“You’ll pay a lot but you’ll get more than you paid for”
This has always been a viable position in the marketplace.
For freelancers of every kind, it remains the best one.
The hard part isn’t charging a lot. The hard part is delivering more than the person paid for.
[I just discovered that I riffed on this three months ago. So, in the spirit of making sure we don’t waste a day, here’s some more on this topic…]
There’s a chasm.
On one hand, there are the endless promises and perfection that are promised by the short-term marketer and the aggressive salesperson.
And on the other, there’s the service provider, freelancer, bureaucrat and hard working frontline worker who’s on defense. Who wants the customer to accept the least, not the most.
One approach is to keep working to survive the chasm. To hype more and apologize later for all that hype.
The other approach, the one I’m hoping you’ll consider, is to charge enough (and then spend that money) to actually keep the big promises you just made.
A race to the top, one that doesn’t happen simply because you announced you’re going to try harder. It happens because you invest in training, staff and materials to make it likely you can actually keep that promise.