Got that nagging hunch that you’re underselling yourself? Here’s how to get paid what you truly deserve!
In this episode, Samantha is joined by pricing expert Alison Haill for a deep dive into one of the most common struggles among entrepreneurs — how to confidently raise your prices and attract high-value clients.
Samantha and Alison tackle the fear of sounding greedy, the mental blocks that keep you charging less, and how your pricing directly reflects the value you bring. Alison shares insightful strategies for overcoming these barriers, and tips for creating irresistible offers that your clients can’t ignore.
Remember, raising your prices isn’t about being pushy or greedy — it’s about knowing your value and attracting clients who appreciate and invest in that value.
IN THIS EPISODE YOU’LL DISCOVER:
- The reality of underpaid women vs. highly-paid men, even with equal qualifications (00:34)
- The myth of the “right” number (04:44)
- Self-worth vs. value of your offer — Which plays a bigger role in setting prices? (08:45)
- How to package your services for maximum impact and results (11:16)
- Will finding your niche make you lose clients? (16:12)
- Why you must shift your mindset to embrace premium pricing (17:25)
- How to confidently lead sales conversations without feeling pushy or greedy (26:54)
- What to do so you can stand firm on your prices (28:51)
- How to effectively communicate your true value to your niche (38:24)
- Where to get Alison’s free guide (46:36)
RESOURCES
- Alison’s free guide: How To Get Clients by Raising Your Prices
QUOTES
“If you’re going to charge what you’re worth, you have to be really strong on what your worth is. Do you know what makes you different from other people?” – Alison Haill
“Most coaches can actually work with a really broad range of people, but when we’re talking to multiple people, no one kind of hears it. So it’s really important to speak to that one nation.” – Samantha Riley
“There’s a whole section of the marketplace that don’t want the Kmart or the Target bag — they want the Chanel, they want the Gucci. The price alludes to more value. It alludes to a completely different segment of the marketplace, and there’s a whole lot of people that just don’t want the budget.” – Samantha Riley
“Think of the clients who have done really well with you, and that’s your calibre, really. And when you’re strong on that, the next thing is your money, your feelings about money. You need to feel comfortable with money to get that out of the way and break that barrier.” – Alison Haill
“The magnetism comes from the work you’ve done on what precisely it is that you do — what is your system, your signature system, how it works so well, what results you’ve got with other people. I think all of that is a blend that you take inside yourself, which creates a kind of confidence which is magnetic, rather than arrogant.” – Alison Haill
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ABOUT ALISON HAILL
Alison Haill has 22 years’ experience as a qualified coach and 25 years as a business owner. She is a true believer in the power of coaching, has trained many coaches herself and is the published author of two coaching books.
A few years ago she turned her business round using new strategies, techniques, mindset and pricing solutions.
Now she shares these tools and techniques in her programmes “Charge What You’re Worth And Get It®” for women coaches, consultants, trainers and experts who want to make their business more profitable and sustainable – and have more free time to enjoy life.
As a client said recently “Alison is warm, challenging and incredibly perceptive”. She is also known for her engaging personality, activator’s enthusiasm and ability to inspire action.
WHERE TO FIND ALISON HAILL
- Website: https://www.alisonhaill.com/
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/alisonhaill/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/OxfordProfessionalConsulting
CONNECT WITH SAMANTHA RILEY
Facebook: Samantha Riley
Instagram: @thesamriley
LinkedIn: Samantha Riley
Twitter: @thesamriley
TRANSCRIPTION
Samantha Riley 0:02
Welcome to today’s episode of Influence By Design. I’m so excited. We’re going to be talking about attracting and signing clients. Now that’s very, very broad, but we’re going to be very deep into charging what you’re worth. We’re going to talk about being comfortable to talk about money, being comfortable on sales calls and all of the good things to make sure that you’ve got a profitable business. So welcome to the show. Alison, it’s great to have you here today.
Alison Haill 0:31
Thank you.
Samantha Riley 0:34
Now you talk about charging what you’re worth and getting it. Now, this is something that I would say just about everyone that I’ve ever spoken to wants to do. I just wish I could charge what I was worth. And, you know, I wish that I could get what I know that I’m worth. What is it that made you dive down that rabbit hole, specifically in the work that you’re doing?
Alison Haill 1:01
Well, actually, I think it’s because I’ve never felt that I’ve been paid for timeless work. When I was employed, before I started my business, I felt I was underpaid and I compared to what my husband got, and he’s got the same qualifications as me, so I think I was bringing quite a load of frustration about that. And I just think it’s so important that as women, we do get paid what we’re worth. And I do work mostly with women, coaches, consultants, and trainers. I imagine your audiences today is mixed? Or is it women only?
Samantha Riley 1:41
No, we have lovely men listening and women listening to the show.
Alison Haill 1:46
Yes, yeah. Well, I think a lot of the thing, everything, I believe, buys them as well. But I do think women take a back seat as regards talking about money, getting paid with their work.
Samantha Riley 2:00
Absolutely. What’s your, what’s your background? You said that you and your husband had the same qualifications, but you weren’t being paid the same. What were you doing that had you on such different paths getting paid different amounts?
Alison Haill 2:14
Well, we met actually on a teacher’s course at the University of London. We had both chosen to teach English as a foreign language, and I’d been for two years in Brazil getting experience, and he’d been for two years in France, and we met on the teachers qualification course, and then we went around the world together to teach English to foreigners. And then we got a masters in linguistics and this and that and the other. We were very well qualified. And I had children, and he didn’t actually go through pregnancy and maternity leave, so I had a few gaps, but basically, I worked for most of the time the same as him, but, well, that’s what we were doing when we met, and when we came back to the UK, he got a job that was very well paid in a university, and I got a job that was not very well paid and not in a university.
Samantha Riley 3:20
Interesting. And I think there’s a lot of women that can relate to that, that I think in oftentimes, even as women, and this is a very general and blanket statement, but because we are able to hold down a job, run a household, look after children, not only do we have the qualifications, but we also have this experience that makes us able to do things in ways that men can’t. Well, obviously we’re different, but we have a very unique skill set that just can’t be replicated. So I don’t know the pay gap thing. Let’s not go down that path. That’s not what we’re here to talk about today. Now you work with coaches, now, consultants, experts, trainers, what I see often is people that have been in their business for a few years, they’re really, really good at what they do. They’re good at the delivery. They’re good at training, they’ve got, you know, they’re really good at their expertise, yet they just don’t have the ability to sign the clients at the level that they would like, or the level that they would get if they were in a job. What do you generally say to people that come to you with that problem?
Alison Haill 4:44
Well, generally speaking, they come to me not with the problem that I can’t sign on clients, but that I’m under charged. I know I’m under charging. I could, I should be charging more. They’ll often come to me with that, with that line, and then when I say, Well, what’s stopping you then? It’s fear. I don’t know what to charge. I don’t know how much to go up. I’m afraid they’ll leave me. I’m afraid I’ll piss them off. All that kind of stuff.
Samantha Riley 5:18
I find that I don’t know what to charge really interesting because, and you might have a different take, but something I say to my clients is that number is just a made up number anyway. There’s not a number that is like, Oh, you’re doing this. Well, this is how much you charge. And some people are really comfortable overcharging and don’t have a problem and a lot of people that I see are definitely overcharging, and they don’t know where to find that number. So for people that are listening now, how do they find their now number, as in, if they want to increase their prices, like, how do they do that? Where do they go from here?
Alison Haill 6:02
Well, some of them will say, What do you think I should charge? And I might say, well, you’re charging x, and that’s, I know that that’s what a lot of coaches were charging in their first couple of years or something. And you’ve been, you’ve been coaching for 15 years or 20 years, or something like that. So I try not to tell people a number, because that’s for me. But the other thing is, so sometimes they know what the next number is for them, but sometimes they really pussyfoot about it, and they just, you know, they’re charging, I don’t know. Maybe it’s 6k. I’m talking UK pounds at the moment. Maybe they’re charging, well, very often they say, I’m charging 500 an hour, I’m charging 250 an hour. And I say, Well, that’s one thing to stop anyway, because giving your rate in hours suggests to the buyer that it’s the time that matters. And so that’s one of my pieces of advice. But to go back to your question, how do I answer the question, What should I charge? If you’re going to charge what you’re worth, you have to be really strong on what your worth is. You know? Do you know what makes you different from other people? And when I ask that question, very often, I get a whole lot of fluff back. I help people with their confidence, I help people with their leadership. And there’s nothing specific enough so they’re not really strong on what the value to their clients is, I mean, and so that stops them really being strong about what they want to charge. But actually, the question I most often get asked is, What should I be charging? Or something like, well, the market rate is, I don’t know, whatever. So I don’t feel happy being different. And as you say, the market rate, well, who says the market rate and the market rate for what? You know, I had a friend who was really finding it very hard to get clients, and I said, Well, maybe you need to put your prices up and she just wouldn’t, she wouldn’t look beyond the market rate, which she’d got from somewhere, and that really held her back. I don’t know if I answered your question.
Samantha Riley 8:45
Yeah, totally. So what I find interesting, and what you just said then is you were talking about charging what you’re worth, and then you talked a little bit about value. So I just want to clear this up before we move on. Are you talking about charging what you’re worth as in your self worth, or are you talking about charging what you’re worth by the value of your offer?
Alison Haill 9:10
I think it’s both. So that’s a brilliant question, which I don’t think I’ve ever been asked before. I do think it’s both, because your self worth, you’ve got to be strong in your self worth in order to be a good leader in your business. And I’m talking mostly to women and men who are the sole, the sole person in their business. So solopreneur, very often. So that’s one thing, but the worth of what you give to clients, or what clients get from working with you, I think that is super important that you’re clear on that, and that you actually are unafraid to talk about results that clients get with you. And I find that that’s something that the women I work with are, and I used to be the same, are very unused to doing. They’re talking generalities like more confidence or more productive, and it makes everybody sound exactly the same. Every offer is similar and so, and the pricing is similar because they’ve all kept it very low. Now I need to say, I know your audience today is men as well as women. So the men who are very confident to put a premium price tag on, I don’t work with people like that, because they don’t come to me. I look for female solopreneurs because I know that they, a lot of them have extra fears about being thought greedy or pushy or people won’t like me, and I think this particularly stops women.
Samantha Riley 11:16
So you mentioned that there’s the self worth of how they feel, but also the value of the offer. I’m guessing that by getting clarity on their offer is going to give them more confidence. What I find is that a lot of people, what did you call it? Pussy pudding around their pricing often comes from the fact that they don’t really understand themselves, or can’t articulate it clearly what their offer is. Do you find something similar?
Alison Haill 11:49
Well, yes, I do. I tend to talk a lot about or help my clients with how they package what they give. So that’s the offer, really. And one of the first pieces of advice from my point of view is, don’t charge by the hour. Charge by a package. You might call it a program, or a bundle, or whatever you want to call it. With my clients, I tend to talk about a program, and that enables you to stop this money for time equation. Also, I think a lot of us are quite, actually quite embarrassed about what our price is per hour, because it sounds extortionate in some cases. But when you think of what all your experience that is going into that and the results that they get, I think it’s very important that we mention the results, the results you can expect, or results clients gain from this program is, I think that’s super important. And to not just say confidence, more confidence, but confidence so that you can do this or that or the other, make decisions faster, or things that actually make a difference to your ideal clients.
Samantha Riley 13:23
How do you suggest people, or what do you suggest people think about by putting together an offer that does include value? You talked about then being really clear on the promise, but what about the actual meat and potato of the offer? Like, what is it that makes a good offer and what makes a, what has an offer being what we would call like, bad or not great?
Alison Haill 13:53
Well, I can’t really remember what I used to do, but I know that it’s taken me a long time to make my offers really zingy and with my clients, I think what makes it bad is if it’s just the same as every other one that I’ve read. The title is important. If you’ve got a good title, I mean executive coaching program, I would say, goes in the bad because it’s just so boring. And I think, you imagine a buyer. I mean, if you’re selling into corporate, then they’re going to be looking at various options. And if they look at all these executive coaching programs, there’s nothing that sticks out. But somebody who might say, I don’t know, executive accelerator or something like that, that’s just off the top of my head, it’s just going to stick out, and that reader is going to read a bit more carefully. And so that’s one of the things. The other thing is to actually put results there, not just, well, obviously not features. I think most of most of your audience, one that they’ve gone beyond giving features like it’s three weeks of this and four weeks of that. So we were all taught ages ago to put benefits, not features, but now I like to see the word results there, because it’s what people are buying you for to change something and get results. So to create it, and there needs to be a certain amount of courage to write an offer that’s going to really attract so, so to have the word results there, to have it high up in the offer, not just, you know, on the second page, and I also think, to say who it’s for at the beginning and this is something else, which we need courage for. Because a lot of coaches, trainers, and consultants, they want everybody. They don’t want to close things off by saying, I work with this niche.
Samantha Riley 16:12
They’re afraid that if they say, this is the only person that they work with, they’ll miss out on all of the other things and all of the other people. And what’s interesting about this is most coaches can actually work with a really broad range of people, but when we’re talking to one, when we’re talking to multiple people, no one kind of hears it. So it’s really important to speak to that one nation. I think that to understand that when you’re speaking to that one person, not only does it stop the scroll for that person, where they’re like, Oh, they’re talking to me, you will still get those people on the peripheral anyway.
Alison Haill 16:55
Yes, I think you’re right. And I also think people will say, if they like you, and they think you’re convincing, and they trust you, they will say, you say you only work with women, Alison, but do you work with men as well? And so although I’ve made a big thing of working with fleet of female coaches, consultants, and trainers, men will come to me if they were, if they like who I seem to be. So I think that’s the same.
Samantha Riley 17:25
Absolutely. Now, what sort of mistakes do you see coaches making when they’re really trying to attract more clients? You’ve said that, you mentioned then that, actually one of your little stories, but you didn’t kind of take that story further, that someone came to and said that they wouldn’t, they wanted to put, hang on. But Rhea, can you cut all of that out, please? That’s my editor. You mentioned that there was a friend of yours that wasn’t attracting the clients that she wanted, and you suggested that she put her prices up. Why did you suggest that she put her prices up?
Alison Haill 18:13
Well, she just seemed to be stuck. And, this was a coffee shop chat. You know, she was never going to be a client of mine, because I think coaching, and certainly a pricey coaching program, I wouldn’t want to sell that to a good friend. So I just threw that out as one of the options. And I was so fascinated by her reply that I don’t know, I have heard on various occasions, other people who say putting your prices up is a first step to getting more clients. I don’t think most of the people that I work with would naturally do that. They’d need to have a coach beside them, or be on a, in some kind of a group where they were all doing it. Because, of course, I’m talking about women here again, because that’s who I work with. But I don’t think the kind of women who come to me who want to really make their business profitable and sustainable, so that it lasts and so that they’re no longer kind of relying on their partner’s income for their way of life, those kind of women don’t, gosh, I’ve lost my train of thought. What am I talking about? Can you remind me what your question was?
Samantha Riley 19:46
Yeah, why did you suggest that your friend puts her prices up?
Alison Haill 19:54
I think because she was stuck, basically, and I wasn’t convinced by the price that she said she was charging anyway, it just seemed an odd price to me and rather low. But I know that she was unconfident, not confident, because she hadn’t actually been long in the workplace. She’d had a lot, many years of being a wife and a mother, and so she was new in running her own business, and maybe her husband had said to her, you know, this seems to be the market price, or that’s the market price and so she stuck with it as the kind of safety net or safety post. So that’s why I suggested it to her. But I think for some people, well, if you sign up for my guide, I’ll talk about my philosophy about pricing, pricing to gain clients, because I think that, well, we all know that high price suggests better quality than average.
Samantha Riley 21:03
And that’s what I thought you were alluding to when you said it. That, you know, there’s a whole section of the marketplace that don’t want the Kmart or the Target bag. They want the Chanel. They want the Gucci. The price alludes to more value. It alludes to a completely different segment of the marketplace. And there’s a whole lot of people that just don’t want the budget.
Alison Haill 21:33
Oh, absolutely, absolutely. And I think in the case of that friend of mine, it was very much a case of confidence not letting her go higher. So even if she wanted to be one of the ones that the first class passengers buy, she didn’t. She felt small. So I think if she had even opened her mind to changing her price, that might have opened something useful for her in her thinking. But yes, I think absolutely, my phrase to my clients is, you don’t see the first class cabin empty when you walk into the plane. And there are always people who want to choose the highest level, and I would say, put more than one price in your offer, so that there’s the VIP level, there’s the middle level, and there’s, the there’s the foundational, or the basic, or whatever you want to call it, the bronze.
Samantha Riley 22:41
Yeah. So when you’re talking about the first class package, what comes first, getting the confidence or getting the offer right?
Alison Haill 22:54
I think they’re both very important. Well, I think probably if I had to choose a first, I think the first for me is, know what your value is. Know, think of the clients who have done really well with you, and that’s your calibre really, and when you’re strong on that, the next thing is your money, your feelings about money. You need to feel comfortable with money to get that out of the way and break that barrier of thinking small money and greedy, pushy, oh, I don’t want to talk about money. Profits? What do you mean? I only care about my clients, you know that kind of thinking has to go in order to be able to get a powerful money mindset. And so I would say that those two things have to come very quickly together. And then I think with all this, it’s changing your mindset about it and it, we often start with the package fairly early, because there’s a client waiting, or something. So but, but then we’ll count, so we’ll do a bit on that, and then we’ll come back to it again a few months later, because all these things take time to sink in. And also you’ve got kind of tiers of how far you can go the first time around, and then you realise you could make it better. And so I think there’s, both of them are very important to keep repeating, keep going back to. Your value, I think when I work with people, first of all, it’s about something fairly superficial on their offer. But then when we get further into our work together, we really are looking at, what are the results that people get? How can you express it in a way that’s going to make a potential client think, yes, that’s something I really want. Specific results.
Samantha Riley 25:14
Totally. Now, what I find really interesting about what you said is that there’s a lot of people that are just saying, I can’t, I could never charge that. Or I don’t want to put my prices up yet. And I guess you and I work both with people who have a high degree of mastery in what they do. They’re treat experts in their field. They would never in a million years consider going, working for an employer on that wage or that salary that was low. Is that something that you find that they know they’re worth in the marketplace as an employee, but they find it difficult to transfer that value over as a solopreneur?
Alison Haill 25:55
Oh, yes, I think that’s, I think that is definitely a case with some of my clients that they were getting a fairly high salary when they decided to take early retirement, start out on their own, and then the first aim is to be earning that same salary by themselves. And then it’s a matter of putting a ticket on my own value. But I think there’s also the sales conversation, if the sales got, if you don’t have really strong confidence in what you’re offering and your price before you go into a sales conversation, it’s terribly easy to say, Oh, well, perhaps I could discount it on this occasion, or something like that. And that’s certainly not, well, they might never do that if they were employed, you know, when they were negotiating their salary.
Samantha Riley 26:54
So that fear, you mentioned it a little while ago, that fear or thought that they might be being greedy, or that fear that they’re being pushy. Let’s talk about the sales conversation. What are some of the symptoms that you see of people feeling like they could be being greedy or they could be being pushy?
Alison Haill 27:21
I think the symptoms would be, I can’t ask that, those kind of thoughts. I could never ask that, people would never pay that, that’s far too much. Those kind of self thoughts that come in the way before you even write down a price. And I think there’s also the difficulty of saying … you okay?
Samantha Riley 27:52
Yeah. It was the sneeze.
Alison Haill 27:56
There’s also the difficulty of saying that price, if it’s a price that you haven’t ever said to anybody before. It’s, you know, you have to practise in advance, otherwise, in the sales conversation it’s going to come out and kind of hesitant, garbled or …
Samantha RIley 28:12
In a high-pitches voice. Wrong way, yeah, yeah.
Alison Haill 28:16
Yes, or stuttering or anything. So I think those are the kind of symptoms that I would say, because more symptoms would be that you wouldn’t, you wouldn’t dare to put the price on the paper, or when you might put it on the proposal, but in a conversation, you might be, you know, when they said, We can never we, if the client says, oh, that’s beyond our budget, you would just move backwards, whereas when you’re courageous and you really know your value, you’d stand firm.
Samantha Riley 28:51
So how can people stand firm, even with those little thoughts in their head? Because I’m of the belief that we all have those thoughts every now and again, but there’s some people that use those thoughts or have those thoughts hold them back, and there’s some people that move forward even with those thoughts. How can, you know, what is some of the tips that you can give people listening so that they can walk into or attend a sales conversation with confidence?
Alison Haill 29:24
Yeah, well, I think one of the things that I suggest to people is that they have a conversation before they’re going to ever have the conversation, which mentions a price. They’re going to have a, I’m going to say discovery conversation, but they’re going to have a conversation where they discover what that person is looking for, and once they discover what that person is looking for, and they’ve built some trust, and they know that that person has a challenge, whether it’s for their team, if it’s in a corporation, or whether it’s for themselves, then the sales conversation, when you get to it, is much, is much more confident, because you know that there’s a real need. And if, and I think, as a service provider, you have to be ethical about this. If you know that you can meet that need, then you say, I’d love to have you as a client, and this is how it would work. But if you know you can’t, I think you should say, that’s not an area that I deal with, but I can recommend you somebody. I think we do have to be careful there and not just say yes, we’ll do it if we have no idea. So that’s again, where you need to have a strong sense of your worth inside, and what your expertise can help you to do. So I think that that’s part of it.
Samantha Riley 30:58
I love that so much. That’s something that I do. We have a short conversation with people, and if we feel like we can’t help, we don’t just turn off the lights on them. It’s like, I’m going to introduce you to someone who I feel could be better. Or here’s some good, free resources that you can go have a look, or go and check these people out. And because I agree with you, I think that there’s a bad energy that goes into signing up a client that’s not the right kind of client for you, and that you absolutely do need to know that you can help that person. And the marketplace is very discerning, and by being that type of service provider that will hold you in a greatest, in a greater, I said, at greater level, I guess.
Alison Haill 31:47
Yes, yes. And I think, I think you can, as a solopreneur, you can become desperate. You know, if you haven’t had any new clients for a few weeks or few months, you can be desperate, and that desperation seeps through. So when you say the market is very discerning, that is something that can be picked up, so that’s one thing. But I think when we are desperate, even if we’re not at such a stage of desperation that it seeps through, we might take on something that actually is, is outside our abilities, and then, I think that’s dangerous. So I think you have to be ethical and discerning yourself. So the discoveries conversation is helpful. Now you asked me a few minutes ago, what do some people do that’s wrong and bad, and I think one of the things that I’m realising is not helpful is to send out your proposal before you’ve had a really good, deep discovery conversation. And that’s what I love. This one to me do, they send out the program or the proposal, or whatever it is, far too soon with a price on it. And I think that’s dangerous, because some people will read, okay, this sounds interesting. The price is completely wrong. We’re not going to pay that. I’m sure we can beat them down, and they’ll come to the conversation anyway, but some will just read that price and think price is wrong. Let’s close it now. They won’t even come back and talk to you. So I like to send out my, first, thoughts, which I call them, or a discussion document without a price, so that we get to the conversation and we can talk more about the meat of the offer, or the program, or whatever it is, without a price tag, before mentioning the price.
Samantha Riley 34:02
As a service provider, what does, by doing it that way, what does that give you?
Alison Haill 34:10
Well, for me, it allows me to find out whether they’re interested in what I’m suggesting. Now, so it is a kind of discussion document that I send over. In fact, it may be what I’m absolutely sure will suit this person, because I’ve spoken to them before, so but it gives me the option to talk with them more about what the challenge is and what would be helpful, but it also allows them to say, for me to realise, does it actually work for them or not? So it allows me then to see their commitment, to see how excited they are about what I’ve suggested, but also it allows me to make some adjustments. If there’s something that really seems as if it’s not going to suit, or, I don’t know, because they travel too much, or whatever it is, it allows me some flexibility and that’s very helpful.
Samantha Riley 35:25
So what I’m really hearing is that you’re tailoring your solution so that it meets your client, or your potential client where they’re at and you’re not just trying to shove some, you know, of what you want to do. There has to be a meeting each other in the middle kind of thing.
Alison Haill 35:46
Yes, absolutely. It’s got to be tailored. Because, particularly if you have decided that you are quite a premium coach or consultant, it’s got to be tailored to what they need and want. But, and that’s an interesting thing as well, isn’t it, because sometimes people say they want X, but as the expert in the field, you know that they actually need Y. So there’s got to be that matching of what will be, what would be perfect for the result they want, rather than the route that they thought would get them there.
Samantha Riley 36:28
Yeah, I see this happening all the time, because as coaches, we’re wired to understand what the root cause is, but the client often doesn’t understand that yet. And a lot of coaches will go straight to the root cause, and then the prospect’s like, well, I don’t need that. That’s ridiculous, and it really is about knowing the symptoms that that prospect is dealing with, so that we’re able to speak to them about what they do know, but then we’re able, when we bring them on as a client, to help them to really understand what that problem is. It’s a conversation that we need to make sure that we open up so that they understand that we’re on the same page.
Alison Haill 37:09
Yes, absolutely. And that’s why that discovery conversation is so important, so that you really get into the well, I was going to say depth. You know, if you have a discovery call that’s 15 minutes or 30 minutes or an hour or whatever it is, you’re not going to get into everything, but you can get into enough to realise, well, what are you noticing? What would you rather notice instead? What are, you know, so that there are details there, and you can really get clear on the result that they’re looking for, because that’s going to, that will allow you to meet their want as well as their need, by talking about the results that they have talked about. Because, as you say, if we start talking about symptoms or needs that they don’t realise they have, that’s not going to help at all. So we have to use their words and use and show we’ve listened, but also show that we’re on the ball. We can help them meet those things that they said they cared about.
Samantha Riley 38:24
So we went from marketing, we’ve just been talking about sales. I want to go back to marketing again and bounce back, because I think that this conversation that we’re having is really important to bring backwards. When we’re talking about marketing, how do people attract the right people, or you mentioned, be magnetic to the right people when they think they want something different to what we know is the problem? How do you blend those two?
Alison Haill 39:00
Well, I think, how do they know what the, they have to know that their client niche really well, so that they can, so that they can understand when the person talks to them, what they’re talking about, and so that they can in anything they write, whether it’s a proposal or a newsletter or whatever it is, a blog, so that they can talk about things that are relevant to that special audience and that to go back to what we were talking about, having a niche or being a specialist, rather than talking to everybody, even though we feel we could help everybody, it does when you choose to be a specialist in some area, it does allow you to actually find out more about the people within that area, and then you can talk to them as if you really understand their position. So, how to marry the magnetic with the what?
Samantha Riley 40:18
Now to blend the symptom that the, or the outcome that the prospect thinks they want, and from the coach’s perspective, knowing what the core problem is, how to get that across in your marketing?
Alison Haill 40:37
Well, I think that’s tricky, to be honest. I think you can talk about examples. You could talk about case studies. I think the magnetism comes from the work you’ve done on what precisely it is that you do. What is your system, your signature system, how it works so well, what results you’ve got with other people. I think all of that is a blend that you take inside yourself, which creates a kind of confidence which is magnetic, rather than arrogant, and I think that will come over in what you write, but certainly in what you speak, in how you speak.
Samantha Riley 41:34
Do you personally have a system that helps people to do that, to really to, to talk about themselves in a way that is magnetic, or is that a bespoke way that you work with people?
Alison Haill 41:50
Well, I think if it would be more bespoke if it was how you speak about it. Well, anything can be done bespoke and one to one, or it can be done group, but I think I try to do that with everybody I work with, whether they’re in a group or whether they’re in a one to one relationship with me. But I think this magnetism comes from knowing, from having explored what it is that you do, and understanding its real value and I think what comes last to the people I work with is really getting into touch with the results, the results that really matter to their clients, and moving away from these fluffy terms, as I said at the beginning, like confidence and more productivity and lack of overwhelm and those kind of things. It’s being able to come down to the nitty gritty of what results clients receive from working with you, I think that adds to all this magnetism and also how to speak, actually, funnily enough, that is something that I work quite a lot with, because the language is so important in how you sound convincing and different and really authentic. So because of my work years and years ago with English as a foreign language, it’s made me, and Masters in linguistics, that’s probably made me extremely sensitive to word choice. And I think that’s very helpful. I can say it’s very helpful.
Samantha Riley 43:43
Can you give us an example of someone that came to you with a very un-magnetic way of explaining what they do and how, what you did to help them, and what came out the other side, what it transitioned into?
Alison Haill 44:02
Well, I can think of some, of one woman who pops into my mind and she, she put her, she had a very low price for her coaching programs, and she was extremely experienced. She’d been coaching for 20 or 30 years and so those were the symptoms in a way, she had low price. She knew she wasn’t charging what she was worth, and that aggravated her. And so she definitely wanted to change things, and we were and she was in a group with me, and one of my charge what you’re worth and get it group programs. And she worked with me, I think, for about two years on, in that program, various iterations. She wrote her proposals and her programs in a different way, but she also, I also helped her with how to to express different things. And when she was having conversations, difficult conversations, selling conversations, I helped her with how she could put that across what she might say, and she mentioned that she found that extremely useful, and that she hadn’t found that with any other coaches. So I know that that was something that helped her. Her programs were far more interesting, and I think she was able to put her expertise across in a much better way. Of course, I was never there when she was speaking to her clients, but I knew from the proposals, the programs that she was writing, that that made a difference. I think she never got, I never saw how enthusiastic she could be. She tended to speak in a rather plain and un-magnetic way in our group sessions. But she certainly raised her price. She doubled her price. And so when she, when she left me, actually, she left me because she decided to retire. She had got, she’d got what she wanted.
Samantha Riley 46:36
That’s awesome. Now I know that you’ve got a free resource about a free guide. Can you just explain a little bit about what that is and who it’s for?
Alison Haill 46:49
Well, this guide was written for my clients, so female entrepreneurial professionals, coaches, consultants, and trainers. I think it’s very relevant to men as well. So don’t worry, you men that are in the audience here, it really explains my philosophy about pricing, and I’ve called the guide How To Get Clients by Raising Your Prices. So it really does make it very clear that this whole idea of price tag equals quality. And so read it to get that thinking. And if it appeals to you and it makes sense to you, then I think you’ll want to review your pricing and possibly raise it so I was in a very lucid frame of mind. I think it’s quite a good piece of work, and it’s free. So, really, that’s what it’s about. And I think it’s quite convincing.
Samantha Riley 48:07
Yeah, love it. So you can get a copy of that by just scrolling below wherever you’re listening. Click the link, get your How To Gain Clients guide. And definitely raising your prices is definitely something that any entrepreneur feels good about. Alison, thank you so much for joining me today on this episode. It’s been great to chat with you.
Alison Haill 48:32
Well, it’s been my pleasure. Thanks very much for inviting me here.
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