Client Deep Dive: The Secret to Overcoming Your Fear of Charging More

Transcription

Yuri Elkaim:                         All right, guys. Welcome back to the podcast. Yuri here. We’ve got a mystery guest with us today cause she’s not on camera, but she’s here with us in spirit. Her name is Susan Gleaton and we can’t get her camera working so that’s why she’s not on the screen, but nonetheless, she’s with us. We’re going to have a great conversation.

Introducing Susan and her biggest issue

Let me give you some context about who Susan is. Again, she’s one of our clients in our Health Business Accelerator Program. She’s a registered dietitian with an integrative and functional nutrition background.

She helps her clients overcome the inconvenience, overwhelm and anxiety often associated with GI and digestive disturbances by giving them the tools they need to get to the root cause of the problem and truly fix it. She’s an amazing person who lives in Dallas, Fort Worth area and super excited to have her here on the podcast. Susan, welcome.

Susan Gleaton:                  Thank you. Thank you very much.

Yuri Elkaim:                         All right. Let’s-

Susan Gleaton:                  I’m glad to be here.

Yuri Elkaim:                         Absolutely. Let’s dive into this. What can I help you with in today’s discussion?

Susan Gleaton:                  I had originally asked for more help, clarity or just getting rid of bad thinking I guess I’d say on charging clients more or actually more like charging clients what I’m worth. I guess that would be a better way to say it.

Yuri Elkaim:                         Absolutely.

Susan Gleaton:                  But even better would be charging clients more in lines of the benefit that they’re getting when they work with me because there’s a big disparity there. I guess I’ve always been for the underdogs. I’m always trying to help out those who don’t have I guess you could say.

Yuri Elkaim:                         Sure.

Susan Gleaton:                  It’s hard to charge a little bit more.

Yuri Elkaim:                         Yeah, let’s start there because that’s one of the biggest concerns that health experts have is “How can I charge more when so and so is charging 10 times less,” or “What if I alienate everyone? What if people can’t afford me?” Let’s talk with that because, as you know, that’s a huge component of what we really recommend for you guys to do is charge a lot more, is to out-charge the competition almost, to be at the top of the mountain because there’s very little competition up there, but also understanding there’s less volume. We’re not saying …

Susan Gleaton:                  Right, right.

Yuri Elkaim:                         Listen, we all want to help everyone, right. We want to change the world, but we have to … Hey, there she is. She’s on camera. It’s working.

Susan Gleaton:                  I’m here?

Yuri Elkaim:                         You did something magical. We are now live on camera.

Susan Gleaton:                  I figured out what I did. Yeah, I got it now.

Yuri Elkaim:                         Cool. So nice to see you. There we go.

Susan Gleaton:                  Thank you.

Yuri Elkaim:                         Yeah. When you look at being at the top of the mountain, just like in a real mountain, there’s less oxygen at the top, there’s also less competition at the top, but there’s also fewer prospective clients at the top because not everyone is willing to invest that amount of money. Now when I say there’s fewer clients, there are 7 billion people on the planet, right? There’s got to be multiple billions who have digestive issues and even if it was a couple million that could potentially be your clients, that’s still more than enough clients for multiple lifetimes.

Yuri Elkaim:                         Let me ask you this. The clients that you’ve worked with in the past or you want to work with moving forward, how much is it worth to them to no longer have their digestive issues? You’ve got to put a value on that.

Susan Gleaton:                  I don’t think they could put a value on it because it’s inconveniencing their life so much that it’s … I was just on a Facebook group for IBS and this is hugely inconveniencing. They can’t get to work. They feel like everybody’s talking about them. Yeah, I don’t think you could put a dollar value on it.

Yuri Elkaim:                         Here’s the fun part is would you agree, Susan, that the intangibles in life are the most valuable like health, happiness, joy, relationships?

Susan Gleaton:                  Yeah.

Yuri Elkaim:                         Now the challenge is how do we quantify those, right. This is where you have to work your magic with the prospective clients to quantify their problem. The person’s saying, “It’s really embarrassing or I’m missing work,” or whatever those frustrations are, you need to be able to lead them down a conversation that is going to help them internalize “Wow, this actually costs me a lot of money,” because nobody can give you an accurate estimation of how much it would be worth to no longer have the problem. If they said $1 million, that may be too much, that may be too little, but if they said $5,000, I guarantee, it’s way more than that, right?

Susan Gleaton:                  Right, yeah.

Breaking down how to frame your price

Yuri Elkaim:                         We need to ask them a question that is going to get them to in their minds like, “Oh, my God, that makes a lot of sense.” For instance, if you know that one of your clients or several of your clients are not able to go to work because of the GI distress, hey, Susan, you not being able to go to work, what’s that costing you?

Susan Gleaton:                  A raise, it’s costing … I’m not as productive. There you go.

Yuri Elkaim:                         Cool. You’re telling me that if you can’t do your work properly, you’re not going to get a raise, you’re not going to be as productive and if you’re not as productive, you’re probably not going to be performing at your best and, hopefully this never happens, but again, you never know, maybe your bosses, your managers, they’re not approving of your performance, that can lead to some type of termination down the road, which is, God forbid, we don’t want that to happen, but you recognize the cost of not being able to perform at your best. Is that right?

Susan Gleaton:                  Yeah, absolutely.

Yuri Elkaim:                         Let’s just use the example of the raise for example. How much of a raise could you potentially get if you actually did your best work?

Susan Gleaton:                  I’m going to have to guess here.

Yuri Elkaim:                         Whatever you want to say.

Susan Gleaton:                  Let’s say that’s going to be 2,000 a month. I don’t know.

Yuri Elkaim:                         Two thousand a month, all right, $2,000 a month, that’s what, $24,000 in a year. What you’re telling me is that you are potentially missing out on $24,000 per year because of this digestive issue.

Susan Gleaton:                  Yeah, I guess so, when you add it up, yes.

A roleplaying example and making the best program for your client

Yuri Elkaim:                         Right. See what I’m doing here, Susan, is I’m trying to quantify the problem. Just for everyone listening and watching not everyone is going to relate this to their job. You need to figure out a way where they’re saying-

Yuri Elkaim:                         Yeah. Give me another example. What’s a symptom of how this is showing up in a person’s life?

Susan Gleaton:                  I’m afraid to travel with a group of people because they’re going to have to stop the car all the time because of me.

Yuri Elkaim:                         Cool. All right, so you’re obviously apprehensive of traveling with other people. Let’s assume that you can’t travel with your friends anymore. What would that mean to you?

Susan Gleaton:                  They’re going to do things that I can’t do. They’re going to be talking about going places that I didn’t get to go. Also, want to do some airline travel and I’m scared to death of it.

Yuri Elkaim:                         Sure, sure. Why does that matter to you that you’re not able to travel with your friends and miss out on these opportunities?

Susan Gleaton:                  Because I finally got to the point in my life where I can because my kids are grown and so this is what I’ve always dreamed of.

Yuri Elkaim:                         Cool. You not being able to do that, you got the empty nest, the kids are out, you have the freedom and time to travel now, but you’re held back because you’re afraid of having these frequent pit stops. What’s the worst thing that could happen if you … What’s that costing you not to travel with those friends?

Susan Gleaton:                  Just staying home and not enjoying life, just loss of a dream let’s say. Not having the maybe retired life that I thought I would have.

Yuri Elkaim:                         Cool. Tell me more about that retired life. What does that dream life look like for you?

Susan Gleaton:                  I’m having to say this for my ideal clients-

Yuri Elkaim:                         Sure. Yeah. We’re just role playing. We’re just having some fun, right?

Susan Gleaton:                  For my ideal client it would be finally getting to travel and do stuff because you couldn’t afford it when your kids were little or in high school, you can’t afford it. Now you have friends and you can go places with them, but your health issue’s a very embarrassing one is getting in the way.

Yuri Elkaim:                         What are you going to do instead without being able to do all the travel?

Susan Gleaton:                  What am I going to do instead? Rent or no, buy a travel trailer and then, it’s just my husband and I travel. There you go.

Yuri Elkaim:                         Yeah, doesn’t sound as much fun.

Susan Gleaton:                  It has its good points and its bad points.

Yuri Elkaim:                         Sure, sure.

Spending more, serving more, charging more

Yuri Elkaim:                         Yeah. Let’s come back to just our conversation here for a sec. What we’re trying to do is we’re trying to take them down a path of we need them to associate the cost of not being able to do something, right. Again, there’s obviously questions we have in our script that can help you navigate that and get there a bit more effectively, but we want to help them understand that we need to quantify the unquantifiable. That’s pretty much what we’re trying to get at.

Susan Gleaton:                  Yeah, yeah. It’s hard.

Yuri Elkaim:                         Because by the time, and we talked about this, is by the time they get to your program, and you’re walking them through what all this looks like, you’re going to tie back in, “Hey, you know that problem you told me about earlier where you wouldn’t be able to travel because you’re afraid of taking frequent pit stops and so forth? Here’s what you need to do to fix that. You need to kind of seal the gut, heal the gut, whatever you want to call it and that’s the first thing you need to do,” right. Then you can segue into your program.

Yuri Elkaim:                         Again, we’re talking a bit more in the prescription phase here of the call, but as we’re doing that, you have to bring back the number, the big problems, the big pain points that we’re really hammering in the earlier part of the call in the discovery, bring those back in, introduce a quick little prescription and the prescription is not like how to do it. It’s here’s what needs to happen, right. You need to heal your gut. We’re not going to say, “Have aloe vera and fish oil.” We’re not going to go into the specifics, but we’re giving them like here’s the high level big picture of what needs to happen in order for that problem to be solved once for all.

Yuri Elkaim:                         Then you’re going to segue into talking a bit more about your program. “We’ve got this, based on everything you’ve told me, here’s what I’d recommend for you. It’s my program called XYZ and it’s what’s my top clients who are very much like yourself end up doing,” and you would then talk about the promise. The promise is “Here’s the outcome you’re going to get from my program.” Then you walk them through the process of how that all helps. During this process, the key is that in their mind, the value of this is infinitely higher than the price they’re going to see. What were you historically charging before we started working together?

Susan Gleaton:                  Including the tests because I highly rely on the MRT test so including that test, it was 1300.

Yuri Elkaim:                         That’s still a decent, that’s a fair amount. It’s not like super cheap. It’s also not super expensive. How long of a program is it?

Susan Gleaton:                  Eight weeks.

Yuri Elkaim:                         I think that’s very reasonable.

Susan Gleaton:                  It was three months. I shortened it to two months, but then they have access to me for an extra month.

Yuri Elkaim:                         Cool. Awesome. What do you feel you should be charging for this program?

Susan Gleaton:                  I would actually to make it my ideal perfect program like one of our modules was, I would be adding two other tests to it so I can help them better.

Yuri Elkaim:                         There you go.

Susan Gleaton:                  I’m going to add probably about $500 just to my cost-

Yuri Elkaim:                         We’ll call it $3,000 as a program?

Susan Gleaton:                  I was thinking about 3,000 actually, yeah.

Yuri Elkaim:                         Minimum.

Susan Gleaton:                  It more than doubled. It went from 1,300 to 3,000 with added value.

Yuri Elkaim:                         Yeah, you said something really important there. You said talking about including two extra tests, which is actually going to help the client get a better outcome.

Susan Gleaton:                  Absolutely.

Yuri Elkaim:                         Guys, listening, watching, that’s the big thing you need to understand about this. It’s not about adding a zero. It’s not about just doubling or tripling or 10X your prices. It’s about thinking what would have to be true if I only got paid after this client got results. What would I have to provide for them? What type of service experience, whatever would they have to have to truly solve this problem? If it’s two extra tests, hey, it’s two extra tests, right. If it’s you showing up at their door and making their meals, hey, maybe there’s an exclusive VIP package. It’s $100,000, not everyone’s going to take that, but-

Susan Gleaton:                  Right. Yeah, yeah. That’s in the works, too, yeah.

Yuri Elkaim:                         Does that make sense, Susan?

Susan Gleaton:                  Yes, yeah, it does. Yeah. To make my ideal thing, it would just cost a little bit more, but it would serve them so much better.

Being able to describe what you do well

Yuri Elkaim:                         For sure. During the call, the goal is to build the value of your program, but also to remind them that the real cost is not $3,000. The real cost is not doing anything, is not working with you because now, it’s that $24,000 for your promotion. It’s the travel they’re not going to be able to do. It’s the suffering. It’s the embarrassment. It’s all the frustration. That’s the real cost and if you ask the person, “Listen, let me ask you. All of those things that I just mentioned, if I can solve those for you, would it be worth more than $3,000?” I don’t think anybody in their right mind would say no to that. If they did, they’re obviously not committed to doing the work.

Yuri Elkaim:                         You just want to position to say “Listen, I understand,” if someone says, “It’s a little bit too much money,” “Listen, I understand this isn’t cheap. I also understand it’s not overly expensive. Would you agree with me that the reason that it is what it is because I can help you really get a great outcome? You have to make a decision. What’s most important to you, the cost or the outcome that you want?” Right?

Yuri Elkaim:                         “Because if you want to save money, you’re going to have to compromise on the outcome and sadly, I can’t help you do that. I would love to give this to you for free. I would love to give this to you at half price. But if I do that, it’s not serving you because I’m only able to give you a fraction of what you really need to create the transformation you want and the last thing I want is for you to say, ‘You know what, this is not the right thing for me,’ and you give up on your dream and you deal with the next half of your life in frustration or worse yet, you find another alternative that might be cheaper that actually costs you more in the long run in terms of time, money and frustration.” Right?

Susan Gleaton:                  Yeah, I totally get it. Yeah. Then come to think of it, I was thinking while you were talking, the cost of $3,000 is probably an average family vacation or so maybe. I don’t know.

Yuri Elkaim:                         Yeah. Yeah, for sure. Yeah. Remember we talked about selling with emotion, closing with logic. Right? At this point of the call, it’s really about logically in your head, how can $3,000 be more expensive than all of the suffering you’ve been going through. That’s pretty much what we have to have them realize. Does that help?

Susan Gleaton:                  Yeah, that helps, that helps.

Yuri Elkaim:                         What’s been the big insight that you’ve had from our discussion here on the pricing side of things?

Susan Gleaton:                  All of this I already knew. I guess confirmation that making the whole package I guess or program better by including more tests, getting all the pieces that I need is a good idea. It’s just making the absolute like if I had the best tools to work with, what would it be? Why not do that? In the long run, it’s not adding that much cost to them.

Yuri Elkaim:                         Exactly.

Susan Gleaton:                  Or the value that they’re getting.

Yuri Elkaim:                         Yeah, and three years down the road, most people are going to have no clue, they’re not going to remember what they paid, but what they will remember is that their life has been transformed.

Susan Gleaton:                  Right, right. Yeah.

Yuri Elkaim:                         Just like when we started our Health Business Accelerator Workshop, it looked a little bit different than it does now. We actually didn’t include the tech build out. Then we realized that hey, what if we could build out all the tech for our clients? We added that in. Right? That’s part of one of the reasons why we increased the price is like “Hey, we’re going to take care of all the tech for you,” and it’s like, “That’s going to help our clients,” help you guys get better results, get faster results, be less overwhelmed, less frustrated.

Yuri Elkaim:                         These are the things that as you’re building out your program, if you’re watching, listening to this, I want you to think about it’s not … I get so much heat, it’s so funny, on our Facebook ads about premium pricing. It’s like, “How dare you charge more for people and their health.” I’m like it’s not about that. It’s not about only speaking and helping wealthy people. That’s not what this is about. You don’t have to be wealthy to afford a $3,000 program, especially if you’ve got a payment plan, right? It’s simply a clarification of values. Everyone’s spending money anyways. No one’s ever giving you their last dollar so if they’re going to spend $3,000 on a TV or a vacation, they have the money or they’ll find it. People will find the money just like they will find the time if it matters to them. Yeah.

Susan Gleaton:                  Right, right, right. Actually, if you didn’t have the tech build out in your program, I probably wouldn’t have joined?

Yuri Elkaim:                         See, there we go.

Yuri Elkaim:                         Totally, totally, awesome. We got another few minutes. Is there anything you want to touch on in the next couple minutes that we have together?

The doorway to starting a conversation with a prospective client

Susan Gleaton:                  One thing that you did a podcast on where I heard you most recently was on being able to say what I do really succinctly. I still get that and I have worked on that for years and it always comes out really bad. Somebody asked me what do I do? I’m like “I’m a dietitian and I help people with digestive health,” and then it just downhill from there.

Yuri Elkaim:                         You know what’s funny. This is a very common issue. That’s why we say the platform isn’t what matters. It doesn’t matter if you’re using Facebook ads or YouTube ads. It’s the psychology, it’s the messaging, right, and that’s what we really focus on so much of is it’s not about do I use my iPhone to shoot a video or a Canon DSLR to shoot? It doesn’t matter. It’s what comes out of your mouth is what matters most. With respect to what you just said, “I’m a dietitian,” as soon as you say dietitian, you put yourself in a box.

Susan Gleaton:                  I did, yeah.

Yuri Elkaim:                         Right? That’s okay.

Susan Gleaton:                  And they didn’t hear anything after that and I’ve got to orient it just to not say that.

Yuri Elkaim:                         Yeah, that’s the thing is because most people don’t have a framework for how to properly tell people what they do, they revert back to the label like, “I’m a dietitian. I’m a health coach. I’m a doctor. I’m a lawyer.” It doesn’t allow you to stand out. That’s the big thing is we want to be able to stand out in a way where you are in a category of one instead of in a category of many others.

Susan Gleaton:                  Yeah, got that.

Yuri Elkaim:                         Have you gone through this exercise in Module 1?

Susan Gleaton:                  I went through Module 1 and did every exercise, but I’m not recalling the particular one you’re talking about.

Yuri Elkaim:                         This would tie back into the promise of your program. For instance, “I help target market achieve certain outcome,” right.

Susan Gleaton:                  Yeah. Yeah. I did that. It’s just when you’re talking about IBSD, it’s just not real conversational.

Yuri Elkaim:                         Sure. Again, it’s not like you’re going to be at cocktail parties all the time like networking and doing all those kind of stuff, right. It’s just coming up in conversation. For instance, if someone asks me what I do, it’s a very hard question for people to answer in general. What do you? We default back to the label, “I’m a lawyer.” Great. Thank you. So are a million other people. What I tell people is I help other health experts start and scale high end coaching businesses that transform people’s lives. That’s what I do. You want to be able to articulate. See, what happens is when you say that, what’s the next question the person might be thinking in their mind when you say something like that?

Susan Gleaton:                  I don’t know. Usually, it ends the conversation right there.

Yuri Elkaim:                         Or they might be thinking-

Susan Gleaton:                  What they might be thinking is I hate dietitians or what’s IBSD or I actually never get that far to the IBSD. I never have said that.

Yuri Elkaim:                         Sure.

Susan Gleaton:                  I don’t know.

Yuri Elkaim:                         Most people don’t care about your label, right. They care about themselves. It’s like, “Hey, can you help me? Cool. Hey, what you said sounds like it could help me.” What a lot of people who might be, not everyone, but again, let’s assume you’re talking to your target audience, the right people would be like “Huh, that’s interesting. Tell me more. Or how do you that?” That’s the doorway into talking about your process and your dream come true system and then obviously, how you can help them, but it all starts with that one sentence that really succinctly speaks to the benefit of what they’re looking to achieve so yeah, just work on that.

Susan Gleaton:                  Yeah, yeah. Let’s work on that, yeah.

Yuri Elkaim:                         The fewer words we use to talk, the more time it takes, right. If we just rambled on for minutes on end, “I do this and this and this and this and this,” it’s like you have to put some thought into that. Like with the title, there’s only two or three words in a title, you have to think a lot about what that title’s going to be for maximum impact. The same thing with this what we call unique value proposition, which is what you do, how you help people in one sentence.

Yuri Elkaim:                         I would just revert back to the promise formula in Module 1, right, and just clean that up and again, remember, you’re speaking only to people who want to hear from you at least in the form of your Facebook ads and so forth so even if you’re at a cocktail party or on the airplane talking to someone beside you, you can tell them that. Maybe water it down, like “I help people with digestive issues,” instead of specific IB …

Susan Gleaton:                  Yeah, yeah, that’s why I usually say it’s digestive-

Yuri Elkaim:                         Yeah, exactly. Does that make sense, Susan.

Susan Gleaton:                  Yeah, that makes sense. Yeah, I have actually never gotten far with digestive …

Yuri Elkaim:                         That’s right. I help people prevent their colon from being removed out of their body.

Susan Gleaton:                  Yeah. I usually say, “I help people reduce inflammation,” and then that’s just too general. They don’t know what.

Yuri Elkaim:                         A lot of people don’t know what inflammation is. They don’t know symptomatically what that means. Yeah, I would just clean that up, specify it a bit more to digestive stuff, and then you become a bit of a category of one, right. I am the person, I am the expert, the world’s leader or the most famous for this target audience with that problem.

Susan Gleaton:                  Right.

Yuri Elkaim:                         Cool.

Susan Gleaton:                  I’ll work on that.

How Susan has benefitted from our program

Yuri Elkaim:                         Awesome. Has this been a helpful discussion for you?

Susan Gleaton:                  Yeah, it has been helpful.

Yuri Elkaim:                         Yeah, awesome. For everyone watching or listening, you came into our program and you had mentioned that you were feeling pressure from within, all the Facebook stuff, the Instagram, newsletter, a bunch of stuff. It didn’t make sense to you that that was going to be the model for you to follow. For anyone who’s watching or listening to this who’s thinking “Man, I’ve been doing all this stuff and nothing’s really coming to fruition,” and they’re considering working with us, what would you tell them?

Susan Gleaton:                  I would tell them I feel like somebody finally has my back. Where before, I felt like I was just kind of floundering. I had some direction, but I really didn’t know what to do and didn’t have enough, somebody just saying “Yes, this is good. No, scratch that,” or the technology. I haven’t gotten there yet, but … And I just felt totally overwhelmed with Facebook, Instagram, email, whatever, very overwhelmed with all that and so haven’t gotten that far in your program yet, but I do feel that somebody’s going to have my back and is going to be just guiding me through so that I’ll be a success instead of “Oh, this worked,” and nothing happened.

Yuri Elkaim:                         Yeah, that’s awesome. Thank you. Thank you for sharing that. That’s very true because we do have your back and for everyone listening and watching, you’re relatively new. You don’t have everything deployed yet. You’re not enrolling clients through our process yet, but you’re doing the work and once you’re ready to deploy, we’ve got your back. We’ll be there to support you and help you, give you feedback on what’s working, what isn’t. It’s very tough to do that when you’re on your own, right?

Susan Gleaton:                  Right.

Yuri Elkaim:                         We’re super happy to have you with us. Thank you for joining me today. It’s been a lot of fun.

Susan Gleaton:                  All right. Thank you.

Yuri Elkaim:                         All right, guys. Hope you’ve enjoyed this one.

Yuri Elkaim:                         Hey, thanks so much for joining us on this episode of the Healthpreneur Podcast. If you’ve enjoyed this episode, here’s what I’d like you to do right now. If you haven’t done so already, please subscribe to the Healthpreneur Podcast on iTunes and while you’re there, leave us a rating review. It helps us get in front of more people and change more lives.

Yuri Elkaim:                         If you’re ready to start or scale your health and fitness coaching business and want to start getting in front of more people, working with them on a higher level without trading time for money, then I invite you to check out our free seven-figure health business blueprint training, totally free right now and you can do so at healthpreneurgroup.com/training.

For now, thank you so much for joining us. Continue to be great, do great and I look forward to seeing you in the next episode.