Secret Files

Issue No. 1 * September 2018

The Pricing Voodoo You

Should Never Tell Anyone
Esteemed TRIBE member,

When I first started charging thousands of dollars for my email writing

services, there’s always that nagging voice in my head telling me I’m
overcharging. And when the topic about how much I charge comes up, I
would usually end up stammering and completely unable to say the price with
a straight face for fear that the client might call me crazy for charging that
high.

Sometimes, I’d even go to great lengths hiding the amount in a mountain pile
of words (I was sending a different proposal back then) and say something
like $5k instead of “five thousand dollars” hoping they won’t notice how high
I was charging them. I must admit I felt pretty stupid especially when I
realized that one of the first things they’ll try and look for is the price.
Also, one of the things you’ll learn as you grow your freelancing business is
that if you’re on a call and the prospect asks the question, "So how much does
this cost?", it means you’re no longer in control of the situation.

Good thing, I learned this technique known as "The Bucket Technique”,

from Bryan Kreuzberger (one of the best cold email marketers out there)
to make sure you’re pricing your services optimally. In essence, it’s a
framework for finding out how much your client is willing to spend, even if
you aren’t comfortable talking money.

By teaching you this, I hope it will save you from endless proposals that go
nowhere, and find out the most a client is willing to spend on your service. It’s
so good, I was hesitating to share it for fear that it may be used unethically.
Then again, you’re inside the TRIBE so at the very least, you’re coming at this
with a different mindset than those scammy fly-by-night freelancers.

PRO TIP: This is better done face-to-face or on a call. Doing this by chat
almost always DOESN’T work.

With that warning out of the way, let’s get started…

ASK THE SETUP QUESTION

Right before you close the call… Or the summary part of the discovery call…
Or on step 6 as you make the gap obvious... Or if you feel deep down in your
gut that the prospect is showing interest, you can ask this simple but scary
question:
What's your budget?
If that’s a little bit scary on your part, you can modify it to these...
"What do you typically budget for something like this?"
"You seem interested, do you have a budget for something
like this?"

Here’s an example…

You: Okay great, thanks… so given everything you’ve told

me, [insert your diagnosis based from what they
mentioned on the call] … is that right?

Them: Yes.
You: I see.

By the way, what do you typically budget for something

like this?”

BOOYAH!

Simple right?

Basically, this is a setup question. And almost certainly they never just throw
out a number. This question is to show you how motivated they are as a
buyer. Now once you’ve asked the setup question, the next thing you need to
do is watch out for their reaction.

What do I mean? When the answers are any of these...

"You know, we're really just looking."

"We're just in research mode."

"Well, all new projects are on hold right now."

It could mean they may just be shopping around, not ready to spend any
money at all, or you simply have no chance of acquiring them as a client. It
could mean a number of things. But one thing is for sure though… a
response could be vague but the moment they give you an ‘excuse’,
it’s not a good sign. If after making the ‘gap’ obvious (see script template)
and they’re still sort of giving you the run around, then there’s a good chance
they’ll never pay premium.

Now, I’m not saying that you give up altogether but when this happens, feel
free to abandon this strategy because it’s no longer going to work. What
you’re looking for are these responses…

"It depends."

"I don't know."

"I’m not at liberty to say."

I know. Pretty vague. But using this technique, you want vague answers like
this instead of an outright excuse like the ones above.

So say you got the answer you’re looking for. The next part is…

FINDING THE RIGHT PRICES

Once you got the question out of the way, the next thing you want to figure
out are the right prices to use to make this work. So if you’re going after a
contract and you wanted to land a client at the price you prefer, you need to
figure out these three prices.

The minimum amount you’d like to be paid for your service. This means
anything below is not of interest.

5 times the minimum amount you’d like to be paid for your service.

10 to 15 times the minimum amount you’d like to be paid for your

service.
So if you plan to charge $1,500 at a minimum, then the numbers would look
like this… $1,500… $7,500… and $15,000 to $22,500.

PRO TIP: You purposely want your last number to be completely

outlandish. This number should be so high, that it's literally hard for you to
say that number with a straight face.

And the reason you want the last number to be high is it anchors a high price
in their mind and makes the perceived value go up. It also gets them to
physically react, when you say it.
Cool?
Good.
Onward to the next step…

FINDING THEIR BUDGET

Once you’ve asked the setup question and figured out the right prices for your
service, next step is to find their budget. Using the example earlier, the
question you’ll ask for this step would go like…
"Typically our clients fit into one of three buckets:
$$1,500… $7,500... or $22,500..."
Now almost always, especially if you’re pricing your service way out of the
wazoo, they will try to stop you as you go and say the third figure on your
pricing. And that’s exactly what you want.
Because the next words coming out of their mouth will be the number on the
higher range of what they're willing to spend. They'll say something like...
"There's no way we can spend $22,500... the max of our
budget is about $8,500"
“We're a lot smaller than some of the companies you
probably work with, the most we could spend is three to
four thousand”
Almost right away they will give you their maximum budget. The numbers are
just so high, as humans, the only way is to respond emotionally. I always use
this strategy on bulk projects where I need to do a TON of stuff and what I
discovered is that clients are almost always willing to pay double than
the minimum amount you’d like to be paid for your service.

“But John, what if I tried this and the client didn’t stop me or didn’t have any
sort of reaction?”

Relax young padawan. If after pulling this off they still haven’t told you their
maximum budget, you just have to follow up with the question:
"Typically our clients fall into one of three budgets,
do any of those numbers speak to you?"
That’s it. And trust me, I never had anyone not answer that question given
that all the factors we talked about earlier on step number 1 are met. So that’s
that. Let’s move on to something else…
 How To Add Another $1k to $2k In Your
Freelance Income When Your Prospect Has
NO Budget
This is something I use all the time and it consistently produces an extra
$1,000 to $2,000 a month to my freelance income. Counterintuitively, it’s
aptly used whenever somebody isn’t able to afford your fees.

You see, not every business is capable of paying you premium fees. But you
can offer the same solution albeit in a different way for a smaller fee. What I
mean is, you simply have to offer a lower package at a lower price
point that still aims to solve their biggest problem that you got from
the discovery call. But instead of a ‘done-for-you’ arrangement, you’ll just act
as their consultant or coach.

Check this out…

See those little charges of $300, $500, $700, and $1200? Those aren’t writing
projects. That’s me doing a little bit of consulting on the side. ;-)
I charge $375/hr for an hour of coaching and an additional $5 for every
minute in excess of that one hour. The most I charge is $1,200 which is
equivalent to one 1-hour call every week for the whole month. And all I have
to do do is tell them exactly what I would have done if they hired me.

Now if this looks too simple to work, that’s because it really is just that simple.
Anyway, enough chit-chat. The only way you can pull this off is if they showed
you enough interest on the call and yet they told you that they couldn’t afford
your services the moment they saw your proposal.

When that happens, you can say this…

Hey [NAME], although it’s unfortunate to hear that the

investment required for our ‘done-for-you’ service is a
bit out of reach, we may still be able to help you out
with our $300 solution.

Would you like to hear about it?

BOOM!

If they say yes, all that’s left is give them the conceptual overview of your
consultation offer and what they’re gonna get. It could be a one hour call, four
1-hour calls each week, 1 one-hour call and email support on any questions
they have for the whole month, or anything really that you can afford
giving out without doing too much work.

For example:

“Great. I’m 100% confident I can help you solve [insert

main problem] by giving you my 2-hour consulting package
where we hop on four 30-minute consulting calls each
week, with the purpose of [solution to main problem
symptom #1, symptom #2, symptom #3, etc…]. Once we take
care of these roadblocks your [insert main problem] is
as good as solved. What do you say we give this a try?”
NOTE: The solution to the symptoms should be a high level overview of how
you can help them. In my case I could say…
“...with the purpose of helping you uncover the buying motivations of
your target market using a one-paged survey (this alone can increase
conversions), work with you on crafting a better offer which could
bring 40% additional sales, and walk you through the outline of my
proprietary email launch method from start to finish so you’d know
exactly what to write from pre-sell to cart close.”

See what I mean? Of course, the solutions you’ll provide depends entirely on
the problem they said they had on the call.

“But John, what if they object and get angry at me for not telling them about
the cheaper option sooner?”

Well, let me ask you this… if they’re throwing a fit when you all did was try to
offer help at a cheaper price, do you really want someone like that to be your
client?

I thought so.
Try these strategies on your next prospect and see a quick bump in your
freelance profits.
Next issue, the four, borderline, manipulative strategies to win every
conversation, negotiation, and argument.

Rooting for you,

John Pagulayan