How to Raise your Fee

Editor's Note:  Ask any appraiser or inspector and they'll tell you that with the rising cost of insurance, gasoline, data/software and more, fees have not kept pace with expenses over the years. For many, the reality has been more work for less money. Despite this, chances are good there are competitors in your market who are able to charge more for their services. How do they do it? Creating a specialized niche and adding services are a couple of ways. Marketing professionals also will tell you that to get what you're worth you have to separate yourself from the crowd and be able to clearly articulate why your services are worth a premium. As we learn here, price is only one of many factors that go into a buying decision. Rich Harshaw explains how to raise your fees and get what you're worth. 
 

How Raise Your Fees
by Rich Harshaw
 

If you can figure out how to do your marketing and web building the right way - so that it busts through the clutter and bridges the confidence gap - then you can easily sell your quality product at a premium price all day long.... and reap strong profit margins in the process. If you're not interested in that and you'd rather just sell your services for a cheap price, prepare to be eliminated from the marketplace.

Solving the Customer's Problem
You need to uncover what your customers want. We call this your customer's value hierarchy or discovering the most important thing to your customers. Then build your case. Prospects want you to communicate the advantages of doing business with your company. Emphasize solving the customers' problems and give them what they want - service, expertise, professionalism, speed. Consumers won't care what the price is if you can solve their problems. Obviously, you don't want to be so outrageously priced that you're way off in right field. And if what they want is not consistent with your professional and ethical values, then they are not the right client for you.
 

Most business owners don't realize that price is actually one of the lowest values on the customer value hierarchy. The problem is that confusion in the marketplace makes it difficult for customers to distinguish who's who and what's what. So when all things appear equal, they default to price. People make assumptions based on the cases built around products.