It’s been a little while since I’ve been able to get a post
out to you all, so firstly, thanks for your patience.
I’d like to talk today about confidence, not the confidence
to stand up and talk, or to ask for the sale, but the confidence to charge the
fees that you want, and deserve. In many industries, profit is made from the
mark up of goods over their production costs, with the expectation that enough
will be sold to cover overheads.
What if You are the product? Or your skill? Take photography
for instance. A good wedding photographer can easily charge more than a couple
of grand- A good camera, lenses and accessories easily cost a tidy sum, but over
their lifetime can make each shot cost only pennies to take, and today’s online
printing labs mean that they only cost pennies to print too. But when you hire
a photographer for a wedding, you don’t end up paying pennies for your album.
This is where skill can potentially increase the cost of the final product over
a hundred fold. I say potentially, because the actual cost of printing is
technically very low. This is where confidence comes into play.
Or perhaps it’s as good to say, this is where a lack of
confidence comes into play, reducing the amount you can charge. Not necessarily
because your client thinks that you are ripping them off, or it’s not worth it-
but because you think you are! If you believe that you couldn’t charge more
than a few pounds for every photo because you believe that it’s a fair mark up
on the cost of printing and your time taking them, then you’re losing out!
Products like photo’s, and hundreds, if not thousands of
others, transcend the usual way of costing products. In this example, photographs
are emotional, they are the lasting memory of a special event, looked after
they are that lifetime reminder of the things that important, and the people
that really matter to us. These kinds of products are almost priceless, and it
becomes competition between photographers that brings prices down.
If you have the confidence to move from the cost of the
product, to the value of the product, they you can charge as much as you
believe is right, if you feel you are better than the rest of your competition,
then charge more. If your product is more pleasing, technically better, and
your service is impeccable, then you are fully justified in charging the extra,
studies have shown that people are happy to pay anywhere between 5% and 25% MORE
for a better service, that extra is fully justified in being your extra!
It’s a very similar situation for say a web designer
creating a website for a business. The
value that a business website can create, far outweigh the development time and
costs. Charging for the value created, and the profit and money your client
will make, means its a win win situation for all involved.
Have that confidence to charge, whatever you feel is worth
the value you have created, and success will be yours!
