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If you’ve ever caught yourself saying “oh, I just gave them a quick template,” you’re already undercharging for what actually solves the problem.
Renee Hribar tells the story of a client she calls Kate, a member of her Permission to Sell program, who couldn’t put a price on a resource she’d built because charging for it felt “inauthentic” — until Renee asked her one question that changed everything: does giving something away for free mean it has no value to the person receiving it? Renee unpacks why the expertise that feels effortless to service providers and consultants — the eight-second diagnosis, the instant read on a broken funnel, the pattern recognition built over years of real client work — is usually the most valuable thing they’re not charging for at all. Using car dealership sticker pricing, a mechanic who solved her car trouble in eight seconds, and her own move from Michigan to Barcelona, she makes the case that price and value are not the same thing, and that undercharging quietly steals time, energy, and life from the people doing the work.
Renee closes with three questions listeners can sit with the next time they’re building an offer, without turning it into a spreadsheet exercise. The parts of your work that feel easiest to you are usually the parts your clients would pay the most to have solved.
Transcript
You know, it's, it's just me looking at their business. It's just me looking at their finances, their course, their HR handbook, their launch plan." Sorry, I'm having fun because these are all conversations I've had lately. "Oh, I just looked at their ads real quick," or, "I just gave them a quick, you know, website eval.
er your thing is, and you're [:So this is why it's highly likely you're undercharging for what you're offering, not because it isn't valuable, but because you've been doing it for so long that you have completely forgotten what it's like not to know what you know, and that is a very expensive blind spot. Welcome back to the Selling Your Expertise podcast.
I'm Renee Hribar, sales coach for B2B service providers and consultants who are sick and tired of being undervalued and disrespected, and a lot of it starts right here. So I help you package up, sell, and deliver your expertise in a way that goes way beyond your, quote-unquote, corporate job. We don't wanna just replace the income.
lly amazed at what we create [:Five innocent little words. I'd just give them that. Oh. Oh. Okay. Come sit by me. Yeah, mm-hmm, come sit right here because we need to talk. Recently, I was working with a group of women on their offers inside of my Permission to Sell program, and for this story, I'm gonna call the person Kate. Not her real name, but 100% real story.
opening the box, like what's [:Like, think about it, the things that you notice right away and you say some- to somebody else, "Hey, take a look at this," and they're not even thinking about the things that you already noticed . That is why we need to have this conversation today, right? Because maybe somebody, let's say, hires you for a website, right?
oing it with real clients in [:Your brain immediately starts connecting the dots before everyone else or anybody else has even found the dang dots. You're already connected, and you're like, "Oh, these dots? Yeah, I found them last week, and I did already." So in this story, the person we're calling Kate has this one particular resource that she just gives away to her clients, right?
It's good. I mean, it's really good, and it's something that she created after years of doing the work that she does, and we're talking about including it in her offer, right? Like, so we're working out the offers, and she, you know, sh- you know, showing up in terms of the value. So she... We're trying to s- determine what's the value of this, and she says, "Well, I don't know.
hem." And there it was. "I'd [:Not because it didn't solve anything or because someone in the market says, "Oh, that has no value," but because it was easy for her. And that, my friends, is a grand canyon of difference. So I asked her, because again, like, she's o- one of my students in the Permission to Sell program. She's brilliant. She's amazing.
wer was no. Just because I'd [:And I, I want you to sit with that for a second, my friends, my listeners, my connectors, because maybe you're doing the exact same thing See, what changed for Kate wasn't that she suddenly wanted to slap a price tag on every PDF in her Google Drive. Please, do not, do not do that. I've seen it happen. Nobody needs the yard sale version of your business.
like, "You should raise your [:You should raise your rates." 'Cause we hear that all the time, right? "You should charge more for that. You should raise your rates." You're like, "Cool, but if I don't feel great about it, then how can I possibly feel great about sharing that with someone else? I can't. I need to lay my head in the cl- on the pillow every night with a clear conscience."
And so, so many people miss the invisible pieces of the offers they're already delivering. And I mean, I see it, like, every week, every day maybe. So you open somebody's website, right? This is you. You're a web designer, and within four minutes you're like, "There's the problem. Boom." Right? Or, uh, maybe you're a director of ops, and you look at their team, and immediately you know where the communication is breaking down, like, within the first 12 minutes of the first meeting.
no one is clicking through. [:Or look at this. You look at... I have someone who is so good with dashboards that I work with. She looks at 12 numbers in the dashboard, and she's like, "That one matters. Those other seven, stop staring at them. I'm gonna fix this. Delete." But doesn't delete it. It... She infuses it into the right places because this is a reality.
Your brain can do things in minutes, and you think, "Pfft, well, that wasn't very hard." Uh, yeah, for you. Let's think about my mechanic opening the hood of my car and listening for eight seconds and saying, "Oh, it's your alternator." And me saying, "Eight seconds? I'm not paying you for that." Imagine. Why? Because I'm not paying him for the eight freaking seconds.
same thing till approximately:Please thank you for fixing this." And I'm just guessing it would be 12- probably more. Depends on the car and everything else. But here's the deeper problem, right? Here's what I think is really happening. You're thinking it's your price, and it isn't. Or at least not totally. So you're simply too close to your own brilliance, right?
Like, you're inside the wine bottle. Have you heard that phrase before? I love it. I also love wine. Um, been on lots of wine tastings here in Spain. I love it. You're inside the wine bottle trying to read the label. Like, that's the analogy, right? And of course, it looks easy from in there. You've been mastering this for freaking years.
rks and what absolutely does [:Er, what? Put on the brakes, friends. What? That is expensive for you because then you start doing this, "Oh, I'll just throw in another revision. Oh, I'll answer their quick question. I know it's Sunday at 9:00 at night. It's okay. It's okay." You know why I know these things? 'Cause I have clients who do these things.
They're willing to go all in.[:But they're not valuing it, right? Like, "Oh, I already have a template. It wasn't hard. Oh, at that quick... That's just a quick audit. I- it won't take me very long." Or, "Well, I'll just send her a checklist," right? And you're, like, at, like... Think about, like, all the free calls, the extra revisions, the one more Voxer, the little audits, the, "Oh, don't worry about its," and suddenly your offer looks like one of those suitcases you're sitting on trying to zip closed before vacation.
Ah. I know I've done it, and I know you have, too. Meanwhile, you're telling yourself, like, "Nobody would pay more for this." They didn't even see what it was though, my friend. They didn't even see what they were getting. Let me say that again. They didn't even see what they were getting for the price they already paid or for the offer you had developed.
e reality is, is most of the [:And this connects e- specifically to something we talked about in episode 61, where I talked about stop waiting for referrals and start closing clients consistently. And you know I have feelings about waiting around for other people to create opportunities for you. Because whether we're talking about getting the client or pricing the project, the same stuff keeps showing up.
It's kinda like a new car sticker, right? I don't know if you know this, but my dad had a car dealership for a long time while I was growing up, and we would put those stickers on there. And I was always amazed. I'm like, "Bose stereo system, $5,000." Now again, it's probably more now. This was, like, in the '80s.
was like, "Sunroof, an extra [:And the manufacturer doesn't go, "Ah, floor mats, those were easy. Throw them in. Don't even mention it to them." No. No. If you've bought a new car lately, you know they actually do not throw in the floor mats, those F-ers. I think they should, by the way, but that doesn't matter. I still value it. The pieces contribute to the value of the whole thing because price and value are not the same thing.
obably things that, uh, that [:Who wants it? Please, take it. Take it." Value has context, which means your opinion of how easy something was to create is not the final word on the value it has for someone else. And maybe I'm noticing this even more because living in Barcelona has made me think a lot about value. We have moved our whole family from Michigan to Barcelona, teenage son, two dogs, the whole freaking circus.
more calls [:I wanted control of my time, and I want that for you. I wanted to make good money and still be able to close the laptop and walk the dogs on the beach. I mean, in Michigan, I guess we could have walked them on the beach. I mean, I could've gotten, stepped on a hypodermic needle and, or seen a diaper washed up on the shore.
Oh, also it's not seawater, it's freaking freshwater. Or is it? Is it fresh? I don't know if it's fresh. So, like you, I wanna build a business that supports my life, not the other way around, and definitely not one that eats my life. And every time you throw another hour into a project because it was easy for me, or I already know how to do it, you're not only giving away money, you're giving away your time.
coffee while it's still hot. [:That's why this conversation is the absolute core of everything I stand for. Charging appropriately for your expertise isn't about squeezing every possible dollar out of somebody. No. It's about making more money, working less, and actually enjoying the life you get because you understand the difference between price and value.
dismissing something as easy [:Now, don't answer. Just notice. And then ask yourself, "What am I giving clients that they would have to spend time, money, frustration, or mistakes figuring out without me?" And then ask yourself this, "If I stopped deciding what my expertise was worth from inside my own brain, what would it look like as a value to each piece for my clients?"
Like, sit with that, because the goal isn't to start charging separately for every email, template, and breath you take, no. Every breath you take. No. Although that is a good song. I won't ruin it for you by saying shit. The goal is to become accurate. I'm being silly, but at the same time, I'm being serious.
municate value that you keep [:I think I learned a lot about what not to do in sales by hanging out at my dad's dealership after school. I mean, hey, you gotta do what you gotta do, but you don't have to do it that way So how do you package it and s- make sure that the client understands the difference between a bunch of deliverables and an offer that actually solves something important, right?
Or how do you put a price around your expertise when the most valuable thing you're selling may be the thing you can do in eight seconds? Because we're gonna keep pulling that thread, right? For today, I just want you to stop giving away the floor mats because they were easy for you to make. They're still part of the car.
They're a [: