I stumbled for a moment, debating how to answer. I quickly realized that he too must have had a hard time hearing me during our previous conversation, because he asked me, “Was that Thirty Five THOUSAND dollars or Thirty Five THOUSAND pounds (at the time about $60,000)?” I did some quick calculations and pulled a number out of the air. However, through the ruckus I could hear “What is your speaking fee?” I was ill prepared. It was difficult to hear him due to the noise on the platform. The call came to my mobile phone as I waited for a train. So much so that a few days later he called me about a potential gig. In the meeting he expressed serious interest. Bureaus are agents who place speakers with events. One week after starting my speaking business back in 2001, I met with the owner of a speaker’s bureau in London to discuss representation. If our customers aren’t the ones defining value, what drives the perception of value? Pricing Can Determine Perception In fact, in nearly every situation, when I asked them how they would determine what to pay me after an event, they said, “Um, I guess we’ll pay you what we paid the last speaker.” In fact, with 90 percent of my speeches, the client asked me for my standard fee and just paid that. What did I learn? Surprisingly, none of the companies I worked with were able to define value, at least in terms of tangible results. How were the concepts reinforced after the presentation? How were ideas implemented? How was value measured? I wanted to learn the value they got from previous speakers. The only stipulation was that we would have a conversation about value up front. The plan was to send the client a blank invoice after I gave a speech, and they would pay “what they thought it was worth.” Instead of quoting a standard rate, the client would determine my fee after the work was done. Instead of using the traditional model to determine speaking fees (where the speaker sets the rate before the work is done), with PW3, as an experiment, I turned this model upside down. In order to find out, I did an experiment called PW3 – “Pay What We’re Worth.” Price drives the perception of value, and unfortunately most customers don’t understand value…ĭo you know what your customers really value? When I first started my business as a professional speaker, I realized that I didn’t have a clue.
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