How To Price Your Client Services

Check out this insightful article from Eva Tang about a topic every entrepreneur struggles with. Eva leads marketing at Practice.

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Pricing can be such a tricky topic, especially when you’re pricing something for the first time.

A few questions for you to consider when thinking about pricing: 

• What is everyone else charging? What is my range? 
• Where am I in my business journey, do I care more about getting started or optimizing for time/effort? 
• How do I combat imposter syndrome? 

The thing that people don’t tell you is that a pricing strategy is more about psychology (yours and your clients) than it is about finance. 

Let’s get the finance part out of the way first, and then we’ll move on to psychology. 

How to price your services

Let’s get the brass taxes (pun intended) out of the way. How do you figure out the actual price of your services, the cadence, and then how to make sure it’s all neat and tidy come tax season?

1. Figure out what other people are charging for similar services. You can do this with a quick Google search and you can email a few professionals to ask them what their prices are. 
   1. Pro tip: Skew slightly on the higher side of your range, especially if you’re just starting out because your instincts will be to value yourself less than you probably deserve. 
2. Choose a pricing model – hourly, project-based, retainer. There are tradeoffs between all of them to consider for your particular business. 
3. Find a way to accept and track payments. 
   1. Pro tip: You can do this manually to start, but make sure you keep track of your invoices somewhere. And tax season will be much less painful if you use an accounting template or some accounting software. 

How to start charging what you’re worth

As we alluded to earlier, this will be the harder of the two pieces in pricing your services. Asking for money is one of the hardest things people run up against when it comes to building a business, so let’s respect that and then make an action plan. 

1. Understand that you will feel some level of imposter syndrome, especially if you’re just starting up a new business. I’ve seen 20-year executives struggle with hanging up their own consulting or coaching shingle, even when they’ve been in the trenches, doing the job, with invaluable lessons to pass on. Feel the feelings, and make sure you have a plan to action it anyways. 
2. You don’t need to be the best-in-class, or have the most educational ribbons, to charge for your services. There’s always another certification, course, or program to continue to become better at what you do, but you don’t need to be a professional course-go-er before you’re able to provide your clients with a valuable service. 
3. Charging anything is better than free. Until you see the power of someone exchanging money for a product or service that you created, it’s more of a hobby than a business.

Pricing your services well is key to a sustainable business, for you and your family, so make sure you account for the nuts and bolts of it as well as the psychological aspects. You can do it, and once you’ve asked for the first payment, every one after that will feel significantly easier. 

If you’re interested in making your business life a lot simpler, we’ve partnered with Practice for this post. Practice is client management software for businesses of one – think coaches, consultants, even dog trainers. They help you manage all the administrative pieces under one roof, because you don’t have the time to try and tape it all together. 

Do you find it challenging to hold yourself accountable? If so, working with others can help you crush your business goals one by one. Snag a membership at The Founding Moms today.

Eva leads marketing at Practice. In her spare time, she fosters, boards and trains dogs through Eva Trains Dogs.

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