What is your sweet spot price?

We’re looking for your sweet spot price

Your sweetspot price is the point where you’re charging enough to make the income you want to earn, and you attract enough customers at that price to achieve your desired income.

Your sweetspot price is where what you charge is okay for your clients, but they have to think about it a little bit. Often I know that someone is at their sweetspot price because they don’t convert all of their sales – they become too expensive for some of the people who would like to work with them.

Your sweetspot price doesn’t feel too cheap, and it doesn’t make clients feel like they’re getting ripped off or that it’s going to hurt.

We’re looking for the sweet spot where you can get, the right number of customers at the best possible price

It’s also the price where they’re happy to come back to you again and again, and are likely to recommend you.

There’s probably not a set price for what you sell

It’s all too easy to think that there’s a set rate in your area for your kind of work. Or that your competitors charge a similar price to you. That’s pretty unlikely, to be honest because there’s usually a broad spread of price points for any particular service or product.

I ask people nosey questions about what they charge all the time. And I’m always surprised by the range of prices people charge. Often for similar kinds of things. I find architects who charge a quarter of what I know other architects are charging. Copywriters who double or triple the day rates of other copywriters. And of course, the people who are pretty much giving it away for ridiculously low fees, and then wonder why they don’t have any money in the bank.

You get to control what you charge. Mostly.

Here’s how to have more control over this, and get to your sweetspot price.

Step 1. Think it through

Many of the business owners I work with don’t think too much about their price. They’re much more focused on the work they do for their clients, or doing whatever they can to get that juicy new customer.

Big mistake.

Having this blind spot about your price means that everything else you do to build your business is being jeopardised. Think about it. All the hours you spend going to networking events, doing online marketing, pitching for work…they become a bit pointless if you don’t sell at your sweetspot price. In some cases, this even becomes counterproductive. I’ve worked with clients whose prices were so far away from the sweetspot price that they were losing money each time they sold a new project. And others who it turned out failed the Tesco Test when we did the sums.

Don’t worry though, we can get you thinking about your pricing without it hurting at all

Step 2 – Pricing is part of your marketing

If you’re doing the right marketing, your customers already want to buy from you, and they’ll be emotionally committed. But they might have to rearrange a budget, get permission from someone else or take a deep breath to buy from you at your sweetspot price. In fact, maybe we want them to think about it, and then go ahead anyway.

You don’t want to appear to be cheap. While I’m writing this article, I’m waiting for some responses to a proposal I put on People Per Hour for a freelancer to make some changes to my Google Tag Manager. Someone offered to do the work for £30. He looks great, tons of experience, good reviews, but my gut is telling me that I shouldn’t give the job to someone who’s offering to do a complex task for just £30.

This person has messed up his marketing by appearing desperate. He’s broken the trust.

Update – I ended up giving this person some disguised pricing advice and now he’s doing the work for me.

Step 3 – Getting to your sweetspot price is all about your marketing

Not only is pricing part of your marketing, but your marketing determines what you can charge. We take this for granted with things we buy as a consumer, and accept that we’ll pay more for real Coke than Aldi cola because Coke spend more on marketing.

Except me. I’ll go for a double espresso instead, please.

But when we come to our own pricing, we forget this equation between marketing and what we can charge. If you put more effort/investment into your marketing, then you will be able to charge more. You’ll be able to get to your sweetspot price a lot faster if you make work on your marketing.

Of course, you might still want some help in working out what kind of marketing you need to do to get to be able to charge your sweetspot price, but that’s what I’m here for.

Step 4 – get confident. Or look confident

In the last 20 years of business mentoring and asking people questions about what they charge, the number one thing I’ve noticed is…

The people who charge more money are not necessarily the ones who have the most experience, the best technique or the most convincing track record. They’re the ones who are most confident.

Not necessarily the most confident about everything in life, but the most confident that people will buy their stuff at the level they want to charge for it. That is, you’re more likely to get customers to buy at your sweet spot price if you believe that they will.

Interestingly, this also seems to work for my mentoring clients if I believe that my clients will sell at their sweetspot price and tell them what to ask for.

What to do next

To get to that sweet spot price for you, we might have to do some work and use my sweetspot pricing strategy. My book Sweetspot Pricing (and the resource pack that goes with it) takes you through exactly how to work out your sweetspot price.

And more importantly, it gives you lots of great ideas to put into action to sort out your marketing, help you with pitching to clients and boost your confidence.

The short version of the book for you

Work out what you want to earn
Change your price, so it’s possible to get to your target income
Test your new price
Maybe change it again
Improve what you’re selling so that people are happy to pay more
Improve your marketing so that people are delighted to spend more – and more people are pleased to pay more

How to buy Sweetspot Pricing

You can get a copy of Sweetspot Pricing (and the resource pack that goes with it to help you set your prices) right here and start reading it in about 3 minutes.

Let me know how you get on.