Some freelancers get all up in arms about clients not liking pricing that was handed to them. They complain about cheap clients always trying to get something for nothing.

Without a doubt, there are clients around that just want to get the best deal and at some point they will find you and try to nail you to the wall on pricing.

I don’t think that most clients are like that.

I think that most freelancers don’t convince the client that they can provide value. So when the client comes back and asks for something cheaper, freelancers go off about cheap clients. They push their inability to sell value on the client.

What that client is really saying is that you haven’t convinced them that you’re worth the price quoted. That is not the fault of your client, that’s your fault entirely. Don’t go spouting off like a petulant child that didn’t get what they want, learn to prove your value.

But it is typically easier to make it not your fault.

Proving That You’re Worth It

It’s great to say that you need to prove your worth, without giving any strategies about how to actually do it.

Case Studies

Was a client paying $50k a year for some corporate service? Did you build them a replacement for half the cost that does exactly what they need? Well why haven’t you blogged about it?

Did you change the checkout process of a client and realize a 2% increase in their site purchases? Hey another great item for a case study.

Did you take a site that crashed all the time and turn it in to a stable well oiled machine that stays up?

Did you new site design increase the pageviews of a client?

All of those items translate in to value for your client and that’s what you need to be selling them. Lots of people can design and build websites but what real value do they bring to the table?

During Client Meetings

When you’re talking to a potential client don’t talk about ‘WordPress’ unless one of their problems is paying some web agency lots of money every month to have site updates. Then the value you can provide is that the client can update their own content without paying someone else a bunch of money.

When I set up an easy to use development environment for clients I don’t talk about Vagrant. I talk about how a new employee can clone a Git repository and then type ‘vagrant up’ and have a copy of the live site local. I sell the time savings (often hours is what it equates to) in setup. I sell the fact that if everyone is running the same stuff bugs are easier to find.

Next time you talk to a client sell the value you bring to the table. If they balk at the pricing really ask yourself, did you actually prove that you have any value?

photo credit: Mukumbura via photopin cc