How to get paid more for your consulting work

Academy member0:02

My fear, like in the back of my head, is how if I'm already making, in some cases, $100 more an hour than the girls that I know do the same work as I do, will could anyone pay me more?

Leah Neaderthal0:21

Welcome to the smart gets paid podcast with me. Leah niederthal, I help women land higher paying clients in their independent consulting businesses, but I've never been a salesperson. My background is in corporate marketing, and when I started my first consulting business, I learned pretty quickly that it's about 1000 times harder to sell your own stuff than it is to sell someone else's so I taught myself how to do it, and I created the sales approach that I now share with my clients so they can feel more comfortable in the sales process. Get more of the right clients and get paid way more for every client contract. So whether your client contracts are $5,000 $100,000 or more, if you want to work with more of the clients you love, do more of the work you love and get paid more than you ever thought you could, then you're in the right place. Let's do it together. Thanks for tuning in, and don't forget to rate, review and share. Hey there, Leah here, and thanks for tuning in. I hope that wherever you're listening to this, wherever you are right now, you're having a great week, making some good progress on your business and taking some time for you. So a while back, I was on a call with a client, and we were talking about one of her potential clients that she had been talking to, that she was in a sales process with, and she had put together a scope of work, and she had attached a price to it, and after talking about it, and, you know, reviewing it with our potential client, they wanted to reduce the scope and the price. I want to say that the starting price was something like $30,000 and the client came back and said, Well, what can you do for 10k and the work that my client does is some really in depth consulting, working really closely, being very hands on with her client for a not insignificant amount of time. And my client wanted to help, but she really didn't think that she could put something together for 10k that would actually make a difference for the client. I mean, they would barely even be able to scratch the surface of solving the problem, and at that level, she really couldn't get them the results that they wanted and she knew that they needed. I think even her lowest price thing was something like 20k and I think I said something in that conversation, like, Listen, if you won't get out of bed for less than 20k then that's your answer. And that line, you know, you won't get out of bed for less than a certain amount. I love that line, and it's, you know, part of the culture. It's like a thing people say, but actually, for a saying that's in pop culture, it's really not that old. Actually, that line first appeared in an article in Vogue magazine in October 1990 and when it did, it caused a huge uproar. The woman who said that line was vilified, mocked, you know, made to feel so ashamed, and people really started trying to knock her down a peg or several pegs. It was so traumatic for her, the woman who said that line, that even today, over 30 years later, when she talks about that line, that she said she's embarrassed and she wishes she had never said it. But the line actually wasn't, quote, we don't get out of bed for less than $10,000 the exact wording that was printed in Vogue was, quote, We don't wake up for less than $10,000 a day. And the speaker of that line, the woman who caused so much uproar and made people so angry, was a 25 year old model, but not just any 25 year old model. She was a supermodel named Linda Evangelista. And in 1990 Linda Evangelista and the other supermodels so Naomi Campbell, Cindy Crawford and Christy Turlington, they were at the top of their careers. I mean, they were already in demand for every magazine, every photographer and every fashion house in the world. And then the singer, George Michael cast them in the music video for his song freedom 90. And that took them from the runway and from the magazine pages into mainstream pop culture, and they became huge, like massive they were the most famous models ever. They were the most famous women in the world, and they were the only models that anyone who was anyone would put on their runway or in their campaigns. And so that year. Yeah, when 25 year old Linda Evangelista was asked about how much she and the other supermodels earn, she said, we don't wake up for less than $10,000 a day. And I just love that line, and I love that the speaker was a 25 year old woman, because it's the perfect example of someone who knows their value and who knows their power. And you know, I've known this story for a while about that line, and then I was reminded of it recently when I watched the supermodels documentary on Apple TV. And Linda Naomi, Cindy and Christy are talking about, in this documentary, they're talking about their rise and their careers, as you know, the supermodels, and in the documentary, Linda expresses so much regret and pain at saying, you know, we don't wake up for less than $10,000 a day like she hates that line. And listen, I am sure that for somebody in the press, for somebody who's so famous, I am sure that line was thrown back at her so many times over the following years, and we all know that, you know, on the whole, society does not like to hear young women asserting themselves, especially when it comes to money. But I wish that I could, like, sit her down and grab her shoulders and be like, don't apologize for that. Please. Like, don't apologize because hearing that from a woman and from a young woman, it means something. So even if you who you're listening to this, even if you never like say that line out loud that you you know won't wake up for whatever number, it's such an awesome sentence and such an awesome line to remind you to know your value, to stand in your power, to put yourself first, and know what you will accept and what you won't. So I would say, Thank you, Linda for that, and I was thinking about that story as I was putting together this episode, because in it, I'm talking to a client who doubts her worth and she doubts her value, and she's gotten sort of knocked down a peg by a much bigger client in the past, so her pricing confidence has really taken a hit. The work that this client does in her consulting business is in communications, and she's struggling because she wants to charge more, and she wants to get paid more for her work, but she's wondering if it's possible, especially when she sees some of her peers charging less. So if you've ever wondered if you could be getting paid more, or if you've wanted to get paid more, but the story that you're telling yourself is that it's just not possible, then this is going to be a really important episode for you. I want to send a huge thank you to my client for allowing me to share this conversation with you. Take a listen, and at the end, I'll come back and share a lesson you can apply to your business. So you might have noticed that with the economy being as it is, things feel a little shaky. Referrals are slowing down. Budgets are getting cut, and clients who you thought would say yes are saying no or not right now. And here's the thing, in this economy, you can't run your business by waiting for referrals. Clients just aren't going to swim into your net. You have to be intentional. That's why the best way to protect your business today and for the future is to have the two systems that every consulting business needs a marketing system to bring the right clients to you and fill your pipeline, and a sales system to help clients say yes and get you paid more. But it's not just about getting clients. It's about security and stability and making your business sustainable no matter what's happening out there, smart women are doing this right now, even in this economy, they're winning their biggest contracts, filling their pipelines, and their businesses are growing, which lets them do things like build up six months of family savings a lot sooner than they had planned, or go from having one to two months of revenue booked to having eight to 10 months of revenue booked, or getting to the place where you're able to pick and choose your clients and say No to the ones that aren't perfect. These are real results from women in the academy, because this is what we do inside the Academy. We help you build the marketing and sales systems that make your business and your revenue more stable, more secure and more sustainable. So if you've been in business for at least two years, if you made at least 120k last year. And if you want your business to feel secure no matter what's happening in the economy, join us. Apply today. It's marketspay.com/academy we get started on Monday, February 9, because you can't control the economy, but you can control what you do about it.

Academy member9:40

I started to fill out the questionnaires and, like, go through finance, some of the revenue forms, but I feel like I don't know. Maybe it's because of the way I structure my contracts with my existing companies. It wasn't like, it wasn't like, an easy plug in. Play for me, because it's like, well, one client I've had, we restructured the retainer halfway through, and another one is just hourly, and I flex up and I flex down depending on the work. And so it wasn't like an easy like, I'm gonna put these numbers in and voila. This is what I need to do, like, I plugged the numbers in, and I got a number back, like, four clients a month, and I'm like, well, sort of it doesn't. It doesn't, exactly. So that one that was kind of a sticky point for me, because I was like, well, maybe with other consultants you work with it, it's more straightforward. But with the kind of consulting I do, it's kind of, it's not all project based. So it's not necessarily like, I mean, I have some like, pay me $5,000 and I will deliver X to you, right? But that's not the current I have two clients right now that that's not the way the contracts are structured. It's not project

Leah Neaderthal11:03

based, right? So I think that, first of all, you're not alone. I mean, there are everybody's coming into this with, with different, you know, the way they've been working with folks. The purpose of that exercise is, it's not like you need 2.8 clients, right? It's like, it's not that precise what I want you to think about. And the way that's going to make this easier is, on the whole, this is often the first time that that a woman, the woman I'm working with, get the chance to say, Okay, I know it's like, in the past, it's been like this way, and there's this exception and that exception, and some clients did this, and some clients did that. And for this one, I did this other thing, fine, right? But how do you want it to be? How do you want it to be, right? And that's really where I want your head to be as you're going through some of these things. Because if, if we try to take, you know, whether it's your revenue and your pipeline or your painkiller or whatever, you know, all these things, and we try to say, Okay, Let's scoop up all the random stuff we've had in the past and try to make it into something it's going to make be made into nothing, right? Because you're going to speak to, you cannot speak to all the exceptions and all the different ways that you've you've done this. So really it's like, take what you like of that and bring it with you, okay, but this is how you want it to be. So if in the future, and it still doesn't have to be like so perfectly cut and dry, but if, in the future, you would like to have clients that keep you on for a minimum of six months, and they pay you this much, right, like we have to, we have to put that stake in the ground right, both on the paper and, you know, for the universe, and it would and in our actions. And so that's how I want you to think about it.

Academy member12:56

Okay, okay, that's helpful. That's helpful, okay? And then there's one other thing, the question so I have friends who are consultants, and they I'm currently make more than they do, and they have said to me, how do you get that rate? And I'm like, I don't know. I just this is what I told them. And they said, Yes. So my fear, like in the back of my head, is, how if I'm already making, in some cases, $100 more an hour than the girls that I know do the same work as I do, will could anyone pay me more like, right now it's $200 an hour. It's pretty good. I like it. But would I like 250 agencies are getting 700 obviously, I'm not an agency, but do you know what I mean? Like, I'm like,

Academy member13:52

Is there room for it?

Academy member13:57

Is, is there room like, have you run into? Well, the market just won't support

Leah Neaderthal14:03

the rate that you dreamed of. Okay,

Leah Neaderthal14:07

there's so I love this topic, okay, speak for hours about this. Okay, a few ways I want to sort of address this. Okay, and I'm taking notes. If you hear me clicking, I'm taking notes while we're chatting, yeah, good. Also, you're gonna get the recording of this. So, okay, you're already charging more than all the you know, the women that you know who are in a similar space. So could anybody Have you reached the max? Could anybody charge, you know? Anybody pay you more per hour? Yeah, right. Short answer is, yes, you can get paid more. There are, and you're going to hear this when we get into, you know, the value based pricing so people can pay more. Because one of the things you're going to hear me say in that training, and then, you know, a lot through our work together, is you, you can get, you can charge and get paid whatever you want. There are people. There are people who are getting paid a lot more than you. There are people who are doing what you do on like upward. Work for

Leah Neaderthal15:00

a lot less, yeah, yeah.

Leah Neaderthal15:03

And so, yeah. I mean, will somebody pay a rate, your rate, if it's doubled, yes, will somebody pay it if it's slashed in half? Also, yes, yeah, right. And so you have the right to charge whatever you want, your your your price is not actually about the money. The price is about how you want your life to be. Do you want to have a small number of clients that pay you a whole lot, that's great. Do you want to have a lot of clients that pay you a little? No, right? Okay, yes. Well, because both of those are like different lifestyles, both of them have different impacts on your life and your family and your children and your time and all these things, right? And so when you think about like your price, your you determine your price. Everybody else is also allowed to determine their price, and they can determine it based on any number of factors. They can determine it based on their own limiting beliefs on price. They can determine it based on their own. You know, money mirror narrative and money mindset stuff that happened when they were five years old. Yeah, they can determine it based on their mortgage or their, you know, other commitments or student loans and and none of that stuff is your business. None of that's your business. And so people are allowed to charge whatever they want, yeah? And so are you?

Academy member16:40

Yeah, I I fall into the trap of comparing value like, well, oh, my friend, who's only charging 150 she's so much better than I am. She should be getting more. I don't deserve $200 an hour.

Leah Neaderthal16:56

Sometimes, I'll tell you what you should both be doing is being here. Because Okay, so also a lot of every woman, it's okay, let's let's not say every, a vast majority of the women I talk to who are running consulting businesses are under charging. So your friend, you think she's undercharging. Yes, she is your other friend you're charging, probably because here's where, here's the big shift from hourly to value based pricing. Right? When you're doing hourly, you have to make a decision on how you're going to charge for every ounce of work. And every time you sit down to do an ounce of work you have to value. Well, is this good enough? Right? Yeah, yeah. Is it? Is it better than somebody else? Will my client like it, right? And that's just one of the reasons. And there's like, a whole number of reasons why hourly pricing sucks, because also it's like, if you're not doing work, then you're not getting paid, right, right? And it just, it just leads directly to overwork, yeah, and it doesn't create a good client relationship. So what we're going to do here is go to value based pricing. Okay, so you price not on your value. You price on the value to the client. Okay, okay. So if you do, you know, and the value of the the work to the client comes from doing great discovery, right? Discovery in the sales conversation. So instead of being like, Well, what do you need me to do? And you know, what's the deliverable and what's your timeline and all this stuff, we start to ask questions instead about, tell me why this is really important, right? What happens if this fails? Why must this succeed over you know, tell me in your words like, what would it mean to you? And so there's just a few types of questions we ask. Because if somebody says, Oh, give me some copywriting, right, you can't charge 30 grand for that, right? But if, if you understand from the questions you ask the client that the if you if this work succeeds, then you know, fill in the blank for any type of value to the to the client, right? The client gets more customers. The client can position themselves for another round of funding, the client can become the employer of choice and get the best talent, right? Is that worth 30 grand? Yeah, yeah, right. So I guess what I want to sort of offer here is, can I charge more? You know? Can I charge more with my friend? Whatever it's it's just not. It's like we're talking about the wrong things, you know. But I will say, how would you have known any differently, right, right, you know.

Academy member19:49

Right, which you said something that is super impactful to me, because something that I often struggle. With and I'll text my consultant friends about it is that the pressure to constantly produce and I can't, I feel like I can't let my foot off the gas pedal. I'm every minute of every hour is I'm at 100 because I'm either not all of my clients. I do have retainers, but it's hourly base. I'll give you 15 hours a week for X amount. So I feel like, I'm like, I've said, like, oh, wouldn't it be nice if you were just like a regular employee, and you could just not work and still get paid where this it's exhausting, and I think that may be why I came to you. One of the reasons is like I'm exhausted from constantly pushing there has to be a

Academy member20:54

better way than

Academy member20:58

feeling this pressure to produce at such a high level for so long, and then it if I'm not at that high level, well, I'm not getting

Leah Neaderthal21:07

paid eight, right? Especially when your peers, you have to, you have to, like, produce, to justify the value to the client, right, to justify, and you and you're already feeling guilty for getting paid more than your peers. So you have, you have, like, pressure from the top and pressure from below. Yeah, that's, that's that doesn't feel good, I'm sure, you know, and it affects the work. And, I mean, what's that been doing to you?

Academy member21:38

Well, I think I mentioned was my client, that we just ended and that we haggled on the price. They didn't want to pay what I wouldn't go below originally, I asked for more, and they balked. And so I came down a little bit, and that the for the last year, just this pressure, because I'm writing for the CEO, I'm writing for the chairman, it's been like a ridiculous amount of pressure. I just, I just got totally in my head about everything. So, yeah, that was a really unhealthy situation for me. And now that, like, kind of talking through is like, oh, I can articulate. You know, there's some, you know, just personality parts that play into it that, but also business wise, I set myself up for that. I could have, I could have changed that situation and saved myself up

Leah Neaderthal22:36

a lot of stress. I mean, perhaps, but, you know, it's hard to be like, you know, I really should have gone up stronger against this multi billion dollar, you know, multinational company, I think a little bit like they were going to win that fight, yeah, you know, they just were. They had better lawyers, you know, they were going to win that fight and so, but I think it's such a good reminder of, like, you know, that whole year felt uncomfortable because of the way this started, you know, and you know, what was the difference per hour that you settled on? Like, what did you What was the difference between what you wanted and what they got?

Academy member23:17

I wanted 250 and we landed at 200

Leah Neaderthal23:21

Okay, well, so, and it's like, really, multi billion dollar company we're handling over $50 Yeah, think about, but think about how that shaded the rest of your engagement, right? Imagine if somebody was like, I'll marry you, but only if you lose 25

Academy member23:37

pounds. Yeah, that's absurd for the for

Leah Neaderthal23:40

the remainder of your marriage, you would feel, you would not trust that they love you the way they the way you are, right, right? You would feel immense pressure to stay at that weight or keep losing or whatever, right, not to mention, you know, all the ways that women are socialized to hate their bodies and other women's bodies and all of that, but like, it's just, you know, for illustration purposes, you see, you know, are you, like, I should have been stronger? Well, no, because they, they've made you feel a certain way at the very beginning.

Academy member24:11

Yeah, yeah. So I

Leah Neaderthal24:15

also think just really quick that, you know, that's why this conversation around, like my friends who also run businesses. It's Listen, it's it's so good to have friends who are running businesses like yours, but you also want to make sure that they're going where you want to be. Yeah, yeah, you know. And so that's also why I'm really glad you're here, because seeing other people who are where you want to be right, either, you know, because you just started right, like a couple steps ahead, or a couple years ahead, that's who you should be paying attention

Academy member24:50

to. Yeah. Yeah,

Leah Neaderthal24:52

right. So I think that this is going to be good for just like, changing a little bit of the narrative. Of around

Academy member25:00

some of this stuff, yeah, for sure. So, all right,

Leah Neaderthal25:03

how are you feeling about this particular thing? Right now,

Academy member25:07

I feel good. I feel good. I feel like, Yeah, this is exactly what I wanted. Like, it's all you know I need. I knew I needed someone else to help put the pieces together. And just kind of getting a taste of that now is is really exciting.

Leah Neaderthal25:26

All right, I loved that conversation, and I really meant it. I can talk about pricing for hours, but there's one thing I want to leave you with in this episode that you can think about for your business, and it's really how connected every step is in a sales process with a new client, and how much each step depends on the previous step. So in the conversation, you heard me say that, you know, you determine your price based on the value to the client, and you uncover that value in the discovery calls, and that call, or calls, if you're having more than one, those calls are early on in the process. And if you want to get your pricing right, you have to ask the right questions to uncover the value early in those discovery calls. So that's a direct link between your price and how you conduct a sales call, and that's just one of so many examples, because the parts are all connected. You know, I talk about how I help women build a sales and marketing system in their business, but I don't mean system as in, it's this automated or technology based thing. I mean a system as in, the pieces are all connected and interrelated, and it's why you really can't, like, Spot fix these things. If somebody comes to me and says, I sent out a proposal and it didn't go anywhere, you know, so I need to fix my pricing. You can't really do that without asking some important questions. I mean, just working backwards, you know? It's like, how did you structure the proposal? Who's making the decision and who's influencing the decision internally. What information did you uncover in the sales process about the value and their process for making decisions even earlier? Are they even the right client? Like, were they ever going to be a client that could say yes to you, and in your messaging and in your signaling, were you signaling this client, or were you signaling the clients who can actually afford you? It's why, to really have a sales and marketing system that works, you have to look at each step. That's why, like, I don't just do pricing or messaging. You know, just last week, somebody reached out and said they only wanted to do the LinkedIn part. And I said, No, because I'm not going to let anyone work hard to get visibility and get leads and get referrals through LinkedIn, just to basically, like pour water into a sieve if you can't lead a sales process, help them say yes and get paid as much as you could. So what can you do with this in your business? Well, to bring it back to this call, price starts with discovery. It starts with asking the right questions and uncovering the value, and then structuring the scope and pricing using what we call value based pricing, so that the client is getting great work. You're making great money, and you're not stressed out, because so many women out there, like my client, who you heard here, and maybe like you too, so many women are working way too hard to get the clients to pay them the money, and then working way too hard to feel like they earned the money that the client is paying them. And shifting that dynamic and shifting it early in the sales process leads to a better client relationship and a more profitable consulting business. You Hey, everything we're talking about in this episode is part of the system. Women like you are learning in the academy. In the Academy, we help women consultants install the two systems. Every B to B consultant needs a marketing system to consistently attract the right clients and a sales system to lead a sales process to a yes and get paid more for every contract. So even if you've only gotten clients through referrals or word of mouth in the academy, you'll learn how to attract and sign clients outside your network, how to lead a sales process with confidence and how to get paid for your value, not your time. And There's no cold calling or cold emailing involved, no changing your services or making a course, and you won't use any pushy sales tactics. That's just not our vibe. So if you like what you've heard here, the academy may be your right next step to learn how you can get these two systems in your consulting business and make progress faster and with fewer roadblocks. Head to smart gets paid.com/academy and apply and we can chat about next steps. All right, see you over there. Transcribed by https://otter.ai