Pricing strategy can make or break your business. If you're wondering how to price your services, raise your rates with confidence, or attract better clients, this episode is for you.

In this conversation, Janene Liston, also known as The Pricing Lady, shares practical insights on value based pricing, pricing psychology, and building a business pricing strategy that supports long term growth. Learn why undercharging hurts your business, how to make better pricing decisions, and why confidence comes from having a clear pricing framework.

If you're serious about building a profitable business, this episode is a must watch.

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Jeanne Liston, also known as the pricing lady.

She is a pricing strategist.

She works with service-based businesses and coaches to help them have a

structure to ensure that their pricing strengthens their position and makes

their businesses more profitable.

Jeanne, thank you so much for joining us today.

We are thrilled to have you here on the podcast because I am so

excited about talking about pricing.

I'm thrilled to be here with you today.

So we started talking this, a little bit about this before we jumped on today, but

I've actually been cyber-stalking you.

And for the reason that a lot of our clients that are using our bookkeepers,

one of the things I heard back from them was, one, they felt more confident

that their finances were in order.

Mm-hmm.

But a lot of them were talking about how they realized they're

under- … for their services.

And so of course, I went online and I started looking up pricing

strategies, and I didn't even know that- pricing strategists were a thing

until I found you and a couple other people, and so I started stalking you.

So I'm thrilled that you're here today because pricing is a really

big challenge, I think for all of us.

And so I would love to hear a, just share with everyone a little bit about your

journey into becoming a pricing expert, into becoming the pricing lady, in fact.

The pricing, yeah.

Yeah.

So I actually, I started my career as an engineer designing buildings

'cause I love solving problems.

And when I left that, I ended up at a company, and the first thing they

gave me was a price list that was almost as old as I was at the time.

It was more than 20 years old.

Oh.

I think I was 26.

And without much commercial experience up until that point, I still understood

that there was something wrong there, and that was my first step into the topic and

trying to figure out what it really meant.

Fast-forward many years later, I ended up as a global pricing manager

for a company called Siemens.

Probably you're familiar with them.

They're pretty global.

Yeah.

And at the time, I was the first one they had in that division, and

so it was a new role for them and for me, and my boss wasn't sure

what I should exactly be doing.

And so I went and got a certification from the Professional Pricing

Society, and that really was when I got into pricing all the time.

And after a few years, many years in the corporate world, I then shifted

in 2017 to starting my own business, working with small business owners

and startups to help them understand how to use pricing in their business

and to make better business decisions.

That is so powerful because, again, you start a business and you have to

create the offer, decide what product or service you're gonna sell, and

then all of a sudden it's, "Okay, what do I charge for this?" Yeah.

And not having a structure or process can cost people a lot of time and money.

Yeah.

Absolutely.

Yeah.

I've come to this realization, I would say, in the last six months that while we

spend so much time focused on the number, what is most important in your pricing

are the decisions behind the number.

So most of the time when people struggle to feel that confidence or that certainty

about what they're charging or when they struggle with the decision-making, it's

actually what's happening behind the number, the decisions they haven't made,

the decisions they've delegated, right?

They said, "Oh, my competitor's doing this, so I have to do that." So they've

just delegated the decision to someone else rather than looking at the data

and the information and making their own decision about, "This is the

right price for my business for this reason and that reason." That, in the

end, is actually what gives people more confidence in their pricing.

I could see that because, like I said, it was when people finally had their

bookkeeping up and they were meeting with their bookkeeper every month

and reviewing their profit and loss and their balance sheet- For a lot of

people, that really gave them a deeper understanding of what was going on in

the business, and that's when all the problems start slapping you in the face.

Maybe you're spending too much money, maybe you need to drive more revenue, or

maybe you realize you're really under- So with a business, does pricing get

harder or easier as you get bigger?

It certainly, it usually gets more complex, right?

Mm-hmm.

And how well you understand the decisions behind the numbers at that point in time

as that complexity is coming in will have an impact on whether it becomes harder

or it remains manageable, in a sense.

So what happens a lot of times is as people's businesses evolve

Pricing doesn't evolve along with it.

And then you get to where all of a sudden it's so difficult

and it's not bearable anymore.

So for example, a lot of service-based businesses, they are afraid to raise

their prices regularly, so they just raise them for new customers.

But then five, 10 years down the road, they have customers

with all different prices.

Yes.

And it becomes very complex and difficult for them to manage.

Then they have to make bigger changes in order to bring people to the same

pricing levels, where it makes sense of course, but to bring them to

their new pricing levels, let's say.

And then that is even scarier because those jumps or those price

changes become that much bigger.

So that's what I mean by if you don't evolve your pricing as you evolve,

as your business evolves, then those pricing problems, they don't go

away, they just get more intense.

Absolutely.

Yeah.

It's so interesting because I still have one-on-one clients, and I've

got a particular client who, fabulous interior designer, just absolutely

amazing, and she was literally charging at the bottom, 75 bucks an hour.

And it was so interesting because it took us, I wanna say two years

to get her to 150, and every time we made an increase… It may even have

taken a little bit longer than that.

It might've been closer to three, four years, because every time she did that,

she just knew no one was gonna call her.

"No one was gonna hire me."

And that was a conversation we had.

"If I go to that price, no one's gonna hire me." Mm-hmm.

"No one's gonna hire me." So it tends to often happen in $25, $50, opposed

to just taking it to fair market value.

What would you tell someone who is in that position?

Because she never missed business.

Just so all of you, it wasn't once that someone said, "Oh, I'm not

gonna, I can't hire you for that."

Because I think if someone's hiring a professional, especially an interior

designer, they're expecting a rate that would seem normal, right?

Because people will search that, what's an average rate for an interior designer?

So it was making her understand that the quality clients she wanted would

also come with the higher pricing.

How do you talk to people about that kind of thing?

Yeah.

So the instinct for a lot of people is to start at the bottom of the market.

When they come in, they have a new business, a lot of people anchor

themselves consciously or subconsciously to the bottom end of the range.

It's like they don't even see the top.

It's not even on their radar.

Even if it's written down on the page, they don't seem to register the top end

of the market as they do the same way they do the bottom end of the market.

And what happens is if you start your pricing there, you develop the market for

people who are looking for those prices.

Those people tend to be less loyal, yeah?

Because they're- Yeah … low price seekers, and when somebody else with

a better price comes along, they'll skip town and go to this other person.

So the problem is less about getting the prices up, but it's about asking

yourself the question, "Is that where I want to build my market?

Are those the people that I want to work with?" Now, people do this a lot out of

fear because the bottom end of the market feels safer, but when you think about

having to redevelop the market every time you adjust your prices to go up

to the next band, that's risky as well.

You should be just afraid as that of that as you are of being too high priced.

So it's about finding the right combination or the right… where those

things intersect for your business.

That's why understanding the customer, I always tell people pricing is

rooted in a deep understanding of the customer because the price point you

choose is very much related to who you're targeting in your business.

I love what you said.

Every time you increase your prices, you have to develop your business again

because, again, you might be attracting very different clients at those prices.

Yes.

You should think about that when you're going into this.

Yeah, I love this.

All right.

I guess, what are some of the other things that you find that

people have a challenge with?

Does… Do you feel like pricing limits growth?

Do you feel like pricing… What are some of the problems

that come from poor pricing or lack of strategy around pricing?

I think one of the things is just it takes so much effort and energy, right?

So each time you sit down to do it, you have to think, "Oh, I don't

really know what I'm doing," so you're making it up from scratch

again, and then you're second guessing yourself throughout the whole process.

And you get tired, so you think, "Okay, I'll just figure this out

tomorrow." You set aside, you come back the next day, and you start that

whole cycle all over again, right?

So it becomes very time consuming and very taxing on your energy, and it need not be.

If you have that process behind it, then you know what to do.

At the other end, of course, if you haven't set prices that you

feel certain about, then how you communicate them out in the

marketplace is also gonna be impacted.

So I always tell people pricing isn't just about finding the number.

It's about how you set, how you get, and you manage those prices over

time, and it's something that you're constantly doing in your business.

Does this need to be adjusted?

If, if let's say if you're a product based business and your suppliers

change, your cost structure may change, your delivery schedule may change, you

therefore may need to adjust your prices.

In a service based business, if your customer decides- They don't wanna

have their monthly meeting with you on Tuesdays on your workday with

them, but instead they want it to be whenever they choose to schedule it.

That changes how you work, and it may also change the behavior and how you

work, the ways of working with the client, and therefore your pricing.

So I- every decision that comes into your business, you kinda wanna look at it,

"Okay, should this or could this affect what I do with my prices?" You may say

no 70% of the time, but right now you're not thinking about it that way, so you're

saying no by default 100% of the time.

Oh, yeah.

It makes me think about two different things.

One, the client I was just mentioning may want to retire in the next couple

of years, and she stays super busy.

I was just thinking maybe she should go and raise her prices now because that may

slow things down, because we talked about would you like to go more part-time and

a four-day work week up until retirement.

And but h- how do you do that when you can't really say no to clients?

She loves what she does.

But that made me think about if she raised her prices again- Becomes more selective

… that may slow her volume down a little bit, but she'd still make as much money,

and then be able to kind of go into retirement, kind of ease into retirement

instead of just having a dead stop.

Right.

Okay.

Or find somebody to bring into the business and hand it over to, right?

Yes.

So there may be equity that she has there that she could then sell to some,

sell the business model to someone else or the client base to someone else.

Yeah.

We are definitely looking into that.

Yeah.

Another question for you around pricing is what about when

things change with the economy?

Because right now the economy has shifted some.

You're in Switzerland, we're here in the US, but how do you feel

like that affects people and their, their mindset around their pricing?

It may not affect pricing as much as it does our fear and our mindset, right?

I can tell you I've been asked this question in so many different formats re-

recently, it's absolutely fascinating.

So I did a talk with a bunch of coaches.

They asked, "What do we do now with our prices?" I did a- another

talk with a group of people who have purpose-driven businesses.

Same question came up, "Oh, what do we do?" The default is to think you have to

adjust your prices, and I actually think the default should be adjusting the offer

to meet where people are in the value that they're seeking right now and what

they're willing to pay for that value.

So I don't think that automatically your prices should change, but maybe

how you package things up, what you offer as solutions change to give

people options at lower price points.

But of course, the value should reflect the fact that those

are lower price points as well.

Yeah, I think that's so interesting.

Jeanne and I, we have our three different offers, and of

course, we've had conversations.

Everyone's pivoting.

I feel like that's the other big word lately is pivoting, right?

And we just decided our core offers are solid and our clients get

great results, and so we didn't really see a need to change that.

And then when we circle back around pricing, it's interesting because what

we do is we pair virtual assistants.

A bookkeeper's $9 an hour.

A marketing virtual assistant is $250 a month, and they work 20 hours a

week, so it's very cost-effective.

And then our fee's on the front end of that.

But the reality is going into this type of economy, we had the conversation

around what we do now may be even more valuable to people, because if they're

cutting costs by letting people go or just maybe they decide to start doing

their bookkeeping again on their own because they can't afford it- Right

then we might be the solution that's between those two choices.

And so we decided not to change pricing, which also meant not

going up in pricing, right?

So we decided we're lowering pricing, but we also made the decision for

this year not to increase pricing.

Right.

But I do feel like, and I'm lucky I have a business partner so we could bait it out.

So if I think if I were a solopreneur, I'd be, it would be running around my head.

I'd feel like a crazy person trying to figure it out.

Right.

But is that a, is that how you talk to people?

I'm sure they talk it out with you in this way to help them decide-

Right … what's the best way to go.

So that's what we look at.

You also look at how are people's value with, not values, but how is

their perception of value shifting?

What's important to people shifts in times like these.

We saw that very fast and clearly in 2020.

Yeah.

Instantly everything changed.

That's happening at a slower pace right now, but it's definitely happening.

So what people want, what you need to communicate can shift.

Yeah.

So you may, maybe before today you were focusing on these three points

of value, and tomorrow you need to focus on these 'cause they're

more important to the customer now.

So maybe it's not changing the offer, but changing the messaging around the offer.

So it can be many different things, and I think your example here is a good example.

It doesn't always mean changing everything.

My point earlier is just that people's default is, if anything's going a

little bit wrong, "Oh, let's lower the price." And it's … I find it insane

sometimes that we're so anchored to trying to fix all kinds of things

in a business by lowering the price.

Doesn't fit the customer, lower the price.

Wrong offer, lower the price.

Not enough volume, lower the price.

Our default is to lower the price, and I would love to see the default

be let's look at the value and decide what the right solution is, as

opposed to just dropping the price.

Yeah.

I think for a lot of people they don't

Dropping your price doesn't always feel good, right?

You're, you're kind of going backward.

Your costs and expenses to run your business aren't going backwards.

They're often going up.

Yeah, it was so interesting because when you talk about the default,

I think the only reason Jeanne and I had the conversation around

pivoting and pricing was because everybody else was talking about it.

Everybody around us was doing that.

Mm-hmm.

And so we had to have that core conversation is, do we need

to do either of these things?

And at the end, the answer was no.

But like you said, we're trying to find better ways to position our value in

this market, because again, the economy changes, the market shifts a little bit.

But yeah, I love that, that we shouldn't have that as our default.

The other thing is, I think people will maybe buy less things, but they

will spend money on quality things.

Are you seeing that as well?

Absolutely, and I think people's definition of what that is,

especially in knowledge-based businesses, is shifting as well.

They can get a lot of information very quickly, but that doesn't

mean they have the solution.

It just means they have a lot of information.

They don't necessarily know how to wade through that.

In information businesses, that means that we have to shift- Yeah, what

we're delivering as well in order to accommodate for that and meet

the new needs that are out there.

So yeah, absolutely.

Yeah.

Wow.

Yeah, and I guess it's one of those things where with pricing, I, I think

because none of us know how to do it, like that's one of the things I loved

when I started following you, is you talk about pricing as a structure.

It's a formula.

Mm-hmm.

It isn't something that you have to revisit how to do it, because there's

always a process for how, which means when you come up to, well, my

costs have gone up, maybe I need to raise my prices, or whatever happens

and you're at that s- that stage, it isn't as complicated because you

have a process, you have a formula.

You roll out a new offer, the formula tells you what to, to price it at.

Tell us a little bit more about that without giving away all your secrets.

Yeah.

So it's, I would say it's less of a formula and more of a thought process.

I think oftentimes people are looking for a quick answer, but if you focus on, we'll

go back to what I said at the beginning, that it's not the number that's important,

it's the, your decision-making behind it.

It's actually the thought process that is what helps you.

L- let me give you a simple example.

So I work a lot with service-based businesses, and our, let's say

our default, if you will again, in service-based business is to think

in increments of effort, yeah?

But effort is not value, and so you, one of the things you need to do

is retrain your brain in a sense.

So I liken it to meditation.

When you meditate, when you learn to meditate, you use the breath as an anchor,

and your mind wanders, you think about the kids, you bring it back to the breath.

You think about work, you bring it back to the breath.

You think about whatever to-do list you have, you bring it back to the breath.

In your business, if you can make the anchor value, when you think

about- How many hours it's gonna take you, you also think about value.

When you think about how much effort this takes or how much this costs or…

You're always bringing it back to value.

So that's one of the pillars that we look at in this thought process,

is to understand and anchor our thinking in value so that we can…

You don't wanna, you still need to think about cost, you still need to

think about the competition, but you need to bring value into that equation,

and most people are ignoring that.

So part of that process is bringing the right inputs in so

that you can look at them in a structured way and make a decision.

And I think that's one of the things I know people don't wanna hear, Sarah.

There's not, like, a calculation that just spits out a price for you.

It's a decision that you make in your business based on this

information that you are assessing.

This is where I wanna be.

This is what I need to be profitable.

This is where I wanna position in the market.

So on and for- so forth, right?

So it's a decision that you have to make.

But like you said, having that thought process and working through that, does it

help you make more sales because you feel more confident in delivering your price?

Because you've gone through a detailed thought process and you're very confident

in the value you're giving for that price.

So do you see people, when they work with you, do- does it make it

easier for them to convert sales?

I would say it, it is easier for them.

Yes, in some cases it's about conversion.

In some cases it's about having raised the prices to a level that represents

the value that they're delivering, and they feel confident in asking

for it Now, usually there's a bit of tension in there, of course, yeah?

But now they're thinking about it differently.

So they usually, they'll get those first few offers at those higher prices,

and then they're like, "Actually, we talked about I have this much

room up here. I only came this far up." Now they're already thinking

about the next increase next time.

And just like interest compounds, so do pricing adjustments, right?

So it's, it gives them, not only they feel more confident because they know

where that price comes from, but then they're thinking about the next step

already and when that comes into play and how they're going to implement that.

So that brings them a completely different level of confidence

than they had before, absolutely.

I bet.

And if a lot of people are like me, they really didn't even know

that people like you existed.

So I'm so glad I found you.

And I love your passion, your passion for helping people with pricing.

I think your story- Yeah … is so interesting, and the fact

that this is your focus.

You're the Pricing Lady.

I love when people are so committed to what they do.

It, it shows that at a core level you know the value you bring

and how you're truly helpful.

I find it endlessly fascinating and challenging, yeah?

It's a set of principles and strategies that I've learned and developed a

few of my own along the way, and I always find it interesting to figure

out, okay, how can we use this in this business case or in this

situation, and to help people do that.

Yeah.

If people wanna get in touch with you- Mm-hmm … how would

you like them to do that?

We will add this to the show notes, but if you wanna do a call-out on

how people can connect with you.

Yeah.

Uh, connect with me on LinkedIn.

You'll find me as the Pricing Lady.

Awesome.

I love that.

It's funny because I, I shouldn't say it out loud, but I have the

handle for LinkedIn of Outsourcing Queen, but I've never really used it.

Maybe The Tiara, I don't know.

Why not?

Thank you so much for joining us today.

Mm-hmm.

I'm sure our listeners are gonna learn so much.

And for any of you out there who have finally got your finances in order

or you're looking at your monthly profit and loss statement, one of the

questions I really encourage you to ask is, "Do I need to change my pricing?

Am I under?" And if the answer is emphatically yes, I highly encourage

you check out the Pricing Lady.

I know she has tons of tips and resources and a podcast.

So definitely check her out.

And we will talk to all of you in the next episode.