Does it ever seem like the only potential clients who seem to find you are difficult and don't have any budget? Well, there is a reason this is happening and the good news is, you can fix this!
That's why here we're going to look at 7 reasons why you continue to attract low-quality and low-paying clients and more importantly what to do about that so you can finally attract these higher paying, better quality clients all around.
For some reason a widespread problem I hear so many entrepreneurs trying to get into web design, SEO and marketing that they're just finding client after client after client that don't have the budget to afford them.
I really want to make sure you can get past this so you enjoy your business.
WARNING: Before I get into these let me just say that some of these reasons may feel a little bit harsh. They may be hard to hear but please know I do this because I care and I want you to succeed. I feel it is my job to tell you what it is that you need to hear and not just what it is you want to hear. That wouldn't help you grow.
7 Reasons Why You're Attracting These Low-Paying Clients
Here we go…
#1 It's All You're Looking For
I'm sorry but it's all you're looking for. You're only looking for these low paying clients and I know you're thinking “No, I'm not. I want the high paying clients. I'm looking high and low but they're nowhere.”
I want you to go back and actually look at the actions you've been taking. Have you been approaching anyone who is a higher paying, higher quality client?
Allow me to give you an example…
A lot of times I hear entrepreneurs who are just getting started and like hey i'm i'm a new startup i'm a new designer i'm a new marketer and I want to go help these businesses so hmm who am I going to start with I am going to help startups but guess what startups have a lot of expenses and no revenue so that makes it really hard for them not necessarily that they're low quality clients but they don't have the budget to pay you more because they simply just don't have the revenue even if they see all of the value that you can provide so we got to make sure that we are talking to the high quality clients we cannot possibly get any high quality high paying clients if we're not at all talking to them so what can we do about that what I would encourage you to do is make a list of any of the businesses that you have been talking to and more specifically write down anything about them that you recognize what is their budget how much revenue do they have coming in per per year or per client what is their average customer value how long have they been in business how many employees does the business have this will start to tell you a lot and you're likely going to start seeing patterns with these businesses that you've been talking to now what I want you to do is start looking at the businesses that you would love to have as a client and look at those same criteria how many years have they been in business what is their average customer value how much revenue do they make per year and so on and you will start to see the difference between who you are talking to and who you want to talk to so now stop talking to the businesses that meet that initial criteria of who you're talking to now and only start talking to the businesses that meet your new criteria of these clients who have the budget are going to be these higher quality high paying clients.
#2 It's All You Believe You're Worth
This one might sting a little bit too but the second reason you may be attracting low-quality, low-paying clients is because it's all you believe you're worth.
That really holds true for a lot more people than you might think so if that's something you are wondering: Am I good enough? Am I worth that higher amount?
If these are some of the things you might be thinking, you're not alone. Especially if you are just getting started, it's harder to to recognize that value.
If you yourself do not believe you are worth that higher price, you're not going to ask for that higher price.
So the only way to fix that is to start working on what is it that you need to do to help you feel worth that higher price. This may be something you need to talk out and I really would encourage you to do that especially with someone who is in this business.
#3 Lack of Confidence
which again is a hard especially when you haven't worked with a lot of clients you haven't built a lot of proof around what you do you may feel that there's something you need to do in your business that hasn't quite happened yet so hold you back from actually going out there and speaking with clients so here's what I see I see a lot of entrepreneurs that I work with and they all want the same thing they all want to grow their business right and there's this lack of confidence when there really hasn't been any business just yet and there's really only one way to build that confidence and unfortunately it's taking action even though you don't have the confidence so the ones who will make it say oh you know what I need to do x y or z and boy is that scary and boy is that outside of my comfort zone but i'm gonna go and i'm gonna do it anyway and i'll report back and then there's those who go oh this is scary this is tough i think i'll go edit the text on my website for a while and they don't actually get out there and take the action that they need to because they lack that confidence but that confidence isn't just going to come you can't just put out there I want to have more confidence and then one day wake up and you have more confidence you're going to gain that confidence through action.
#4 Your Portfolio is Full of Low Quality Clients
has to do with your portfolio you may be attracting low-quality or low-paying clients because your portfolio it's full of low-quality and low-paying clients so your portfolio is only going to be as strong as really the worst project that you have in there not necessarily that you have a bad project in there but it's only going to be good as well whatever project you feel is the least good that's in your portfolio so for instance i hear a lot of entrepreneurs who say you know what i want to be a web designer I want to have a web design business i don't have a portfolio so what i'm going to do is i'm going to go contact a non-profit organization and i'm going to build their website to gain some experience now if all you want to do is gain some experience and build up your confidence wonderful if you want to help a non-profit organization out who needs that help wonderful if you want to work with that nonprofit in order to put that work inside your portfolio in order to show new potential clients well then you got to think about it does that non-profit represent the type of client that I want to have in the future and if it doesn't that's where you need to second guess this you see when you want to have higher playing clients you are actually weeding them out when they come to your portfolio and they look and all they see is these businesses that don't look like them that don't represent them and you've actually now sent them away because your portfolio doesn't represent that type of client so you have to be very intentional with how you design your portfolio and make sure you are designing it around the type of person and type of business that you want to see that portfolio and think yeah that's the one I want to work with they get me in my type of business.
#5 You're Not Charging Enough
already which is similar to your portfolio but it has to attract the right type of client and this is your prices now this may not be a surprise you are attracting low-paying clients because well you're just not charging enough now if you have followed me for any length of time you may have heard this story before so if you have well excuse me for 30 seconds but I want to share this story because it really highlights just the importance of your price and how it attracts a certain type of person now this was earlier on in my business but I was feeling really good because i had two proposals out in the same day hey this is really starting to work right and so I had two proposals out and the jobs were really pretty much identical so I really sent out two of the same proposals I just tweaked a couple things because that's both what they needed and so both of them got back to me on the same day they had the same price on their proposals and they both said no both of them they both said no i was baffled and I went to them and i said why what you know what what happened what what made you say no please tell me and the first one said you know your price is just too low i mean if you're pricing me that low that means that at some point you're going to come back and you're going to ask me for more money you're going to tell me I need some other software you're going to say there's something else you have to add onto the website and the cost is just going to go up no no no this is everything I promise you it's here i've i've written this all out this is everything that's included nope sorry price is too low I just I just can't trust that so I call it the next client you know what happened what didn't you like you know why did you say no well the price is just too high I mean it's just too much I i just can't do that I just i don't have that kind of money for a website and so that's where you have to understand that no matter what you price your service whether you're charging five hundred dollars five thousand dollars ten thousand dollars there's always going to be businesses who say no because of your price and others who say yes because of your price your price is going to attract a certain type of person so if you are charging 500 for a full-blown website well guess what you're going to get a 500 type of client and they're going to be a pain and you're you know what so you have to know that that is who you are attracting and by keeping that price low you are also getting rid of unintentionally but you are getting rid of those potential clients who absolutely will pay you more because it's a red flag to them that the price is so low so that either means you're not good enough you're not going to do what you say you're going to do you're just trying to get a little bit of money and run there's something there for them that just makes it unbelievable.
#6 You Would Not Pay That Much
which actually has to do with pricing itself but this requires a bit of internal work and that is you are not charging higher prices because you yourself would not pay that much now this is something I actually struggled with earlier on we all have our things that are very important to us and we're willing to spend more money on where others would look at and say why don't you spend all that money there and the same things where we don't care about other areas and so we don't spend as much money there and this is is very true with our clients so if it's something for us where we are looking at our service and we're saying okay well if I need a website here's how much I pay if I need seo here's how much i'd pay if I need such and such you know facebook ad service whatever it might be this is how much I would be willing to pay and if it is not near your own price it's really hard so I think about this like if I go out to dinner with a friend or family and they say you know what i'll take care of dinner then you just go ahead and order whatever you want so i'm like okay great but when I look at that menu I cannot in good conscious order more food than i'd be willing to pay for myself if I was the one footing the bill so I can't say okay normally I would spend 15 on this meal but because you're paying well now i'm going to pay 30 or i'm going to order a meal that's 30 so you see it's the same thing here if you yourself wouldn't buy a 5 000 a 10 000 website you wouldn't spend a thousand dollars every single month for seo it is going to be much harder for you to charge that to a potential client right so that requires a bit more internal work of making sure that you see the value and that you understand the value see a lot of this starts from within and if you understand your value you understand how you are going to be changing a business through the work that you do well you see that's when it really is going to help you sell your services more and feel more confident sit a little bit taller when you are offering these services to clients.
#7 You Don't Know What You're Best At
which can sting a little bit too i'm sorry but not sorry is that you don't know what you're best at and you're a little bit all over the place and you are just trying to basically design your business around what these clients are telling you that you need so if a client is saying you know I need web design you're like hey great I provide that let's go let's do this and then they're like oh but you know i really think I should do facebook ads oh do you know anybody who does graphic how about can you write content and so you start scrambling oh wait i could help them because I could earn a little bit more money but wait you know shouldn't I be like the one-stop shop where they can come to me for everything because I don't want them going to anybody else I want them to be able to do everything with me and we really just start providing what a client tells us versus understanding first how we want our business to run what is it that you really want to be known for what is it that you enjoy doing most in your business what is it that you feel that when you do this service you add the most value to a client into their business and that's where you should start you can wrap your entire business around just that one thing and you never have to expand outside of that and you can be extremely successful now of course you can choose to expand and that can be great too but this really comes from an understanding of what it is that you want in your business and making sure that this is something you love and you feel yourself that you're providing the most value now if you are new and you don't know if you're saying you're thinking well this I get this but I don't know I don't know what it is that I do best then that is your job right now that is your job to go out and figure out how am I going to add value to these businesses and one of the ways that you can do that is to figure out who it is that you want to serve what you think it would be fun to be known for what could you see yourself doing and start there and start to build up results in that way all right so there you have it those are the seven reasons why you may be attracting these low quality and low paying clients I know some of them can sting a little bit and some of these just really require some internal reflection which you know doesn't always seem that fun it doesn't necessarily seem like it's worth your time but this is really where a lot of the work is at and other than that there's just some tweaks that you can make in your business and working with clients to make sure that you are able to attract those higher paying clients.
Charging More For Your Services
I hope this was helpful please let me know below in the comments what it is that you believe is holding you back from charging higher prices and i'd love to hear what you're going to be working on to fix that all right until next time.
