In the last article, I wrote about how our beliefs around money impact on our ability to feel comfortable asking for or discussing fees. Now you recognise that you’ve some negative beliefs around money, you’re doing your money affirmations and you’re still not feeling comfortable asking for payment. Let me share one very simple technique to help you say your fees with confidence.
Practise in front of a mirror. Look in the mirror and say, “I charge [your new fee].” Practise telling someone on the phone. Have a friend or colleague sit opposite you and practise looking at them saying how much you charge.
Keep doing it until you feel comfortable. Get comfortable with the sound of the words. They’re just words, nothing to be scared of. When you practise with another person, make and maintain eye contact. Say it until your body and tone of voice are relaxed and all match each other. If what you say, how you say it and your body language are not congruent with each other, the client will pick this up.
Have fun with it, don’t take it too seriously. Before long, it won’t seem like a big deal.
Right now the only thing that’s really stopping you from charging the amount you deserve is the little voice in your mind that’s telling you it’s too much. That little voice doesn’t know what your clients will or won’t pay; it really doesn’t. Ignore the little voice. Prove it wrong. Of course you must feel in your heart of hearts that the value you create for your clients is high. That takes away the feeling of “Oh, it’s a lot to charge”.
And now to finish the story I began in article 2 of this series about the accountant who wasn’t charging for everything he was doing. Consider this. If it wasn’t important to the client, and if they didn’t value his expertise, they wouldn’t have asked him to do it would they? Realising where he was going wrong was probably the easiest part of the process for him. Actually telling clients that he was going to be billing them for the additional work was one of the hardest things he’d ever had to do in his professional career.
But we worked on it until he was confident enough to do it. As soon as he was, he made an additional £9000 in just three weeks! We worked together for a year and during that time he brought in an extra £46,000 by making sure he charges clients for everything he does. So what would that be worth to you? There were many other benefits too.
So ask yourself the following question:
Do I want clients who value what I do and pay me accordingly or do I want clients who don’t value what I do and won’t pay what I’m worth? The choice is actually yours.
So finally, let’s take a look at fear. Fear, it is said, is the killer of dreams. I’m not talking about fear when there’s real danger – that’s a necessity – but fear of a perceived danger. How many times have we stopped ourselves doing something, not because it’s physically dangerous but because there is a fear of rejection? So we limit ourselves and our lives thinking that this will make us safe. Deep down, though, it makes us feel unworthy. We are in fact rejecting ourselves. So let’s stand up and look fear straight in the face. When we do, it loses its power. It’s all a question of perception and perception is just about how you look at something. Because HOW you look at something determines HOW you see it. And HOW you look at it is determined by your thought processes. Ultimately, this means that there are always more ways of looking at something than you originally thought. So let’s try it now, how would you look at fear knowing that it stands for: False Evidence Appearing Real – it’s just our imagination
Full-on Exquisite Adrenaline Rush – it can be a signal for excitement
It’s a habit. It’s an automatic response based on past programming and we keep listening to the programming. Stop listening, change the record, tell yourself something different and your experience will be different. If you listen to your fears, you will die never knowing what a great person you might have been. Robert H Schuller.
To summarise this series of 6 articles, I would like to add that realising your worth is not about being big-headed, aloof or stand-offish. It’s about understanding and appreciating your own value. It’s about wanting to create that value for your clients, and charging what you’re worth. It’s about delivering a fantastic service to clients that other organisations probably don’t deliver.
When you understand the value of what you do for your clients, can communicate that value to them and are comfortable asking for fees, then you will be able to charge what you’re worth.
Please look out for further articles on how to charge what you’re worth and get it!
If you have any questions in relation to this article, please contact me on 01202 743961 or 07957 672335 or visit my Contact Vanessa Page to book your complimentary True Worth Strategy Session.
Leave a Reply