clients who don't follow your advice, don't value you, they drain your time and haggle over every detail, which leads to burnout and this is the one that most people ignore until it's too late and I am coming from a place of having been there. So what I'm sharing with you today, I have been through this journey. What happens is you start to resent your work and you stop enjoying what you're doing. Even when you help someone, it doesn't light you up like it used to because you're not being paid what it's worth and you have that resentment kick in and it leads to frustration. You start doubting yourself and sometimes you might even say, do you know what, I think I'm going to give it all up and that is because nobody ever taught you how to price with purpose and that's what I'm talking about today. I'm not talking about you being overtly greedy, I'm talking about you being smart, it is about charging based on real value and it's definitely not charging on your time or the tasks that you do and that's what this episode is all about. So I'm going to be sharing something with you called the value triangle and it's a simple but very powerful framework I use with clients to help them confidently charge what they are worth and the value that they provide and as with all triangles is made up of three corners. The first corner is belief and we call this your inner worth. The second corner is delivery and this is your actual impact and then the third corner is perception or what I call your perceived power and when these three things align pricing becomes much much easier and can be quite exciting. So what I'd like to do now is just dive on in to each of these parts of the value triangle and then what we're going to do is have a look at how you can start to implement it. So as I said, the first thing is about your belief, it's about you, it's your inner worth and this is really important because it all begins with how you feel about yourself and where most advisors quietly tend to fall apart really because if you don't believe in your own value no price will feel right. You will discount before people even ask you the price right or they'll say what's the price and you go oh well it's normally this but for you order it for this and then you'll over explain to fill the silence and they're just sitting looking at you blankly and then your second guess or proposal that you've just sent so you'll send a discount with it and your prospect will feel every little bit of that hesitation and as I said prospects need to feel confident and they need to know that you are confident in your value. So I've worked with many advisors who have helped businesses double revenue who've saved clients from absolute six figure disasters and yet they're charging less than their day to day bookkeeping that used to be priced at £25 an hour right. It's ridiculous and why do they do that? Because deep down they don't believe they're worth more. It's not because they're not good enough it's because no one has ever taught you how to see your own value. Your pricing will never rise higher than yourself worth. That's some really important thing for you to think about. It doesn't matter what skills you have or the credentials or the tools. If you see yourself as just a typical accountant or just a bookkeeper you're going to play small and charge by the hour and relate what you charge for accounting and bookkeeping to your advisory services. If you have helped one business grow recover or even thrive with what they're doing you have already delivered tens of thousands in value and your price tag should be a fraction of that transformation not a sum based on hours or guesswork. So how do you start believing it? You might be saying to me oh that sounds great Amanda but I'm not confident. So I'm going to share with you a tool and it is something called a value journal and I believe in this so much and I run this myself. I have a value journal because like I might be sitting here saying to you oh you need to be more confident but actually I go through this too which is why I have a value journal and in my value journal and what I would like you to do in your value journal is write down every single win that you have every breakthrough every client success no matter how big or how small and every email that says thank you. It isn't about you patting yourself on the back it's about you creating a book of proof. Proof that you can see that you're making a difference and proof that you're worth every single penny that you're going to ask for and more. And confidence doesn't come from you pretending to be confident or shouting louder than your competitors. It comes really from you stacking evidence of your own impact. So you need to start documenting today and every time someone says thank you or even when you're on your advisory calls make an absolutely concerted effort to record your advisory calls if you're doing them online and listen out for when people go that's great thank you and also remember to ask for the wins when you speak to your clients. You sometimes have to tease it out of them and the wins are as much for them to know that they're doing well but also for you so that you can see you're making an impact. So do start documenting today because the moment that you believe in your value your clients will too. All right now let's move on to the next part of the triangle which is your actual impact and this is you in delivery. So belief is important you have to believe in your value but it is not the only thing that we need to focus on you also need to deliver results that make a difference a matter. So we're not talking about more meetings we're not talking about you having more spreadsheets we're not talking about that you're doing more for your clients I'm talking about making sure that your clients get results and something changes for their world and clients don't care how long you've been doing this I'm talking about your first advisory client not your 10th 20th 30th or 50th they actually care about what is going to be different after they work with you they care about the transformation. So things that you need to be thinking about when you're pricing your value is are your clients going to earn more money are they going to save time are they going to make better decisions are they going to feel less stressed each of these things has a value attached to it and that's what they're paying for they're not paying for your time they're not paying for your effort they're not paying for things they want outcome and this is where productizing your service makes all the difference because when you productize you're actually taking something and turning it into a transformational product and it will be a clear offer structured and repeatable and you're going to deliver better results every time because you can tweak and iterate and what happens is you stop reinventing the wheel you stop making it up as you go and you start leading your clients through a journey that you have walked through once twice three four five 10 20 50 times before and again this has a knock on effect to your confidence. So think about it like this if your offer is messy you articulate it in a way where you're not quite sure what you're even saying let alone what your potential client is hearing your value is going to feel uncertain but if your offer is productize if it's a step by step process if it has method in the madness your value is going to feel solid and when results are clear pricing becomes really simple. So here's what I want you to do when it comes to this part of the triangle I want you to track the wins that you create I want you to get clear on what work is helping your clients grow their revenue what work that you're doing with them is helping them save money and time where were they stuck how did you help them get clarity and then write it down capture that story and then use those stories to back up the value that you ask for okay so when you say this is the price go and this is why it is this price because you have stories to back up the fact that you can do what you are saying you do when you productize your value you stop guessing and you start building a business around what actually works. Now then what we do is we have perceived power this is the perception bit and this is the bit that most business advisors miss you can believe in yourself you can get great results but if your prospect doesn't see your value they're not going to pay for it and this is when so many of my prospects come to me and they're like Amanda I am an advisor I'm posting on social media nothing's working I'm not getting the high value advisory clients I'm still getting the accounting and bookkeeping clients and that is because of the way that you show up your brand the perception that people have of your brand is not where it needs to be I'm pricing is based on perception and if you look and sound like everybody else or if you look and sound like a typical accountant or bookkeeper you're going to get treated like everybody else so what creates a high-value perception well clarity confidence a system that they can trust and you're showing up where you need to in a way that you need to and this is where productizing helps you shine because when you show up with a clear offer if you have a name a process and a price in that offer you feel in control and your clients are desperate to be led and they're looking for a leader and if you feel in control and if you look like you're in control then they're going to be happy to say hey please lead me you look like someone who's done it before and this builds trust because this is all about trust and you sound like someone who solves problems not someone selling time and that's what premium clients are drawn to so when you to ask yourself does the way I show up match the fee that I want to charge does your website reflect the outcomes that you want to deliver do you talk about transformation or do you talk about accounting and bookkeeping and would you pay yourself what you're asking others to pay and that's a really important one if you're asking someone to pay a thousand pounds or a thousand bucks or two thousand three thousand four thousand would you pay that kind of money for the service you're providing this stuff really matters every single message you send every conversation every proposal is shaping how people see every single post on social media go and have a look at it does it position you as a business advisor or does it position you as a typical accountant that charges by the hour you need to show up like someone who is worth five 10 15 20k here not three thousand a year okay you need to have a productized offer that you believe in and speak to the value that you create not just the work that you do now let me talk about perceived power for a moment and how this plays across different industries so let me paint a picture for you you walk into a local supermarket and you grab a bottle of water it's chilled it's clean it's convenient and it will cost you about a pound maybe a dollar you don't think twice about paying for that you're on your lunch break it comes with your sandwich and you just grab it and go now I want you to think about this you're at a busy train station you're running late you're super thirsty you had to run for the train and there is a shop right next to your platform where your train is waiting and you grab the same bottle of water same size same brand and now it's three pounds or three dollars do you still pay it absolutely because you're in a rut and it's right there and you need it now imagine this you are in the desert there's no shade there's no end in sight you're dehydrated you're desperate and someone appears holding that same bottle of water how much money would you pay for that bottle of water now in that moment you would pay all the money in the world you have for it the product hasn't changed that is being sold and the value it provides hasn't changed but the perceived value is everything it's all about where you are how urgent the problem is how the water's positioned and that is what changes the price and that is exactly what happens with your services if you sell what you do like it's a bottle of water on a shelf don't be surprised when people only want to pay you a couple of bucks for it but if you show up with authority solve an urgent problem that's really important and position yourself in the right place at the right time when they need help with that urgent problem you actually become essential to them and they will pay you lots of money for it and that's how perceived value works and that is how premium pricing starts now i'm going to give you another example this is more about branding okay because water is needed for life what i'm sharing with you now is more about having something a brand it's about your feelings okay so you're in a shop and you're buying a pen you grab a bit by row and it costs about 50 pence or 50 cents right it works it's functional you don't think twice it writes fine next you see a parker pen now this parker pen is a bit sleeker it comes in a box it feels a bit more special and they're asking 20 pounds or 20 dollars for it you notice the difference and then you walk into a Mont Blanc boutique the pen is under glass it's heavy handcrafted it's laying on a bed of velvet the staff treat it like a watch or a piece of jewelry and they treat you as if you are a premium client the price hundreds of dollars and pounds sometimes thousands why not because it writes any better but because it means something and is branded as higher end it's used for signing contracts making statements marking big moments it's not just a pen it's positioning and this is where you need to understand that you can be doing exactly the same work as somebody else but if your offer is packaged like a big pen no one is going to pay Mont Blanc prices and if you provide a Mont Blanc service but you don't position yourself in the eyes of your potential clients in a way where they see you as someone that's high value they're not going to buy from you the difference isn't the ink that's inside the pens it's the perception of the inks so the question is how are you showing up are you stacking your offer like a one pound or 50p big buy or are you a thousand pound Mont Blanc pen because the work might be the same that you're doing but that perceived value that is where the profit lives it's pretty cool ain't so when you're in a worth your actual impact and perceived power all line up pricing gets easier you stop second guessing what to charge you stop wondering if you're too expensive or not charging enough and you start saying your price with calm clear confidence and you mean it right clients can feel that and when you believe in your offer they do too they stop handling they stop asking what do I get for that or what's the price they start saying this sounds exactly like what I need when can we start and that's the shift that's when your pricing moves from awkward to automatically being well received this isn't about you charging more just to earn more though it is about being paid fairly for the real change you create for the peace of mind for the growth for the freedom your work brings your clients and you're not charging for hours at no point have I mentioned hours have I you're charging for the transformation and when all three corners of the value triangle are strong your business and the way you approach selling your offer changes completely you're not guessing you're no longer stretching yourself then you've built a service that works a message that lands and a price that matches the value that you bring this has a knock-on effect you actually enjoy having sales calls because they don't feel like sales calls because people already understand the value that you might be bringing them you stop feeling underpaid and overworked you stop saying yes to the wrong clients just to fill your books instead what you do is you work with the right people the premium people at the right price in a way that feels good for everyone and that's when you start to believe and your impact grows and you're positioning all click into place and that's what I want for you so let's bring it all together your inner worth is how much you believe in your own value if that belief is shaky your price will be too your actual impact is the real difference you make when you focus on outcomes not hours your work becomes priceless and then we've got perceived power which by the way is my favorite it's all about how others see your value before they even work with you it's built through confidence clarity and a productised offer that positions you as the expert so here's what I want you to do grab a piece of paper rate yourself from one to ten on each corner of the value triangle ask yourself where am I the strongest where am I hiding and where do I need to focus this week and then pick one thing just one and start because nothing changes if nothing shifts if you'd like some help putting this into practice I've got you DM me the word triangle on LinkedIn and I'll send you my pricing confidence worksheet and an invite to my free training and we'll go even deeper together you deserve to be paid well for the value that you bring not for your time not for your tasks but for the transformation you deliver so go out there own your worth and build a business that works for you you have been listening to me Amanda C. Watts and the business advisor podcast and I wish you a good day or night wherever you are