You are absolutely undercharging. You just have to figure out by how much. I’ve said that to every freelancer and agency owner who’ll listen, and when I said it to Ann Carden on the Unscripted SEO podcast, she put a number on it: “I usually say you should be able to three to ten times what you’re making per client.”
Ann is a business growth strategist and the CEO of Expert in You. She works with professional service entrepreneurs who are great at the work and still priced like beginners. Here’s her case for a premium model, and why it should come before you chase new cities or new markets.
Watch the full interview:
The work doesn’t get harder at the top
Ann’s favorite example is an interior designer who was doing home projects solo. They moved her into commercial and luxury work, and she noticed something: “the reality is it was not as hard to work with big commercial projects as it was to work with a homeowner who’s remodeling their bathroom or their kitchen.”
Most of her new clients after that came in as six-figure deals. Multi-unit buildings let one engagement turn into several clients, and a furniture rental side added recurring revenue. The same play works in plenty of trades. Ann has done this kind of positioning work with contractors and plumbing companies, where the crew and the tools stay the same and the target customer changes. The product barely changes. The buyer and the deal size do.
Cheap clients cost you more
I’ve noticed that the bigger the client, the fewer headaches the project has. Ann hears that from her own clients all the time: “Ann, I can’t believe what it’s like to work with these high-end clients. I mean, it’s so much easier. It’s so much less stress.”
Her explanation is about what the client can afford to lose:
“If they’re trying to figure out if they’re going to pay you or their electric bill, who do you think is going to win, right?”
A client stretching to pay you is stressed about every invoice. A client who values time over money wants speed and the shortcut, and they “don’t take up your time.” If you’re a freelancer, that’s the difference between ten small retainers that all need hand-holding and three that trust you to do the job.
Sell the time back, not the hours
Ann’s line on what premium buyers are paying for: “They have money. They don’t have time. And that is what you are selling. They are buying back their time.”
That changes how you write a proposal. Stop listing deliverables by the hour. Show the owner what they’ll stop doing, what decision they won’t have to make, and how fast it happens. When you’re selling B2B, Ann said, “they really have to be able to see the investment and the value of what they’re purchasing.”
Raise the price before you add a market
I asked Ann whether going premium comes before or after scaling into new markets. “It should be your first scale strategy, in my opinion.” You’re adding revenue and profit while serving the same audience.
Her math is hard to argue with: “It’s a lot easier to manage 20 clients than it would be to manage a million clients at a dollar.” And when I mentioned clients who come to me wanting SEO for the next three cities over, she flipped it: “the first thing I would look at is how can we make more for what you’re already doing without more volume.”
So here’s what to do this week:
- List your current clients by revenue and by headache. Notice which list the small ones sit on.
- Write one offer that sits above everything you sell now.
- Quote it to the next prospect who fits, before you talk yourself out of it.
Ann closes with the question you should leave on a sticky note: “Are you going low when you should be going high?”
Listen to the full conversation on the podcast, and if you sell SEO, read when SEO is the wrong channel for the part of this talk that should change how you scope clients.