Say the Price. Hold the Silence.
There is one thing that freaks my clients out more than any other: stating the price of their services.
I’ve taught hundreds of workshops. I’ve led hundreds of companies into their greatest growth. It doesn’t matter if the founder is a seasoned vet. It doesn’t matter if it’s a brand new business with a green, but excited founding team.
The question I am always asked, the worry that is always nervously expressed: “…but what should I charge? I hate selling. I hate talking about price. It makes me feel gross.”
Why is money and the idea of charging it, the idea of naming it, the idea of asking for it, the idea of following up on your invoices in a timely manner if they are not paid on time, such a challenging thing for us to confront in our businesses?
Money decisions are rarely just math decisions and they are rarely about pure numbers. They are meaning decisions. Long before we ever earned our first dollar, we watched our family closely and whether we realize it or not, we learned through them what money represents:
Is money safe or stressful?
Is wanting more ambitious or greedy?
Do people like me make this kind of money?
Do people with money have freedom? More problems?
Is charging someone helping them or taking from them?
These questions land particularly hard for anyone who is in a helping, service-based profession. Our money stories come with us into every room we enter and because we are already wired for service, we can feel extra guilty about charging for our service.
These ideas about money we learned from an early age come into your business in very specific ways. They show up in:
Pricing decisions
Sales conversations
Coaching packages
Contract language & design
How you market yourself & your services
Willingness to invest in inventory or staff
What you believe about yourself & your services
There is solid research showing that our beliefs about money are associated with our financial behaviors well into adulthood.* And while the research isn’t specifically about entrepreneurs setting their prices, I see those beliefs walk straight into business decisions every day.
Everyone has a money story. Every. One. So there is no need to pretend these money stories don’t exist. Instead, we want to understand them well enough so they stop running things.
An exercise I find particularly helpful with clients is to go back to our first money stories so we can begin to understand how we arrived at them in the first place. Think back. What is your earliest money memory? How old were you? What happened? Who was there? What emotion do you remember?
What you likely notice if you take just five minutes thinking back: you didn’t learn what you learned about money through financial lessons. What we learned as children about money was learned by watching who worried, who spent, who saved, who argued, who controlled the money, who had it and who didn’t.**
How would you fill in these blanks quickly with whatever comes to your mind first (this only works if we don’t polish our answers!):
Money is _________________
Rich people are ___________________
Successful people are ___________________
Charging people feels like _______________
Someone like me _______________________
What comes up if you fill these in honestly without editing?
Yep. Some stuff that likely makes you feel tender. Funky. Maybe embarrassed or ashamed. Perhaps even, a little bit of “whoa, I did not realize I felt that way. “ Or even: “whoa I didn’t realize that’s why I felt that way.”
When I first did this exercise long ago, I noticed my most immediate thoughts were about my father. He is an architect. For my entire childhood, he loved being an architect. He would often say things like: “My accountant hates me because I never charge what I should and I never follow-up on invoices. I would do this for free if I could.” Also? My Dad was rarely present in my life, always working, always with clients, never meaningfully available for day to day life stuff as I was growing up.
So imagine my money stories. They were all about not charging if you are doing work you love (!!!) but also that doing what you love for a living means you are not available for your family. I learned that money = sacrifice. Money = too busy. And when my parents divorced? I learned that making money = problems.
But right on the heels of my father money stories were those I learned from my mother. I have such a clear picture in my mind of waking up in the middle of the night as a teenager to get a glass of water and finding my mother at the kitchen table, on the phone with the automated voice at Wells Fargo, yellow legal pad in front of her, marking which checks had cleared and which ones had not.
She was frequently up at night deeply stressed about money. While my young mind learned that making money can lead to divorce, I also learned that being divorced can lead to money stress. One morning at 3am while on the phone with the bank she told me: “Don’t ever rely on a man for money. Make your own. Don’t ever put your dreams on hold for a man. Ever.”
No wonder I have been the breadwinner in every single relationship and kept separate bank accounts even when married! And no wonder I felt guilty charging for doing work I loved for many years!
So yeah. Not the lightest of stories, our money stories.
Be really kind to yourself as you explore these answers as they can often kick-up some very old stuff. And the oldest stuff, the stuff we have not looked at in a very long time, is often the most potent. Sit with this. Take your time. Don’t edit yourself. Just notice.
After doing this exercise (even if it takes you a few days to really sit with what comes up), it’s likely not a surprise that you feel some kind of way about sharing your prices with a prospective client. It’s not just a price — it’s your entire money story and all those old feelings and beliefs coming into every conversation you have about your price.
The good news: a belief can feel true without being true.
So now - knowing what you know and having some sense of what you feel about money and charging for your services and why - let’s get to the real moment of freak out. The one my clients always ask about.
You’re on a call with a prospective client, it’s going well, you like them and you have a sense they like you. You can see this would be a good collaboration and of equal exchange. You want this client. Perhaps you even need this client as your revenue is not where it needs to be at the moment (lest you become my mother up at night with your legal pad). And the client eventually says: “This all sounds great. What is the price for this?”
You say your price.
And suddenly you find yourself desperately wanting to manage their reaction.
So you talk. You explain. You justify.
You offer a payment plan they didn’t ask for.
You offer a discount on the spot. Before they’ve even spoken.
You mention something extra you’ll throw in (that you’ve not even made.)
Does this sound familiar? Have you done this?
We have all done it.
When you say your price, here’s the story that is unfolding for you:
My price is too high.
They don’t like me.
My pricing is wrong.
My packages are wrong.
I should probably just not do this anymore.
This is so uncomfortable…maybe I should add a 74-page PDF to the offer, that will really change everything.
When you say your price, here’s what might actually be happening for them:Can I do this?
Can I make this work with my schedule?
Will I actually show up every week how I want?
What happens if they see me as I really am? I’m a mess.
I’ve not stuck with anything in years, how do I know I’ll be different this time?
What if I don’t reach the goals the way I told them I wanted to? I’ll fail again.
What credit card should I put this on?
This is so scary.
Or perhaps they are thinking your price is too high. You don’t know. That’s the point.
Their silence is not an invitation for you to invent their thoughts and then start solving for them. Their reaction belongs to them. Do not fill the space with noise as they are deciding. Let them have agency in their own decision.
Your responsibility is to develop services and offers you believe are valuable, price them based on evidence and market needs, explain clearly how it all works and then…say the price. It’s much easier for someone to make a clear decision when you’re not trying to manage the outcome with extra talking, explaining and nervousness.
Say the price and hold the silence. Not a single peep.
Say the price without putting your insecurities onto them.
Say the price and let another adult decide.
In my next piece, I’ll talk more about how to build confidence in your price so it’s even easier to say the price and hold the silence.
__________
**Bandura, A. (1977). Social learning theory. Prentice Hall.