– by Craig Wilson
The vast majority of businesses I meet with just aren’t charging enough for their services. Even though they know they’re worth it, they fear the potential fallout from implementing a price increase.
So they continue to undercharge for their services and survive on lower margins, or try to win more clients to make up for it. Then they run out of time in the week to service their clients.
It’s a classic business treadmill.
I believe the main reason is that they don’t have a plan to generate a steady flow of leads.
Their leads are scarce, so they are afraid to turn anyone away. Beggars can’t be choosers (or so they say).
Businesses that don’t have enough leads tend to take what they can get. Unfortunately, that usually leads to poor client fit and starting to offer services outside their areas of specialty to accommodate potential client requests. It’s inefficient, exhausting and not a great way to run a business.
But when you have a strong lead strategy you have the luxury of choosing who you want to work with and setting the right price to get them the result they desire.
You can afford to say no to opportunities that aren’t a good fit and push back on requests outside your core offerings.
An abundance of leads means you can charge what you are really worth and not worry as much if you don’t win every new client.
You can do business on your terms.
One of our current clients is a great example. We’ve been encouraging them to increase their fees since December. After 6 months they finally did it, and guess what?! Not one of their clients objected.
They basically gave themselves a quick and painless revenue increase without even adding a new client.
The thing is, they only had the courage to do it after we had developed a lead generation strategy that resulted in them becoming so busy with new clients that they were becoming too stretched. Knowing they could now afford to lose a few clients, they weren’t as scared to increase fees to the existing ones.
A great lead generation strategy not only delivers you more new clients, it delivers you the confidence to be more selective about the people you work with and the services you’re willing to offer them.
When people are queuing up to work with you, it gives you the confidence to act like an expert or specialist in your field. You can do business more on your terms, rather than everybody else’s terms.
And that’s the key. When you operate from this position of strength you can start charging what you are worth.
