An executive coach raised his prices by more than 40% after a single conversation
Nothing about his work changed. What changed was what he thought he was allowed to ask for.
Results
What people achieved.
No names here, and no logos. What matters is what changed, not whose face is next to it. Most of this work was with founders and consultants rather than coaches, because coach pricing is where the focus is now and it is newer. The problem underneath is the same either way. Nobody could say what their work was worth, so they charged like it.
One by one
What changed for people.
A consultant found his market was too broad for anyone to buy from
Everything downstream had been failing for that one reason, and he had been treating each failure separately. He left knowing what to narrow to.
A designer replaced ten minutes of explaining with a single sentence
Nobody could pass his name on, because nobody could repeat what he did. He left with one sentence and a €20 way to test it before building anything around it.
A coach and author found his next client in a comment he had already written
One reply in someone else's community had brought him a client months earlier. He had never worked out why, or done it again on purpose.
A coach who believed he had shipped nothing realised he ships constantly
Comments, posts, an about page. Once shipping was defined properly the blockage disappeared, because it had never been real.
One before and after question freed a stuck value proposition
What does a customer say before working with you, and what do they say after. It produced one-liners they could test that week.
A founder team left with a sharper ICP, including who they would not serve
The exclusion is the part most people avoid, and it is the part that makes the rest of it usable.
A founder team split “we can't sell yet” into three different problems
What was real, what was an objection, and what was mindset. Only one of the three needed solving first, and it was not the one they had been working on.
A strategy consultant turned his client's losing year into a twentyfold gain
He took a method from one of my workshops and used it on his own client, a trader. Down 40% over a year became twenty times the money in nine months.
What keeps coming up
The patterns behind those results.
A few things come up again and again, whatever the person does for a living.
Positioning and messaging
- Too broad is unbuyable. If your market is everyone with a leadership problem, nobody can say yes to you, because nobody recognises themselves in it.
- Attach the consequence to the claim. “I visualise your processes” becomes “so you can see where they break.” The second is an offer. The first is a description.
- Every place you describe your work should say the same thing. Most people have four versions and have never put them side by side.
Pricing
- Where the money comes from sets the ceiling. The same service bought personally, out of an HR budget, or as a team measure carries three different prices.
- Underpricing is rarely a pricing problem. It usually traces back to a value nobody has put into words yet.
- A price that is timidly in the middle can repel people. Cheap and premium both signal something. The middle often signals nothing.
Getting clients
- Trust decides who is able to buy from you. If people only hire you after working with you on something else first, that is a messaging problem wearing a sales problem's clothes.
- Networking that works can hide a messaging problem. If people need 20 minutes with you to get it, the decision turns emotional and the sales cycle stretches into years.
- Deciding what to build next should be a system, not a mood. Otherwise you build whatever surfaced that morning.
Mindset
- Shipping is not only products. A comment, a post, an about page all count. People who believe they have shipped nothing are usually shipping constantly.
- Knowing you are underpriced has never once raised anyone's rates. Insight on its own does not move behaviour.
- Likes are cheap. Comments are not. Someone who comments has already paid you with their time.
Perspective
- In the work I have done, most buyers are reducing risk rather than chasing upside. Most messaging is written for the other one.
- Early on your identity is the product. Later it becomes the business you run. You cannot change the product while you still are it.
- Most companies I have worked with formed the intuition first and assembled the data behind it afterwards.
Bring your numbers.
One call, no charge. Bring your real numbers and I will tell you what they say. If I am not the right help for you, you will hear that too.