You don’t need precision to set a price
One of the more common objections I hear from CPAs is:
“But I don’t know how much I can save the client until I get in there.”
Whenever I hear that, I like to slow things down and ask a simple question:
Is that actually true?
Or is it sort of true?
Because there are two very different situations:
1. You don’t know the exact amount — but you do have a sense of the range.
Most of the time, CPAs don’t have zero idea.
You may not know you’ll save the client exactly $14,762…
But you usually know whether this is a $5K–$10K kind of thing…
Or a $20K–$40K kind of thing…
Or a “could be $100K+” kind of thing.
And if you have a sense of the range, you can set a price relative to the potential ROI.
Asterisk moment:
* I don’t know exactly how much revenue my clients will increase inside my programs either.
But I know it’s common for them to increase revenue 10%–30% in a year while cutting 30% of their hours.
So even though the range is wide, I still choose prices:
$197 for the Peak Freedom community
$997 for the Accelerator
I’m confident that at both prices, clients can get a positive ROI.
I don’t need to know exact ROI numbers to set a price.
Neither do you.
2. If you truly have no idea — then the next step is a diagnostic.
If the situation really is a mystery, then your job isn’t to guess.
Your job is to get under the hood.
Run a diagnostic.
Take an x-ray.
Getting an x-ray to see if your arm is broken is valuable — even if the arm isn’t broken.
Knowing it is broken is valuable.
Knowing it’s not broken is equally valuable.
“Not knowing” is the least valuable option.
Clients will pay to know if there’s more worth looking at, or not.
Knowing is always better than wondering.
A diagnostic lets you see the scope clearly enough to:
determine whether you can create financial and/or intangible ROI
increase clarity around that potential value
propose a price with confidence
3. Narrow your marketing so you attract the clients for whom you can likely create value.
If every new lead feels like a question mark, that’s not a pricing problem — that’s a positioning problem.
The more specific you are about:
who you serve
the types of problems you solve
the industry, life stage, or complexity you’re best at
…the less “mystery” there is in the value you can create.
When your audience is consistent, the potential ROI becomes more consistent, too.
Bottom line
Build your business so that the value you create isn’t a mystery.
If you’re guessing:
Do a diagnostic to see what’s really going on.
Set a price that’s worth it to you and exceedingly likely to be a positive ROI for your client while letting go of the need for precision or squeezing every drop of profit from the engagement
Narrow your positioning and focus your messaging so you attract the right-fit folks.
You don’t need certainty.
You need clarity.
And clarity is something you can create.
Wondering how to price soft stuff?
It’s not obvious how to do this. Inside Peak Freedom, we’ll show you how to do it.
JOIN US NOW »
$197/mo
