Ant Hodges 0:00
What are you charging right now? And here's a more important question, is that number based on what the transformation is worth to the person receiving it, or is it just based on a number that you felt comfortable asking for? Because those two numbers are almost never the same. The gap between them is costing you more money. I'm ant Hodges, this is less. Is the strategy. The podcast that proves doing less is the most powerful business decision you will ever make. Are you ready to find out what becomes possible when you simplify then let's dive in.
Ant Hodges 0:49
Before I get into today's topic, I just wanted to say something. The response to this podcast already, in just the first few episodes, has genuinely moved me. Thank you for dropping the reviews that you've dropped on the different podcast platforms. For those that have dropped them, for those that have messaged me and said about flipping time I get it. You know, people are reaching out to me and saying that what I'm talking about is really landing and listen podcasting, from a business strategy perspective is good, because inquiries are coming in as a result of this as well. So all of this content that I produce on this content, I really want to speak to the heart of what I see is going on in the marketing world right now. And you know, it's I know, speaking to something that I've been feeling for a long time, and a lot of other people have been feeling for a long time. And I'm glad you know that somebody like myself is actually standing here or sitting here and recording this and finally saying it. So I want you to listen in. I want you to dial in. I want you to subscribe wherever you're listening to this podcast so you don't miss an episode, because less is the strategy. We've got to simplify, we've got to strip back, and we've got to double down and focus on the things that are working, rather than get lost in the complexity that the cult of hustle is telling us that we need to get involved with so thank you genuinely my friend, for listening, for subscribing, for sharing, for sending me messages. Please keep them coming. You're the reason that this podcast actually does exist, and the reason I will keep showing up for every episode.
Ant Hodges 2:40
Now I do owe you all an apology, everybody who's listening and you individually, I should have started this a long time ago, years, probably, and I did not,
Ant Hodges 2:51
not because I was like, I didn't know what to do,
Ant Hodges 2:56
but just the sense of
Ant Hodges 3:00
wanting To get my message out, there was a big deal, so I I had to overcome that, and I'm here now, sitting in front of a mic, speaking to you, sharing my thoughts, my beliefs, my values, the whole notion of simplification to help you really Understand that less is the strategy. So I'll be honest, you're probably going to get sick of me at some point, but I'm just going to keep going. So Right? We talked about pricing just as the starting point, and that's really what I want to talk about today. I want to ask you something, and I want to get you to sit with it honestly for a few minutes and just really think about it.
Ant Hodges 3:48
When you set your price, whatever you charge for your service or your program or your coaching or your consulting, what did you base it on?
Ant Hodges 3:59
Most people, if they're really honest, will say something like, I looked at what other people in my space were charging, or I picked a number that felt reasonable, or I was worried about putting people off, so I kept the price lower than I originally wanted, or worse still, I needed to make more sales, so I just priced it cheap.
Ant Hodges 4:18
Very few people I find will often say that I based it on the value of the transformation that I deliver.
Ant Hodges 4:28
And the difference here is huge. It's the difference between pricing based on what feels safe and pricing based on what the outcome is genuinely worth it's one of the biggest leaks in most service providers businesses. It's the one of the biggest leaks in professional service businesses. It's one of the biggest leaks full stop in business. So here's how I think about it.
Ant Hodges 4:57
Number one, you're not selling your time.
Ant Hodges 5:00
One. Number two, you're not selling a course. Number three, you're not selling a call.
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Number four, you're not selling a document or framework.
Ant Hodges 5:13
Number five, you're not selling a number of sessions. The fundamental thing that you are selling is a result a change, a before and after. And the question that should anchor your pricing is not how many hours will this take me or how many sessions is this? It's what is the result worth to the person receiving it?
Ant Hodges 5:40
If your coaching business helps business owners to add $50,000
Ant Hodges 5:46
to their annual revenue, charging $5,000 is not expensive, it's a remarkable return on investment, they make 10 times what they paid you.
Ant Hodges 5:58
If your program helps somebody finally get their health back after years of struggling. What is that worth?
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What would they pay to not feel the way that they've been feeling for the last five years?
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The transformation in any niche has a value, and it's your job to price against that value, not against your own comfort level of what the person next to you is charging or what you feel comfortable asking for in terms of a price.
Ant Hodges 6:33
I want you to really think about this, because it's a conversation that I have with members of my simplify community. It's a conversation I have with my private clients time and time and time again.
Ant Hodges 6:47
But I and I know that people turn around and say to me, ant, what if people think it's too much? What if I put them off? And my answer is always the same, good
Ant Hodges 7:01
a price that puts the wrong people off is doing exactly what it's supposed to do. Your price is a filter, my friend, it's one of the most powerful filters you have. And when you price too low, you attract people who maybe are not fully committed, who will not do the work, who will not actually get the result, and who will, you know, tell others that it didn't work because they bought from you.
Ant Hodges 7:30
Premium pricing attracts a different kind of client, someone who's decided that they're serious, who's got some skin in the game, who shows up and does the work and get results and then tells everybody about it.
Ant Hodges 7:45
I raised my pricing during my agency years, we were kind of just pricing based on the number of hours the team would put in to really pricing on this transformational value, and I was supremely confident that we could help our clients to literally double, if not triple, their business. And so what we started to charge at our very top end was 10k per month as a service. I was supremely confident that we could add half a mill, if not a mill, to someone's business if they were at a stage where they had proven offers, they had an audience built already, and they had they had investment ready to put into their marketing, it's not that we were creating something from scratch. We were taking an existing business and we were elevating and we were putting we were like the catalyst to those embers in their marketing that would just take off, and it worked because we attracted the right level of clients in the agency time
Ant Hodges 8:51
and even now. You know my mastermind pricing as an example, and the quality of applicants who applied to become part of my mastermind has gone up.
Ant Hodges 9:04
More people have applied. There are better conversations. There's a higher commitment from people, and there are better outcomes from the people who are in it, because they're just getting on with things.
Ant Hodges 9:18
The number one thing I always say to people is that implementation is your only superpower. You need to succeed. I wrote about it in my book simplify the funnel. You can grab your copy over at simplify the funnel.com.
Ant Hodges 9:34
Implementation is the only way you're going to succeed. And by attracting a more premium level client, they're more serious. They're investing at a higher level. They're actually doing the work. It's those people who really haven't committed or got too much skin in the game that I really don't hear from, and sometimes who stay where they are for months, if not years.
Ant Hodges 10:00
And it's hard, because I want them to succeed, but I can't force them to take action. I can't force them to show up in that way.
Ant Hodges 10:09
So raising my pricing and doing this in my own business, and where I've seen other people do it,
Ant Hodges 10:17
you know, it's it's changed the dynamics a little bit when someone invests significantly in something, they show up, they take it seriously, and they make it work. That's the psychology of commitment. So it's not a coincidence that raising your prices gets better clients and gets better results. It's because of that commitment that they're making. And
Ant Hodges 10:41
there's something else I want to say about this, and it's probably something that most people miss when they think about raising their prices. Keeping your pricing low does not make you more accessible. It makes you less sustainable. When you're under charging, you need more clients to hit the same revenue. More Clients means more complexity. More complexity means you have less time and energy for each client. Less time and energy for every client means the results are just not going to be as good as they would be. And worse still, results means your business is either going to thrive or it's going to grow slowly those level of results that you bring in. So if you don't get your clients great results, then it's not going to grow as quickly. But if you get amazing results, then your reputation builds even faster, and your business will grow.
Ant Hodges 11:38
So actually, in reducing your pricing, not only are you putting this out into the world that actually you might not necessarily offer as much value as other people who are charging more,
Ant Hodges 11:53
it actually gives the complete opposite effect to your business than what you intended it to you kept the price low to help more people, and the result is that you're helping fewer people.
Ant Hodges 12:06
And it's, it's a battle of the mind, and the majority of the time it's because you're selling from your own pocket. What I mean by that, and it's a phrase I've used a lot, you know, don't charge lower pricing and sell from your own pocket, because what you're doing is you're making a decision for your customer and for your client about what it is that they're going to pay.
Ant Hodges 12:33
And selling from your own pocket is really the whole notion of if your business is struggling, if you are not generating the revenue that you want and you want to grow your business. Then when you think subconsciously about the service that you're going to put out there, you'll think, could I afford to pay for this?
Ant Hodges 12:53
And sometimes that stops you from charging the right amount, because you're selling from your own pocket. Could I buy this? No, I don't have the money to do that. Okay, so let me reduce it to a price where maybe I could, and then I'll attract people like me.
Ant Hodges 13:09
You want to attract the right clients, the right customers, the right members,
Ant Hodges 13:15
and that's where you need to charge properly.
Ant Hodges 13:18
When you charge properly, you can take on fewer clients and give each one more of yourself and genuinely deliver a better result. They will tell people, and your reputation will build. The business will grow on the bracket of the transformation that you're bringing, not the transaction volume,
Ant Hodges 13:41
fewer clients, better results, higher pricing. That is the simple business model. So how do you figure out what to charge? Well, my friend, start with the result. What result are you supremely confident that you can get for your customers and for your clients. Because once you align yourself to something that you are 100%
Ant Hodges 14:10
convinced that you can help somebody to achieve a result for, then you're going to value it probably more than they will. So get really specific about what changes for the person on the other side of working for you, what would become better? What would become different? What can they do, have or feel that they wouldn't have, had felt or been able to do before they engaged with you?
Ant Hodges 14:38
Once you get really clear on that and confident about that result, you'll be able to say, Okay, well, if working with me over the next 10
Ant Hodges 14:49
if working with me over the next 12 months means that I can double your business, I'm confident that I can get there, once you're confident of something like that, you're not going to be.
Ant Hodges 15:00
Struggling to sell it, because if you're not confident yourself, then you won't be in alignment, and people will pick up on it.
Ant Hodges 15:08
So once you get that clarity, you've started with the result, and you're aligned to it, and you're supremely confident that you can get it. Ask yourself, honestly, what is that worth?
Ant Hodges 15:23
What would a reasonable person pay to have that result,
Ant Hodges 15:28
and what people have paid for to get similar outcomes, could be a way in which you discern what it's worth if someone, for instance, if you're a leadership coach, and somebody may have paid an accreditation agency or consultancy firm to do an accreditation around leadership,
Ant Hodges 15:52
what did it cost them to get that accreditation?
Ant Hodges 15:57
And then you look at your pricing, and you will potentially offer even more transformational value than just a simple accreditation program, because you might be offering some one to one coaching and some check ins and some accountability over a period of time, not just a simple accreditation week, for instance. So if I've seen leadership accreditation programs that are worth in an in excess of around $20,000
Ant Hodges 16:26
and it's some home study and then a few days in a hotel to get accredited,
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if you could offer for the same money,
Ant Hodges 16:37
maybe like a 12 month coaching program or a Six Month coaching program to get them a very similar result, but you walk them along the way, you keep them accountable more, and actually you're looking at ways to help that transformation bed in, rather than them just walking away with a certificate and then having to work it out afterwards. Could a six month coaching program at 25,000 be worth it, more so than anything, because I've done those accreditation programs as an example in different niches. I accredited as a master coach. But the challenge was, after that accreditation, where's the support, where's the implementation behind it, I'd actually much prefer that way of getting that transformational value. And I think it's this real sense of belonging that people want more than anything. They want to feel like they've got that accountability over time. They don't just want to pay a certificate and put a badge on the wall or something like that,
Ant Hodges 17:41
but in some industries, that's what's required. But give them the requirement, but offer them even more transformational value,
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if your pricing reflects an increase exponentially of the transformational value that you can bring compared to something similar in your industry or niche,
Ant Hodges 18:04
then the sale does itself.
Ant Hodges 18:07
You know, most coaches, consultants, service providers that I've worked with, they're not actually overcharging. The ones I've worked with over the last 20 years are almost always doing the opposite. They're undercharging because they haven't yet fully believed in the value that they do. That's the number one challenge,
Ant Hodges 18:30
and what this disbelief does,
Ant Hodges 18:33
it communicates to yourself
Ant Hodges 18:38
and to the client before you've even said a word about your product or service because of the label, the price label that you've put on, people can feel when you're not fully behind what you charge and when they feel that, they'll they'll kind of push back
Ant Hodges 18:56
when you believe it, they'll also feel it too, and the conversation changes completely. So the transformational value you need to kind of work that out.
Ant Hodges 19:09
You need to be able to discern how it's different from something else in the industry, or compared to the pain or the challenge of staying where they are right now,
Ant Hodges 19:20
and your own belief in it needs to be fully aligned with the conversations that you have and the positioning that you have and all of those kind of things, because if it doesn't,
Ant Hodges 19:33
there's going to be that pushback.
Ant Hodges 19:36
Let me talk about a very simple kind of version of all of this.
Ant Hodges 19:43
Price for transformation is about charging for the outcome.
Ant Hodges 19:49
So let the price filter the wrong clients and bring the right ones. You know, if you can deliver an exceptional result for fewer people.
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You build a business on the back of real outcomes, rather than on volume.
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That's the simple business model. So we work with less people, we deliver even better results, we earn even more, and our reputation builds stronger than it would have done before.
Ant Hodges 20:21
I want you to have a look at your pricing this week. I want you to have a think about increasing your pricing, not to just falsely inflate it, but to honestly ask, Does this reflect the transformation I deliver?
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If the answer is no,
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then it's time to change it, my friend, I
Ant Hodges 20:44
want to thank you for being here on the podcast. We're only a few episodes in, and as I said at the top, I'm genuinely enjoying this more than I expected, in terms of sharing my wisdom, sharing what I believe about this whole industry, how less is the strategy for anything that we want to be able to grow our business. If you're in this build phase of business right now, and you're, you're building something, and you want to step into growth phase, or you're, you've kind of grown the business, but you're looking to scale all of what I'm going to share with you moving forward on this podcast is for you,
Ant Hodges 21:20
and I want you to subscribe wherever you are right now. If you're sat there and you think I had this conversation with somebody this week, this really resonates, I'd encourage you, my friend, please share this episode, or any episode, with somebody who needs to hear it. It literally doesn't cost you anything to consume this. It doesn't cost you anything to share it, but the value that it's going to bring, I believe, in transforming any industry that we've can tap into to simplify and to move forward. That's the impact that I want in the world, which is the purpose behind me doing this. So here in this episode, I got you thinking about your pricing.
Ant Hodges 22:03
I do want you to sit with it and ask that question, what is the transformational value really worth? In my book? Simplify the funnel. I do go deeper on this specifically how to build a simpler offer suite that commands premium pricing without complexity. You can find it all over at simplify the funnel.com
Ant Hodges 22:26
at simplify the funnel.com. Where you can get a copy of my book.
Ant Hodges 22:32
Next week, I want to keep building on this idea. We're going to talk about selling specifically and why the best sales conversations don't feel like sales at all, and what actually moves somebody from just an onlooker to somebody who's committed. So if you gain make sure you're subscribed. Make sure you don't miss next week's episode. I'll be unpacking my selling without selling in that episode, and give you an insight into how I convert 90% of my own sales calls.
Ant Hodges 23:06
I've been ant Hodges. This is less is a strategy. I can't wait to speak to you again very soon. Please do follow me over on Instagram at ant Hodges, grab a copy of my book at simplify the funnel.com,
Ant Hodges 23:19
or share this episode with somebody who needs to hear it less is the strategy, and we will make it work. I'll speak to you next
Ant Hodges 23:30
time. Bye for now. You.