How to Avoid the Need to Justify Your Advice Fees

Hey guys, Steve Salvia checking in from blackwing.com.au.

And in today’s boost your business blog, I want to pose and important question to you…

Have you ever struggled with justifying your financial advice fees…?

You know….

You start to sweat…

You get a dry mouth…

Your palms get all clammy and sticky…

You can feel your face going all red and the blood draining out of you the second someone asks or questions you about your fees…

You’ve been there right?

And I have too.

So today I want to show you a couple of little tricks that I show my Blackwing planners that help them get super confident in themselves and the fees they charge…

And it even helps them increase their fees when they are under-pricing themselves.

That’s where we’re heading in today’s boost your business blog.

Stick around and let’s see if we can get you paid what you’re worth!

See I got an email by a financial planner not long ago that said:

“Steve, my biggest challenge is around my own confidence & justifying the investment clients would make in me… I don’t feel I can accurately articulate my fee”

And it’s a common problem…

So many financial planners struggle with doubt & anxiety around fees, pricing and asking to be paid like a professional for their advice.

Today, I want to give you a shot in the arm to ‘inoculate’ yourself from this fear & show you the 3-step formula I use so that you never have to “justify” your fees ever again.

But first, a quickie on justification as it relates to selling your advice.

I want you to FORGET ABOUT YOU!

That’s right – forget about you! You have absolutely nothing at all to do with your price!

If you have the knowledge, skills & expertise that can make a difference, then get off your nerves completely, and get into advice.

Be proud of what you charge!

Move your butt out of the way of your fees and let your client decide what your value is.

IT’S ABOUT THEM. Right?

You’re not there to prove yourself.

You’re there to help a person get the results they want.

They’ve got a problem they can’t solve as fast as they want, and you can help them.

Just remember – they are the one with the need here. Not you!

So, you’re not there to “justify” anything.

Justification is focused on you, not your prospect.

It’s a defensive position – and there’s nothing to defend.

You don’t convert (and therefore transform) your clients’ situation by justifying yourself.

You engage the client by showing them how to get what they want and making a no-brainer offer to do it today…

An offer where your value far outweighs your fee.

… So let me share a 3-Step Formula I learnt from my coach – Taki More that makes prospects understand the value you bring them, and gladly pay whatever you ask.

It goes

Relate

Educate

Translate

And it works in marketing just as well as it does face to face with a financial planning prospect…

RELATE

We connect with your prospect by focusing on their problems & goals.

The impact on their financial situation and how that impacts them both personally & emotionally.

We want to relate their situation back to them in a way that they get it and understand it!

EDUCATE

We teach them what they need to know and what’s holding them back.

What to look for, what to look out for, and your system for solving it the problems they have.

So we’ve got Relate.

We’ve got Educate

And then what we want to do is TRANSLATE.

Translate the value of the problem or solution into one of the 3 main currencies that every single person has…

Time

Effort

Money

If your prospect has a big – $100,000 problem…

And you only charge $10,000 to fix it…

Your advice just became a no-brainer.

You’ve become a ‘walkin-talkin’ good deal.

I always talk about wrapping your client’s problems in $100 dollar bills…

You watch how important you become and how willing to pay your fees they become then…

You’re never going to be as cheap as your clients want you to be! So instead, try position yourself as being ‘reassuringly expensive’!

People get that you pay for quality – and your need to justify your fees is in YOUR head, not theirs!

So that’s it for this week’s Boost Your Business Blog.

If you’d like to know more or access the worksheets that we use to map this out in your head and create a ‘No-Brainer’ offer, just reach out to me with the words “FEE MODEL” in a private message, and I’ll show you what our Blackwing clients are doing to put an end to this ‘low fee’ issue for good.

Take good care. Talk to you soon.

Steve Salvia