Are you good at what you do? Very good? If no, work hard on yourself, so you can use the ideas here. But if yes, this article explains how you can get paid more, for doing the same or even less work. It goes without saying that getting to the competence level that makes it possible, will rarely be an overnight journey.

More importantly however, you need to know HOW TO convince those you serve to pay you that way!

Many highly competent service providers struggle to get paid what their solutions are worth. Sometimes it’s because they lack the insights shared in this article. It could also be because they lack the confidence to act on those insights.

Two Stories You Can Learn From

I share below, two real-life narratives that illustrate the mindset a service provider who gets paid more for less work needs to have.

But that’s all I can do.

You alone will have to decide to go out and confidently apply what you learn from her, to get what you deserve for being so awesome at what you do

1. A Legendary Artist

I read a story about the great Picasso. One day, he drew – on request – a beautiful portrait of a woman client who stood before him, within just a few minutes. When she asked how much she was to pay, he mentioned a large sum of money.

“But you just drew it in a few minutes!” she exclaimed. Picasso replied that it took him years to learn to do it that quickly.

In essence, Picasso was crystal clear about the VALUE of the solution he provided: she was paying for access to his ability to deliver such top quality artwork, in a short time. Not for the time it took him.

2. A Computer Repairs Genius

Another story – this one more in our time. A company CEO was forced to call in a computer repairs expert, after the corporate network suddenly went berserk. The in-house IT team had worked for days to rectify the problem without success.

When the expert arrived, he resolved the problem in less than 30 minutes. One day later he sent in an invoice for 5,000 dollars.

The CEO called him to express surprise at the hefty sum for work done in such a short period of time. He told the expert to re-think it and send in another invoice.

The next day, a revised invoice arrived which read:

“$500 for correcting the problem. $4,500 for knowing how to identify the problem, and what to do to correct it.”

Stop Charging for Your Time – or You’ll Short-change Yourself

Both stories illustrate the importance of knowing your stuff so well, that doing it takes little effort or time.

But there is an even more important lesson to be learnt from those narratives:

It’s the need to avoid letting clients dictate the value or price you place on your provided solution. And you must also not accept to quantify your remuneration based on TIME taken to do the work.

This second point is so important. Yet, many entrepreneurs fail to grasp it – especially service providers.

In a sense, this inability to avoid charging based on time is the result of formal schooling we receive. Most of our schools still teach people to think like employees, and to go out looking for jobs.

Now, time spent at work has, for decades, been the basis of estimating work done – but we often forget that that model was meant to estimating remuneration for employees working in industries etc.

As self-employed or independent service providers/consultants, adopting a similar model when our “time spent at work” is not fixed per client, sets us up to lose in the long run.

What happens when – as occurred in the stories above – you are so good, you tend to deliver solutions quickly?

Will you then deliberately take longer, in order to earn something worthwhile. And will ethical and integrity issues not arise as a result of going that route?

The foregoing is why smart service providers are choosing to price solutions they deliver using other criteria.

One reliable strategy is to make your price a percentage of total benefits (in monetary terms) to be reaped by the client, from using your solution.

Important Note: You don’t necessarily have to reveal how you arrive at your fee in detail. Just get the information needed, work it out, then state it.

You will then simply have to convince the client that s/he can reasonably expect to reap such “total benefits” by investing in your service.

If s/he disagrees, and you’re sure your offer is the best you can do, your best bet would be to move on. Your time will be better spent finding willing clients.

On a final note, it does not matter what field you are in, or what kinds of clients you serve. Pricing your services based on how long it takes you, will drastically limit your ability to make money. And it will most likely prevent you from earning sustainable profits as well.