A client of mine spent eighteen years running finance for a manufacturing group. Three plants, two currencies, a board that trusted her with numbers nobody else was allowed to touch. When she left to build her own advisory practice, I asked her what she’d charge for a day of her time.
She named a figure. It was roughly what a junior contractor charges for spreadsheet work.
I asked why that number.
“I haven’t proven myself outside the company yet,” she said. “I don’t have a track record as an external person.”
I pointed out that eleven months earlier she’d caught an error in a supplier contract that would have cost her employer close to two million euros over its term. Nobody outside that boardroom would ever know. She’d know. It happened because of exactly the kind of attention she was now pricing like a beginner’s.
She went quiet for a moment, then said, “I’ve never had to put a number on that before. It was just the job.”
That’s the sentence I hear most often, in one form or another. It was just the job. As if the size of the value only counts when someone outside is there to price it for you.
Here's what I've noticed after enough of these conversations to call it a pattern rather than a coincidence. Women who have spent decades inside organisations rarely build the muscle of pricing their own judgment. Their salary was decided for them. Nobody ever asked what a caught error, or an averted crisis, was actually worth.
So when the question finally becomes theirs to answer, most reach for the lowest defensible figure and call it humility. It isn’t humility. It’s a discount, handed over before the client on the other end has said a single word.
I ask everyone the same three questions when we get to this part.
1. What are you tempted to charge?
Most answer instantly. They’ve usually already lowered it twice in their own head before saying it aloud.2. What would you charge if you fully believed in the value of what you’re offering?
This one takes longer. Some people write a number down, look at it, and quietly cross it out for something smaller. I ask them to put the first number back.3. Is the gap between those two numbers nerves, or evidence?
Nearly every time, when we look honestly, there’s no evidence at all. No client complained about the old rate. No competitor is cheaper because the work is worse. The gap is just fear wearing the costume of realism.
My finance client’s honest number, once we did the arithmetic on what one good day of her judgment was actually worth to a client, came out at nearly four times her first answer. She sat with it for a moment, not backing away from it, then read it aloud and said, “That’s uncomfortable. It’s also true.”
Price is only the sharpest edge of a bigger question, though, and it’s worth saying the rest of it plainly. One number rarely fits everyone who might want to work with you. Some people can only ever afford your smallest offer. A few will want direct access to you. Most sit somewhere in between, deciding whether to trust you at all before they spend real money finding out.
So alongside the number, I ask people to sketch the whole ladder. Something free, so a stranger can test the work without risk. Something small and easy to say yes to. A core offer, the one that pays the bills and does the bulk of the good. And something premium, for the handful of people who want to work closely with you.
Most people, when they first sketch it, discover they only have one rung. Usually the middle one. Which means anyone not ready for the middle has nowhere to start, and anyone who wants more has nowhere to go.
None of this needs to be finished before you can act on it. The ladder she’ll have a year from now isn’t the one she needs today. What she needed this month was one offer, priced honestly, that she could put in front of one real person before the month was out.
That’s usually where I stop the conversation, because it’s the part people are tempted to skip. Not the pricing. The offering it to someone, this month, at the number that actually reflects what it’s worth.
She sent her first proposal at the new rate eleven days after that conversation. The client said yes without countering.
“I kept waiting for them to push back,” she told me. “They just said yes.”
They usually do. The negotiating almost nobody warns you about happens before the client ever sees the number, and you’re the only one in the room.
Before you lower your price, ask yourself one question. Are you responding to evidence, or to fear? They’re rarely the same thing.
That’s the third part of The Second Act Blueprint. Not just what you sell, but what you charge for it, without doing the client’s negotiating for them before they’ve even arrived.
Talk soon,
Pia
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Such an important conversation Pia. I’m glad that women have you in their corner, reminding them of their value and worth.