Women Consultants, Do You Shy Away From Negotiating?
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I speak to women all the time who are the absolute rockstar of their field, and yet they price their services as if they are completely new to it.
There are a few reasons why women do this, but a key one is leadership. We can be very passive in the way we interact with other people.
We wait for them to do something and then we respond.
A lot of women hate sales because it often involves making the first move.
We would much rather wait for someone to come to us and tell us what they want. Then we can respond and tell them what we can offer them.
We want them to tell us how much we are allowed to charge before we put a price on the proposal.
In a lot of situations we might want someone to walk us through our own sales process, or our own negotiation – and to tell us what we are allowed to charge, or ask for.
The problem when you are waiting for the other person to set the tone or take the lead, is that it sets up an unhealthy dynamic for you as their consultant. You can’t do your job effectively if you give them all the power in the working relationship. A key part of consulting is being able to say the hard thing, or to approach the uncomfortable truth that the rest of the team are tiptoeing around.
There are also lots of situations where you need to come into the room ready to lay down your terms and walk away if they aren’t met.
If you try to fudge the issue by bending over backwards for other people, you can end up with nightmare clients that you don’t enjoy working with, and for whom you don’t get the best results.
You can also find that the freedom you wanted when you set up your consulting business is getting eroded, as the boundaries between when you want to work and when you want to attend to other parts of your life become blurred.
Part of showing up as a leader in your consulting business is all about knowing what you charge and how you will operate before you get in the room.
The power that you possess when you approach your business in this way is phenomenal.
When you really start to see this, and feel this, and walk in these shoes, you realise all the situations where you folded too soon, and the other party was bluffing. Those times where you agreed to something you didn’t want to do because you didn’t realise the power you actually have.
Decide what your rules of business are and stick to them. Charge with the reckless abandon of a straight white man. And don’t be afraid to push back when you are faced with scope creep.
In this episode of the Seven Figure Consultant Podcast, I am talking about giving away your power.
This might be something you can immediately relate to, or you might think it’s a bit aggressive. But the reason I think it is helpful to phrase this whole discussion in terms of power, is because when you realise that you are actually giving your power away, it becomes easier to see how you can start taking it back.
I talk about:
● How it feels when a client is ignoring your boundaries
● When you price yourself lower than you want to in order to win a contract
● Sales and making the first move
● Your superpowers as a consultant
● Saying yes, when you want to say no
● Showing up as a leader
🎧 Head here to listen to this episode in full – 049 Are You Giving Away Your Power?
And let me know, do you enjoy taking the lead in negotiations?
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Thanks for reading! I’d love to hear your feedback and future topics you’d like me to feature.