How to work with fewer clients that pay you more – Part 2: new clients

Leah 0:02

Working with fewer clients that pay you more. It isn't something you achieve by just doing one thing you don't spot fix it. It's the result of doing many things right, which is why we call it a system. And so here is the system to get higher paying clients so that you can work with fewer clients that pay you more. Welcome to the Smart Gets Paid Podcast with me, Leah Neaderthal, I help women land higher paying clients in their independent consulting businesses, but I've never been a salesperson. My background is in corporate marketing, and when I started my first consulting business, I learned pretty quickly that it's about 1000 times harder to sell your own stuff than it is to sell someone else's. So I taught myself how to do it, and I created the sales approach that I now share with my clients so they can feel more comfortable in the sales process. Get more of the right clients and get paid way more for every client contract. So whether your client contracts are $5,000 $100,000 or more, if you want to work with more of the clients you love, do more of the work you love, and get paid more than you ever thought you could, then you're in the right place. Let's do it together. Thanks for tuning in, and don't forget to rate, review and share. Hey there. Leah here, thanks for tuning in. I hope that wherever you're listening to this, wherever you are right now, you're having a great week, making some good progress on your business and taking some time for you.

All right, so welcome to the second in our two episode series about how to work with fewer clients that pay you more, so that you can hit your revenue goals without having to work with as many clients, and so that you don't get overworked. Now if you listened to the last episode, you know that we're tackling this in two parts. The first part is how to raise your prices with current clients so that you don't have to take on as many clients. And we started there because the best potential clients are the ones you've already worked with or the ones you're already working with. So in the last episode, you heard me talk to a client of mine who realized at the end of the year that she had worked with 20 clients. That's just way too much, especially for the work that she does, which is pretty intensive and working pretty closely with her clients.

And so as you heard we talked about how she can raise her prices with current clients, and how to approach that conversation. And you also heard how, using value based pricing that we walked through in that episode, she was able to renew six of her existing clients for new six month contracts at a 50% increase across the board, which resulted in $45,000 in new revenue just from those six clients that would have otherwise been left on the table, so an additional $45,000 from six clients. So she was well on her way to being able to work with fewer clients that paid her more, starting with her existing clients. So now in this episode, we're going to look at how to get new clients that pay you more so that you could hit your revenue goals without having to take on as many clients. So we're going to look at why you might want to do that. We're going to talk about the steps to be able to work with fewer clients that pay you more. We're going to look at what actually doesn't work, and we're going to share a few things you can do today. So stick around right after this first. I just want to put something out there before we even begin. Because I think it's important to know that if you're someone who wants to work with fewer clients that pay you more, it's important to know that doing this in your business isn't something where you just sort of flip a switch, like you just make a few changes and poof, your business is different overnight. It's really about transforming your business and doing many things right consistently.

And when you can do that, when you can do many things right consistently, you can transform your business. Because what we're really talking about here is changing the ratio of clients in your business. It's kind of like changing the concentration of a solution in chemistry, like maybe at first you'll have all smaller contracts, or mostly smaller contracts, and maybe one big contract. Then after a while, you'll have some bigger contracts and some smaller contracts, and then after a little longer, you'll have a greater percentage of bigger contracts, and still maybe one or two smaller contracts. Maybe you want to have smaller contracts at that point. So I just want to put that out there, because I don't want someone to listen to what I'm sharing here, do these things for a month and be like, it didn't work. Like, don't be that guy. Because, like, nearly everything we talk about in B to B consulting, it doesn't happen overnight. It's not a switch that you flip. It's a process that brings about a transformation. So let's look at why you might want to do this, like why you might want to work with fewer clients that pay you more. So for a lot of women who decide that they want to work with fewer clients that pay them more, they make that decision really from experience, because they realize that they've hit their revenue goals, maybe they've made good money or great. Money working with too many clients and getting overworked or burned out. And so they decide that they want to work with fewer clients that pay them more for a few reasons, and maybe these are your reasons too. They might want to give more and work more deeply with a few clients, instead of being spread across a number of clients.

One of the women I spoke to recently said, I want to work with just a few clients, because I want to give them my all. If I'm pulled in a million directions, I'm not doing that for them. If I just work with a few clients on a deeper level, I can pour more of me into it. She goes, at the height of my business, I had seven clients, and I felt really disconnected. She goes, I want fewer so I can be more for them. So that's one reason why you might want to work with fewer clients that pay you more. In other cases, women find that they're just working too much, so they want to be able to take on fewer clients that pay them more, so they have more time for themselves or time with their families or the things they care about. One client of mine said that she found that she was working all the time, which was taking time away from her family, and it started to make her really resentful of her clients. So for many people, making this shift is a quality of life thing, and in other cases, people want to change the mix of clients just because they want to, and because they know it's possible. They know they don't need to take on that many clients to make a great living. I mean, this isn't a B to C thing, like a membership or something where you have to have hundreds of members, or you're not selling a low cost, course, where you're like, constantly trying to sell this thing for $99

This is consulting where clients do regularly pay 10s and hundreds of 1000s of dollars for your expertise, and it's just not necessary to take on that many clients to make a great living. And because they're solopreneurs, or maybe they have a small team of contractors, it's possible to make a meaningful change by working with just a few clients that pay you more. Like if you went from 20 clients to say, you know, six to eight, like my client did in the last episode, that's a meaningful difference. I mean, even going from 10 to six is a meaningful difference. So there are many reasons why you might want to level up your clients and get fewer clients that pay you more. And before we talk about what will work to make this shift in your business, let me talk just quickly about what won't work, what you're not going to hear me say you're not going to hear me say that to work with fewer clients that pay you more, you need to raise your prices, or work with bigger companies or create a higher priced offer and put it on your website.

So again, the things that won't work, raising your prices, working with bigger companies, or creating something higher priced and putting it on your website. So I tackled the first one in the last episode, and if you haven't listened to it yet, which I encourage you to do, but if you haven't listened to it, you don't just raise your prices, raising your prices on what you're already charging. That'll help you get paid a little more, but not a lot more. Instead, you need to use value based pricing to create a value based scope and price service that's high value for the client and extremely profitable for you, because then you're delivering something new, not simply just trying to raise your prices a little, because raising your prices alone won't get you there. So let's talk about the second thing you don't have to do work with bigger companies, and if you work with nonprofits, this could also mean working with bigger nonprofits. So if you wanted to work with fewer clients that paid you more, you might assume that you have to work with bigger companies. I mean, because bigger companies have more money, right? But here's the thing, just because they have more money doesn't mean they want to give it to you. You still have to know how to lead a sales process and actually get the Work Sold in in these bigger companies that are really complex in their structure of approvals and whatnot.

And in fact, it can be even harder to sell into big companies because of the long sales process, the levels of process and bureaucracy and on and on. So if you've been worried that if you want to work with fewer clients that pay you more, you were worried that I was going to tell you that you have to work with bigger companies, don't worry, because you don't have to do it. And the third thing I'm not going to tell you to tell you to do is to create a higher value offer and put it on your website. Here's the truth, nobody is going to randomly stumble onto your website, see your service and want to hire you for it. Your website is the smallest, tiny corner of a vast Internet, and very few people are going there, as opposed to a place like LinkedIn where people are going so putting something in your website is not actually selling it. It is not marketing it. So if you've created something, stuck it on your website and felt like you did it, unfortunately, it's just not going to work. But the truth is that. When you know how to do the things that we're going to talk about here, like getting in front of your ideal clients and positioning your value and leading a sales process and more, when you know how to do that, even small or mid sized companies will pay for value, and they may pay much more than you think they will when you know how to attract them and you know how to land them. I mean, my clients in the Academy are proving this out every day.

As I was putting together this episode, I went into our wins channel and pulled just a few wins that people posted recently. And keep in mind, these are all solopreneurs selling into companies or nonprofits and getting paid way more for the same work. So one of my clients recently sold, in her introductory offer to a new client, she said she normally would have sold it for $17,000 but she reconfigured it using value based scope and pricing, and she sold it for 22 five so right off the bat, she's making $5,500 more for each one of those that she sells. That means, for every three of those engagements that she sells, it's almost like she gets paid for a fourth and she didn't have to lift a finger. Another client said that she stopped thinking about hours and now these are her words. Quote, how much they would pay if I was in house and priced it at what I want. She said she offered it to two clients. One said, Yes, immediately it was a past client where she turned it into a value based price service and doubled her fee, and the other she increased 3x after restructuring her offer, and they both said yes. And just to put a fine point on this idea that clients will pay for the value when you know how to help them say yes, one of my clients won a new contract with a new client, and after she won it, she found out that she was actually up against another consultant in her space. But they picked my client, and they picked her even though she charged 60% more than the other consultant, and they had to cover her travel, whereas the other consultant was local and her separate coaching rates, which is something else that she had included in the proposal. Her separate coaching rates were twice the other consultants rates. And my client goes on to say it's just a great real world reminder that it's not a race to the bottom on pricing, but that clients will pay for the value they want with the consultant they believe will get it for them.

Okay, so how do you get there? Like, what is necessary to change the concentration and work with fewer clients that pay you more? So as I was preparing this episode, I asked two of my Academy members. I was having a one on one call with each of them, and separately, each one was saying that the biggest change in her business is that she's working with fewer clients that pay her more. And so I asked both of them like, what do you think are the biggest game changers that got you here? One of them said finding my voice and being more consistent on LinkedIn, letting people know this is what I'm good at and what I do, and setting boundaries for myself. And the other one said understanding my value, building out value based pricing and trusting my clients. So which one is right? Both of them. Because the truth is, all of it is right, because this is a system working with fewer clients that pay you more. It isn't something you achieve by just doing one thing you don't spot fix it. It's the result of doing many things right, which is why we call it a system. And so here is the system to get higher paying clients so that you can work with fewer clients that pay you more.

All right, so let's go through what's necessary. And there are five key things. And actually, hold on, there's something that we need to sort of set out even before we get to those five things. And actually, as I was preparing this episode, I almost forgot about it, because it seems so obvious, but for a lot of women, it's really not and that is to work with fewer clients that pay you more. You have to know who you want to work with. Like you need to know who your ideal clients are. And I don't mean like you need to figure it out. I mean just choose who you want to work with. A lot of women are stuck working with any client who comes their way, which is, of course, not the way to work with fewer clients that pay you more. But they're stuck there because they're not willing to choose or to decide who they want to work with. And I will tell you, if you don't know what you want, you probably aren't going to get it. So everything I'm going to share here assumes that you're willing to make a choice about who you want to work with who you are best suited for, who you can be the most successful with, because I'll tell you that without that, you will always be just working with whoever comes your way.

All right. So with that, here are the five keys to being able to work with fewer clients that pay you more. Number one, communicate your value. And when I say communicate your value, I mean communicate it to the right clients. A lot of times, when people aren't getting paid, what they could be getting paid or they'll say, you know, their clients won't pay them more. It's because they're not talking to the right clients. And that doesn't mean they're talking to clients who are too small. It means they're talking to clients who don't. See the value and aren't willing to pay for the value. So if you're talking about your business in terms of what you do, like the tactics of what you do, then people will come to you for the tactics because they want you to do something, but just because they want you to do something doesn't mean they see the value. And if you've ever felt like you have to convince clients to see your value, then you know how frustrated and demoralizing it is and how crappy it feels, but when you talk about your work in terms of the value, people will see the value immediately from that first sentence, what we call the painkiller statement. Because when you communicate your value and you start with your painkiller statement, you start to attract clients who understand the value and want that value for themselves, and getting paid for your value is absolutely necessary if you want to work with fewer clients that pay you more because they're paying you for the value that your work delivers to their business, and they can't pay you for value if they don't know the value.

So communicating your value is key. And in our system, we communicate the value everywhere in the painkiller statement that I mentioned, in how we title our services, in how we communicate the outcomes of our work, and how we follow up every touch point puts the value front and center, because when the clients understand the value, they will pay for the value, and if they don't see the value and don't need the value, then they're not your client. We'll get to that one in a minute. The second key is, get visible, show up. Now there are a few parts to this one. The first is the most basic, you have to actually be seen. So many women consultants are out there being quietly awesome. And another way to say quietly awesome is invisible. Clients can't hire you if they don't know about you. Now, of course, you can be quietly awesome and still get the haphazard referral here and there. And a lot of women are doing just that. They're just existing that way. But when you don't show up for yourself and you only respond to the clients that happen to come to you, then you'll feel compelled to take on those clients, because you don't have any other way to get them. You don't have a system, so you have to take them on, even if they're not great or they can't pay your rates like you literally have no choice, and you can't shift your business to work with fewer clients that pay you more if you're only accepting what comes your way, you have to show up and actually be seen by your ideal clients.

Talk about what you do and who you do it for when my client said that two of the game changers for her were, quote, finding my voice and letting people know this is what I'm good at and what I do, that's what she's talking about. You have to show up and market your business. And I just have to say here, women are always like, you know, I feel so weird marketing my business, or I don't want to be seen as marketing my business. But I have some news for you. Marketing your business is part of business. There is no business out there, big or small that grows and is profitable without marketing the business. Marketing your business is part of business, so get visible. Start talking about what you do, let potential clients see how you think, and you will start to be the driver in your business development, instead of just taking what comes your way. And that's why getting visible and showing up is a really important way you go from smaller engagements to working with fewer clients to pay you more. The third necessary step is turning your services into value based scope and price services. So we talked about this one in the last episode where we walked through the four components of value based pricing.

So if you already listened to that one, you are one step ahead. And I'm not going to go through the whole thing again here, but what you need to know is that you have to use value based scope and pricing to turn your work into value based scope and price services, because value based services are high value to the client and also highly profitable for you. They allow you to charge a lot more without doing a whole lot more, because they're structured in such a way that the client gets a tremendous amount of value. And when you do that, you communicate the value, and you don't let anyone get any value they're not aware they're getting. So go back and listen to that episode, Episode 97 for the whole process on that and the four components of value based, scope and pricing, all right. So so far, we've talked about communicating your value to your ideal clients, getting visible and showing up and turning your services into value based scope and price services. The fourth key to being able to work with fewer clients that pay you more is to be able to actually get the Work Sold in, to actually help them say yes, because you can have great messaging, you can show up and be visible. You can have great value based price services. And if you can't lead the sales process and help clients say yes, then you won't get the client or the contract.

And this is actually something I'm super passionate about. It's like kind of a soapbox for me, and it's a big part of my approach. Because here's the thing, to get consulting clients, you need. Two things you need people to sell to, and you have to know how to land them. These are equally important. And if you've ever started talking to a potential client and you hit it off, and you wrote a proposal and you sent it off to the client, and it felt like it went into this black hole where you sort of had no idea how to actually move it forward and get it signed, and you stopped hearing from them, then you know what talking about. What we've been talking about so far in terms of getting visible and showing up and having great messaging, that's all part of the people to sell to. Part it brings potential clients to you. And actually, from what I see out there in the landscape, when a lot of business coaches or people who promise to get you clients, or say they'll help you get clients or whatever. For most people, that's all they're talking about. The people to sell tooth part, and then they leave it up to you to actually get the Work Sold in. And that ends up with what we call fingers crossed selling. You're just sort of sitting there with fingers crossed, hoping you say yes, but to actually create a new client, you need both. You need to sell to the right people and know how to land them.

Having a value based price service is part of knowing how to land them, and so is this part number four, knowing how to get the work sold in. And so to do that, we have to understand what's going on in the client's world. We have to understand what's called the process buying journey, the process by which they actually say, Yes, we have to lead the client through a sales process and follow up effectively and do what we call be an ally to our client. When you're working with your clients in a deeper way, that's higher value for them and the price tag is bigger, you can't simply send a proposal and have your fingers crossed. You have to know how to get the work sold in. So we've talked about the first four keys to moving to working with fewer clients that pay you more. Number one, be able to communicate your value. Number two, getting visible, showing up and telling people what you do. Number three, moving to value based pricing. And number four, actually being able to get the work sold in and now the fifth key, number five, set boundaries and stick to them. So simply put stop saying yes to lower priced work.

Now I know that probably sounds scary if you don't have a way to actually market your business and get clients, which, again, is why all these things are connected, you can stop saying yes to lower price work when you know how to get higher price work. But really, there is no substitute for simply saying no to clients that can't pay your rates not bending over backwards to make it work. For a client that can't really afford you, if they can't afford you, or if they're asking you to bend over backwards to make it work, then they're probably just not your client. I mean, listen, if you've worked with me, you've heard me say that, of course, you're allowed to take on any client at any price for any reason, based on what's going on with you or in your business, even LOWER price work. But I want you to take on that work because you want to not because you have to take whatever work that comes your way. So the way you stop saying yes to lower priced work is to know whether you're aligned on price to begin with, and that takes talking about price up front, even in the first call, which is why, in our system, I teach all my clients how to talk about price in the first conversation, so you know if you're even in the ballpark on price.

And that's not, let me be clear, that's not asking what their budget is. That's the wrong question. The way you do it is by telling them what your price starts at and asking if that's what they expected. Without that information, when you put together a proposal, you're just guessing about what they can pay. And here's why talking about price upfront is so important to being able to stop saying yes to lower price work. The longer you stay in a sales process with someone who can't afford you, you'll experience what's called investment bias, which means the longer you stick with something, the more compelled you'll feel to try to make something work. So the key to stop saying yes to lower price work is to know whether they can afford you. And the key to knowing whether they can afford you is to talk about price as early as possible. So those are the five keys. Number one, being able to communicate your value. Number two, get visible and show up and tell people what you do. Number three, move to value based scope and pricing. Number four, actually be able to get the work sold in. And number five, stop saying yes to lower priced work.

So you might have been listening to this so far, and you might be thinking or saying to yourself, yeah, this might work for some people, but my clients can't pay more. And every time I talk about this, I always get people who get really angry at me and tell me that their clients can't pay more. And I mean, on one level, you're right, the clients you've gotten so far, the ones who have happened to come your way, maybe those past clients don't want to pay more. But let's think about how you got those clients. If you're. Most women consultants out there, you probably aren't communicating your value as clearly as you could be. You aren't marketing yourself or your business in any meaningful or strategic way. You're talking to clients who maybe can't afford you in the first place, so the wrong clients. You aren't talking about price up front. You aren't doing value based pricing. You aren't writing compelling proposals. And trust me, I see a lot of the proposals that people are doing when they think they're doing it well, and you aren't effectively leading the sales process. You aren't doing any of those things, and you're still convinced it just won't work for you. That's such fixed mindset thinking. It's such a limiting belief. And in fact, I actually did an episode on that with the help of some of my clients. It's episode 25 and it's literally called it's called episode 25 if your clients can't pay higher rates. And the truth is that when you have a strategy to get in front of the right clients, when you have a strategy to start talking to the clients that are the best clients for you, when you begin the conversation at the level of value, when you use value based pricing, when you put together winning proposals, and when you can lead a sales process and navigate the jungle to help your clients say, yes, you can. You can do this.

Don't let what happened when you didn't have a system dictate what you think you can do when you have one. So we've talked about why you'd want to work with fewer clients that pay you more, we've talked about what's possible when you do. We've talked about what won't work. And then we walked through the five steps to help you get there. And the last thing I want to leave you with is this, when you put in the work to be able to work with fewer clients that pay you more, and you create your value based pricing, and you put yourself out there, and you go talk about your new pricing, all of those things, it will feel a little uncomfortable at first. I was talking to a client who had this same goal of working with fewer clients that paid her more, and so she turned her services into value based price services. And we talked about her positioning, her painkiller statement, we talked about how to lead a sales conversation, all of that, and when it came time to share her new services and her new pricing with a potential client, let's just say she had some feelings. So we had the conversation that you're going to listen in on now, and I want you to hear this, because this will probably come up for you too, as background this client used our approach for value based scope and pricing to turn her usual service from 12 five, so $12,500

to a higher value service where she's charging 18 five, right? $18,500 so again, she's going from 12 five to 18 five. And here what happens next? I want to send a huge thank you to this client for allowing me to share this conversation with you. Take a listen, and at the end, I'll come back and leave you with a final thought. Hi. How you doing good? How are you good? Good? So fill me in. Let's do like a just a two minute update on what you've been working on. I know we talked about the framework, but tell me how, even the stuff we worked on before that, with the pricing, how is all that sort of shaking out?

Yeah, so the stuff we worked on last time, I didn't really touch, I did start thinking about, I did, like a brain dump of like, trying to develop that framework, and started to plug it into just a visual thing to see how it was working, so I can share that with you. And so I guess one thing you know, I haven't rewritten the proposal. I still, I was still using my old proposal, and I had a call with a client who would be a great fit. Definitely, they need it. And I sent her my proposal at 12,500 and she wrote back, and was like, Oh, I don't know if we can make that budget work. I'll have to get back to you. Like, we probably only have, like, 10 I haven't responded yet because I got that email yesterday, but I'm not gonna. I'll be like, All right, just let me know if it's a fit or whatever. But that does make me nervous for raising the price, since I haven't raised it's not the new proposal, and it's not like structured in the same way, but it was just something, it's just something that's happened since our last

call. Okay, yeah. So sample size of one, yes. So sample size of one, old proposal, old pricing. Proposal, old pricing. So what are we talking about?

Well, I don't know. I just, I was just like, is it going to be too much? I don't know. It might be too much for that. Yeah, but I'm just scared. Let me just, I just want to look something up really quick so they're like, 40 grand a year. I don't want to, like, harp on that too much, but it's something that just got me thinking again, as I'm, like, thinking through these things with you and trying to figure out a new way to present it. I'm like, it didn't, it didn't get you thinking. It got you freaked out. It did, yeah, it made you freaked out. Yeah, a little bit. Yeah, all right, okay, let me offer a few thoughts, yeah, okay. One question is, did you talk about price in the in when you were having sales? Like, the conversations with her I did.

I did you say specifically, like, it starts at 12, yeah, I did, yeah. And in that conversation, she was like, that sounds good. We can do that.

No, she was like, Okay. And then I said, and then we were talked about that, I send my proposal. She said she had to review it with people. And then her email, thank you so much for this. I'll have to talk to a few others to see if I can work with that fee. I'm not sure I have more than 10k at this point. I'll be back in touch.

All right. So that's also not a no, yes, right? True, yes. Okay, so all of in your mind and our just because we were all 12 year old girls, once you know what I'm saying, like, we read that and we're like, oh my gosh, yeah, true. So it's not a no, yeah, it's a good buying signal that I had to talk to some people, yeah, because she does one person, especially in an organization like this, it's complex. They're decision makers or stakeholders. I'm curious why you didn't offer the new pricing that we talked about.

Because I haven't had time to put it into a proposal format yet. That's fine, yeah, another thing this sort of falls into this. I think the bigger sort of question is, your new price might be too expensive for some clients, yeah, but remember why we started this process? Yes, yes. Because you don't want all the clients. You actually want fewer clients.

True. Okay, so, like, the fact that this woman is like, let's remember she didn't say no, but let's just say, like, it's not, let's just say it's not. She says it's not a fit, yeah, yeah. Like, you are not loading yourself up with these, like, lower paying clients, yeah, yeah. I think I said, when we say, last time I because I remember you had this minor freak out moment last week, yeah, that we joked about, it's like, don't stop before you get what you want. Yes, yeah,

I know you're right. Yeah, good reminder,and it will be a transition, and you might get you will if you do this right, I just, let me just prepare you, yeah, if you do this right, you will get more nos. Yeah, yes, you're right. Because how many yeses do you need? Yeah, I know. So if you, if you do this right, you will be for the right people. You will be able to give your all. I remember that's another thing that you said at the beginning, right? You felt so stretched thin there.

Yes, and if I can do this, this new process, like, not just less of these clients, but then having more, if they stay on, like, having this whole thing that we talked about, so it's just like the engagement that, yeah, what was it like, yeah? That that would take away from even having to do, like, some of these smaller projects for other past clients. So it'll take away a lot of that too. If I can just get more, like, let's kick off together and keep going.

Yeah, this is fewer clients, yeah, price, yeah, are, you know, and higher value is because we, yeah, that's what we created. And, yeah, and it's going to be it's going to be a little until it starts to click. You might get some more no's. So just remember that we sort of have to just, like, bless and release the people who can't afford us and like, yeah, it's a bummer, but yeah, it doesn't mean if they can't or won't, or whatever it is, then that's their problem.

Yes, yeah, problem, yeah, anything wrong? Yeah, all right, so yeah, just, I just write it down on whatever. Don't stop before you get what you want. So I hope I've shown you today that shifting to working with your clients that pay you more is possible, and not only is it possible, there are specific steps to do it and that it's worth it. So I want to leave you with the thought that I shared with my client in that clip. When you put in the work to make this shift in your business, don't stop before you get your wish. The steps that I've outlined here can transform your business if you let them, if you're brave enough to take them and if you're willing to see them through, because you deserve to work with the clients you want at the price you want, so that you can make a great living and have time for the people and the things that matter. That's how you create a business that's financially, professionally and emotionally profitable.