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Do you struggle to communicate your value as a designer? Whether you’re just starting as a freelancer or you’re an established design business, it’s important that you approach these conversations with confidence. In today’s episode, I’m sharing how you can communicate the value behind your services, command the rates you want, and eliminate that feeling of self-doubt or insecurity you have in chatting with potential clients.
How to Experience a Deeper Sense of Confidence & Communicate Your Value
I know how nervous designers can get as they approach a conversation with a potential clients, especially when they struggle to talk about what they do and the value they bring. If that’s you, you’re not alone. There are a few ways you can approach those conversations with more confidence to better communicate your value!
Define Your Outcome & Realign Your Expectations
Assuming the expected outcome from every single conversation with a potential client is to book them, consider the following questions as you go into those conversations:
How do you want to feel?
How do you want to carry yourself through the conversation?
How do you want them to respond to you?
If you’re able to identify the outcome and the experience you want yourself and your potential clients to have, then you are better able to make informed decisions that will align with our vision.
Stop Comparing Yourself
We’ve all gotten caught up in the comparison game, where we have the expectations that we should be, do, and book like the other designers in the industry that we look up to. It’s important to realign your expectations when necessary so that you’re not comparing yourself to the other designers in the industry.
We get stuck in believing this cycle of comparison, but the truth is—your lead isn’t talking to them. They’re talking to you. It doesn’t matter if you aren’t as great in one skillset as another designer is. You don’t need to compete with the other designers in the industry, because they aren’t you.
Separate the Value of Your Work & Your Personal Value
If you’ve been around her for a while, you know how passionate I am about not charging your worth—because you are priceless. The value you bring to a customer and your personal value are vastly different and we shouldn’t hold them so tightly together. Rather than focusing on charging our personal value, we’ll focus on value-based pricing, which charges for the value you’ll bring to your lead.
If you are chatting with a client and know that your work can help create them a 6 figure business, you can go to them and say, ” I charge $X, and through my strategy process, design process, and your website, I’ll be giving you the assets to build a six figure business.” This gives them an understanding of the return on investment.
If you’re just getting started and you don’t have the numbers just yet, there are plenty of other quantifiers for the value your work can bring a customer—strategic design, authentic brand, etc.
If focusing on the value of your work, you’re boosting the confidence in your work.
Highlight the Transformation Your Work Provides
Now, let’s take the value or transformation that you detailed for your clients previously and these will be what you use to share about your services. Once you’ve determined what that is, that is your sweet spot: it’s what you’re uniquely equipped with to serve your clients and empower them to experience the outcomes they’re dreaming about.
It’s important that you’re connecting with the client over the transformation that motivates them.
Are you dreaming of consistent monthly income without adding more to your already overflowing plate, fellow designer? This free training is for you!
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Hi friends and welcome to the brand strategy podcast. A show created to equip you with the inspiration, encouragement, and clarity. You need to build the brand of your dreams. I’m your host, Bonnie Bakhtiari rain designer, strategist and founder of the Lumetri from sustainable strategy to heartfelt encouragement. Each episode is designed to equip you with the tools you need to chase after your dreams, because you deserve a brand that empowers you to do what you love, connects with your dream clients and offers a deep sense of fulfillment along the way. So grab a cup of coffee and join me on this journey. Won’t you?.
Hey friends. Welcome back to the grand strategy podcast, where today we are talking about how to communicate your value to potential clients as a designer. So this is an episode, especially for my fellow brand designers, graphic designers and web designers. So whether you are just getting started in your freelance business, or you are an established pro, I am here to help you understand how you can experience more, ease and experience more confidence when you’re communicating with a lead or a potential client, so that you are able to communicate the value behind your services, command the rates that you want, and not have to feel any self-doubt or insecurity along the way. So as a fellow designer, a brand strategist, and actually a coach for designers like you, I, over the years have taught over a hundred designers, how to experience a deeper sense of confidence, how to supercharge their services through brand strategy and as a result, how to generate consistent income in their businesses.
And so today I want to talk you through some simple steps that you can take in order to effectively communicate the value of your services. And the reason why I am excited to have this conversation with you today and share this topic is because I know what it’s like, because I’ve been in your shoes. I know what it’s like to have those conversations with potential clients, where your palms are sweaty. You’re nervous. Your heart is starting to race. You are so excited about this opportunity to work with them. And you are so excited about that income that you can create and what that will mean for you, what that will mean for your family. But you know, there’s something in the back of your mind, or maybe at the forefront of your mind, that’s telling you that you have a reason to be nervous, whether you’re comparing yourself to all the other designers out there, or you’re doubting yourself, you’re doubting your abilities, or you’re, you’re feeling like you’re new with those and sales calls make you uncomfortable.
There are a lot of different things that can come to mind that make us feel like these conversations with potential clients are uncomfortable and it doesn’t have to be that way. And I don’t want it to be that way for you. So if you have ever felt like it’s a struggle to talk about the work that you do, or what makes you different as a designer to elite, then it today, first of all, uh, you’re not alone. I’ve been there. So many of us have been there. So many of the, you know, like I think at this point inside my free Facebook group for designers, there are over a thousand designers in that group. And we have definitely talked about how this is something that a lot of us have experienced, so you’re not alone, but today we’re going to, we’re going to talk through how you can experience a deeper sense of confidence when you communicate the work that you do as a designer and why you don’t need to be, uh, ashamed of your expertise, the insight and the knowledge that you bring to the table and what equips you to be the best professional for this project.
So let’s dive on in now, first and foremost friend, whenever you’re sitting down and chatting with a lead, whether this is on a zoom call, a phone call or over coffee, we first need to go into this conversation, knowing what your expectations are, right? I’m assuming the outcome that you want to experience is you want to book this client and you want to land this project, but how do you want to feel, how do you want to carry yourself through this conversation? How do you want them to respond to you? If we’re able to identify the outcome and the experience that we want to have, then we are better able to make informed decisions that will bring us to a place of alignment with our vision and the outcome that we experience. Also, I think it’s important to realign your expectations because when I see designers getting stuck, especially in this kind of cycle of self doubt or insecurity, especially when it comes to talking about the work that they do and really feeling confident in that it’s coming from a place of feeling like somehow they don’t measure up to everybody else out there.
And so sometimes it’s easy for us as designers to feel like we’re competing with all of the thousands and millions of designers that are out there. Like we think about the designers that we follow on Instagram and the design pros that we look up to in industry. And we think, oh, I’m nowhere near as talented as they are. I don’t know, illustrator or the way that they do, or I can’t mock up website wire frames, the way that they can, right? Like we tell ourselves these stories about how we don’t measure up, but I’m going to say this with love. I don’t actually think that matters, right? Because we sometimes get so stuck in believing that we don’t measure up to the other experts in our industry, but here’s the thing, your lead, isn’t talking to that person. They want to talk to you. And I believe that you don’t need to compete with the other designers in your industry because they aren’t you now, I am not saying that we should settle for complacency.
I’m not saying we should, um, kind of adopt this like laissez-faire attitude about are our talents or our abilities. Like, I believe that we should always be growing and challenging ourselves, but from a place of, of self-improvement from a place of honing your craft, not from a place of feeling like you have to hustle to, um, compete in, in the industry or feeling like you have to do something in order to quote unquote, measure up to the competition. I’m also not saying that we need to ignore what the competition is doing. I think it’s important to, you know, stay on top of industry trends and, um, you know, industry standards, but from a place of how you view yourself and how you view your ability, if you are looking at what other designers are doing, and it is making you feel a certain way about yourself, and it is a, not a good certain way about yourself, we need to cut that out because that is keeping you stuck in a cycle of self doubt and insecurity.
And when you operate from a space of self doubt and insecurity, that’s when we start to undercharge for our work. That’s when we start to struggle with self-confidence. That is when we really just experience not, not the full quality of, of life that we can be living and especially not the full amount of creativity that we can be experiencing as designers. So, first and foremost, before we even sat down to this conversation with your lead, we want to, uh, define the outcome. We want to realign your expectations. And we want to do that with the knowledge that you are, you, this lead wants to talk to you and you offer something that only you can, and that’s powerful. I don’t want you to get stuck in feeling like your design aesthetic has to be what everyone else is doing, or your process has to look like what everyone else is doing.
There is something really powerful about creating and owning your uniqueness and bringing that into your process as a designer. So now let’s put ourselves in the position of we’re getting, we’re getting ready to talk to this lead. We are hopping on the call or sitting down at the coffee shop, and we’re going to start this conversation in order to effectively communicate the value of your services. We need to separate the value of your work from your personal value, right? If you have been around these parts for a hot minute, and you’ve heard me talk about this, and I’ve even talked about this here on the podcast in the past, why I don’t believe in charging your worth, right? Because you are priceless. You are worth everything. Your work, however, is different. Your work, your pricing for that, that value is determined based on what the market is willing to invest for that level of service, right?
So you priceless your work can be quantified. So when we are sitting down to chat with a potential client, what we to do is we want to understand the value of our work. And we want to understand the value of our work relative to the person we’re speaking to. What I mean by that is, and this is something that I also teach at in more detail inside the brand strategy school, but just to, you know, kind of give you the SparkNotes version when we understand the value of our work. And we can look at that relative to how your potential client or your lead is, uh, defining that value. We’re able to do something called practicing value based pricing. So value based pricing essentially tells us that instead of charging for our work, based on the amount of time that we are pouring into it, we’re charging for our work based on the value, the perceived value that it brings to your lead.
So if you are chatting with a client and you know that you have an incredible design process and a strategy approach that allows your clients to create a six-figure business, and you want to charge them $10,000 for that design work, um, you’re able to go to that conversation knowing, Hey, my investment is $10,000, but through my strategy process, through my design process and through, uh, the website that I’m going to build for you, I’m going to give you the assets, the strategy back to assets that you need in order to build a six figure business. And so if we look at it from that standpoint, that $10,000 initial investment has a massive, massive return for your lead. So when we go into that conversation, we want to know the value of your work. And if you are a freelancer and you’re just getting started and you think, well, bunny, that’s great, but like, I don’t have that data yet.
I don’t know what kind of transformation my work can really provide like that big picture, you know, those measurable sort of ROI components. Well then ask yourself, what kinds of benefits does your work provide? So for example, if you work with this client, are they going to experience a deeper sense of confidence? Are they going to have a brand that feels and looks authentic? Are they going to have a clear cut strategy that they can follow to grow their brand? Right. There, there are other things that we can start to quantify here. So when we focus on the value of your work, we’re starting to boost and kind of bolster our inner confidence because right, again, we’re not trying to be every designer out there. We’re trying to focus on who we are and they need value that our work provides so that we can communicate that.
And we want to know that so that when we’re sitting down with that person and we’re having that conversation, we can say, you know, my process allows you to build a six-figure business, or my process allows you to, uh, you know, experience a deeper sense of confidence and consistently connect with your ideal client. Those are wins that are going to matter to your lead. And so then if we focus on that value, it, it really does kind of change the game and changes the way that you feel about it. So then the third thing that we’re going to do, we are going to highlight the transformation that your work provides. So this step builds on some of the groundwork that you laid in the previous step of knowing the value of your work. When we highlight the transformation that your work provides, we are, we are pointing to the tangible kind of growth that will happen when this lead signs on and chooses to work with you.
So for example, you are going to create a brand for them that allows them to build a six plus figure business, or you’re going to build a brand for them that allows them to pivot from their current industry, to the new industry that they want to work with. Or you’re going to build a brand that allows them to focus on consistently connecting with the quality of clients that they want to be working with, whatever that transformation looks like. That is your sweet spot. That is where you are uniquely equipped to serve your clients and empower them to experience the outcomes that they are dreaming about. This is where we can also take some time to learn your potential client’s goals, and then align your services, you know, authentically and honestly, you know, say, okay, based on your goals, this is what I’m hearing you want to achieve.
Well, that’s great because this level of service that I offer allows you to experience that same kind of transformation, right? And so then what we’re doing, what do we highlight the transformation behind your work? Uh, it’s not so much this, this feeling of needing to hustle to prove your worth to your ideal client. It’s about standing your ground and confidently from a place of, uh, grounded and assuredness. We’re able to say, this is the transformation that my design services provide. Does that work for you? Does that excite you? Are you ready to move forward? So it’s not about hustling to be seen or to be viewed as worth it. It’s all about connecting with your ideal client over the transformation that motivates them. So then friends, the point of this conversation that you’re at in this hypothetical example, your potential client should be feeling excited about the work they can do with you.
And so, right from that point, they’re going to say, yes, that is exactly the kind of transformation that I want to experience. That’s exactly the kind of goal that I want to achieve. What are the next steps, right? And then that’s where you get to point them towards your services. And actually inside the brand strategy school, I have a training that goes over my exact four part process for sales calls or sales meetings with potential clients that guides you through how you can actually implement a, an approach that centers on these components so that you can confidently and expertly guide leads through a sales call. That’s designed to convert. And I know we’ve been talking a little bit about the brand strategy school, which is my signature program for graphic brand and web designers that teaches you to leverage brand strategy as your super power to generate consistent monthly income in your design business.
So whether you’re just getting started or you’re a seasoned pro, if you are wanting to use brand strategy as that value add that is going to transform your business and allow you to command high-end rates for your services. This program is for you. And if you’re curious about my method and how I’ve actually used this exact method to grow my incredibly successful design business, I have a free training that covers this. You can grab your spot to this kind of on demand, uh, class. You can go to be as for Bonnie design.com/training and join us there and check it out. But friends, I hope that at the end of this episode, you are feeling a little more confident and a little more clarity on what it’s like to effectively communicate the value of your services to your potential clients, right? It doesn’t have to be this crazy complicated or difficult or intimidating process.
It’s all about knowing the value of your work, knowing the outcome that you want to experience and knowing the transformation that you confidently can deliver to your ideal client. And that’s where things start to change for us. So if today’s episode resonates with you, I’d love to hear from you feel free to reach out on Instagram. You can find me at Bonnie Jo Marie, if you have questions or want to chat more, or if you’re joining me for my free training for designers, and you’re super excited and want to hang out with me beforehand, feel free to shoot me a message. And I would love to connect with your friends as always. I appreciate you. I appreciate you tuning in and your continued support of the podcast. And as always, I’m cheering you on from Waco.
Thank you so much for joining me today, friend, before you go, I would be so grateful to receive your feedback on the brand Shazzie podcast. If you enjoyed this episode or the podcast in general has helped you grow your brand and really appreciate it. If you left us a review in iTunes, your positive reviews enable the brand strategy podcasts to continue to grow and reach like-minded creatives. Just like you. Plus, I’ll be randomly selecting a handful of lucky reviewers each month to receive a little, thank you, surprise for me in the mail. Thank you for all your support and encouragement as together. We pursue building brands with purpose and intention, and till next time I’m cheering you on from Waco.
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