A key part of being a successful freelancer is charging enough that your business is sustainable. But maybe you’ve been put off because, in the past, you put your prices up, and sales dropped. Perhaps potential clients weren’t getting back to you, or they told you outright that they couldn’t afford your service. Or everything just went REALLY quiet…
It’s tempting to decide you really need to put your prices back down and accept that you’ll just have to work harder and do more hours.
But the chances are that actually your rates are NOT too high. Here are three changes you can make so you no longer have potential clients telling you they can’t afford to work with you.
Rethink how you offer free content
If you’ve been offering lots of free content and support, it may be that you’ve attracted an audience who are only looking for something for nothing. Because of differences between rates or pay and the cost of living in different countries they genuinely can’t afford your paid service. Or they may simply not be willing to truly invest in themselves.
Either way, they’re not your ideal clients.
If you’re always offering lots of free content, you may be training even potential paying clients to see you as a free resource. It isn’t necessarily a problem to have followers who enjoy your free content, as long as you also have potential ideal clients there too. You just need to think about what signals you’re sending. So what can you do?
Try dialling down the free content. Instead, spend more time and energy on helping them identify the gap, rather than always filling the gap in for them.
Make sure that you’re regularly talking about your paid offers, and making it clear how they can work with you more closely.
Before you get on a call, make sure it’s clear to them exactly what you offer is, and at least a rough idea of the cost. Not everyone you have a call with will be a right-fit client, of course. But, as far as possible, you want to avoid having calls with people who are never going to be seriously interested.
Communicate the value
People often say they can’t afford something when what they really mean is that they think the offer isn’t worth their investment. It’s not that they don’t have the money, but that this isn’t what they want to spend it on. It could be that if it was super cheap, they’d be willing to give it a go. But the current price makes them hesitate.
Usually this problem arises because of your messaging, not your offer. Assuming that the offer actually is right for them, and could help them solve their problem, then you just need to work on how you communicate the value of it so the investment is clear to them.
The solution is to clearly show or explain the difference that working with you could make.
Maybe it will save them time.
Perhaps it would make or save them money.
Maybe working with you will improve their quality of life and how they feel.
This is why you need to get good both at really deeply understanding your ideal clients, and at expressing this in your marketing copy. Once you’ve cracked that, you won’t hear people saying they can’t afford to work with you.
And, remember, just because people might not see sufficient value in your offer, it doesn’t mean there isn’t value (despite what your inner Troll might be telling you!).
Change your offer
Is there something about your offer itself that you could tweak to make it an easier ‘yes’?
More support, less teaching
Would they appreciate more support and accountability for example? For example, you could reduce the actual amount of face-to-face teaching time, but increase the ongoing support. This might feel like better value to them.
Group classes for clients who can’t afford 1-2-1
Or you could make part of your offer within a group. This could actually enable you to drop the price a little, but still make as much, if not more, money.
Change how they pay
A simple tweak that can bring in sales is to offer a payment plan, for example paying in instalments. Or you could offer a guarantee of some sort to help reassure them. That can remove the feeling of making an irreversible decision.
Whatever changes you make to avoid reducing the price or doubting your own offer, it all starts with really understanding your niche. From there, you create your business, and your marketing around that niche. Hopefully, you’ll stop hearing “I can’t afford it” and start hearing “How do I sign up?”