How to Set Your Fee Rates With Confidence (and Attract the Right Clients)

business development charging your worth fee confidence helping industry how to set your fee rates peter thomson pricing for coaches pricing for consultants raising your rates value-based pricing Jun 04, 2026

Start With Why: The Reason Behind Your Fee

The first factor, and for me it is the most important of the lot, comes down to one small word.

Why.

What is the reason you do what you do?

Once I became clear about my own purpose, talking about money became noticeably easier.

I have my purpose written down, and I read it at the start of every single day.

It keeps me on track, and it means my life and my business stay on purpose.

A friend of mine, Gill Fielding, put her purpose beautifully.

Hers was to light the spark of financial possibility for as many people as she could reach in her lifetime.

Every morning she asks whether what she is about to do is in alignment with that purpose.

If it is, she does it. If it is not, she does not.

When your why is that clear, the right fee follows far more naturally.

The Value You Deliver to Your Client

The second factor is the value you actually deliver.

What is it worth to your client, and therefore what is it worth to you?

The income you receive is a direct reflection of the outcome your client receives.

Sit down and list every outcome you create for the people you work with.

I have done this myself, and it gives you something powerful.

It gives you belief and confidence, and that makes the fee conversation far less of a problem.

Years ago I interviewed Roy H. Williams, the brilliant Wizard of Ads.

He taught me the difference between the relational client and the transactional customer.

When you are clear that you are attracting relational clients, the money becomes only one factor in the arrangement, not the factor.

The Value You Place on Your Own Life

Here is a factor most people overlook entirely.

The value you place on your own time and your own life.

A client of mine called Mike once asked me, half in jest, to reduce my fee.

We had great rapport, and he knew it was not going to happen.

So I asked him a question.

I said, Mike, can you tell me the shop where I can buy another day of my life?

He said no, he did not know that one.

I told him I did not know it either.

And until such a shop exists, I cannot change the value I am prepared to swap an irreplaceable day of my life for.

Remember, it is not only the delivery time you are charging for.

It is the preparation time too.

So why on earth would you swap that for the wrong price?

Are You a "Me Too" Offering?

The next factor is your positioning.

Are you a me too offering in your marketplace?

By that I mean, is there anything that genuinely sets you apart from everyone else who does what you do?

If there is no real difference, people will shop you as a commodity and buy on price alone.

We have to make certain we are differentiated in our chosen marketplace.

That might be the way you speak, the way you present yourself, or the products that sit alongside your service.

Do you have a book you have authored?

Do you have an audio programme or a video series that lifts you above the crowd?

Becoming an author is one of the simplest ways to build that authority, and it quietly changes how people see you.

The Scarcity of You as a Resource

There is real power in being a scarce resource.

Let me share a simple technique I have used myself.

One September I opened my diary and wrote a single word on every day right through to the end of the year.

The word was no.

It reminded me to say no to the things I had been saying yes to far too easily.

And it reminded me to say no to work at the wrong price.

I had the belief that the world would bring me the business I had set out in my goals.

So I was comfortable turning down the wrong thing.

You could set the same reminder on your phone or in your calendar.

Just that one word, no, helps you protect your time and your value.

Your Belief in Yourself

My friend Jeff Pettitt, a former football referee, has a line I wish I had written.

Most people reach the limit of their belief well before they reach the limit of their talent.

Is that not painfully true when it comes to what we charge?

So how high is your belief in yourself?

Part of the challenge is our history with money.

If you have had times in life when money was tight, that can push you into a scarcity mindset rather than an abundance one.

The programming of our parents, our teachers and our peer group all plays its part.

Sometimes we simply need to leave those old beliefs behind.

Confidence in Your Service and Results

Closely linked to belief is confidence.

Confidence in your service, and in the results you can achieve for your client.

What you promise in your marketing and your sales, you can actually deliver.

When your confidence is high, when your belief is high, and when you are working in alignment with who you are, charging the right rate becomes far easier.

Alignment, Belief, Confidence

When you are in alignment with your purpose, your belief in yourself is firm, and your confidence in the outcome is high, the right fee rate stops feeling uncomfortable and starts feeling obvious. Those three together are the foundation everything else rests on.

The Strength of Your Goals

Your goals matter here too.

When you are truly committed to a goal, you are far more prepared to do what needs to be done to reach it.

Albert E. N. Grey wrote a wonderful piece called The Common Denominator of Success.

He found that successful people focus on pleasing outcomes, in other words their goals.

Failures, he said, focus on pleasing actions.

Pleasing actions are nice.

Pleasing results are better.

When you focus on the result, and accept what it takes to get there, quoting your fee becomes much easier.

Getting Clear on What You Want to Earn

Here is something most people never sit down to work out.

Their actual financial goals.

Resistance is created through a lack of clarity, as the Chip and Dan Heath book Decisive puts it so well.

When I ask people whether they have clarity on their financial goals, only a few say yes.

When I ask how much they are targeting to earn this year, fewer still can answer.

There is a useful distinction here, one I picked up from Earl Nightingale.

We do not make money. That is the job of the Mint.

We earn money.

But the question that really catches people out is the next one.

What are you going to spend it on?

Almost nobody can answer that one.

So sit down and ask yourself three simple questions.

What do I want to spend, and on whom, over the next twelve months?
What do I want to save over the same period?
What do I want to give or contribute to the people and causes that matter to me?

Once you are clear on what you want to spend and save, you get clarity on how much you need to earn.

And that number quietly shapes the fees you are willing to quote.

Testing and Flexing Your Fee Rate

Let me ask you a question.

When did you last test your fee rate?

I have made some bold tests over the years, and they have usually worked out.

In fact, and this still surprises people, the higher the rate I quoted, the more work I tended to win.

When you position yourself with that level of belief, and state your fee with confidence, it changes how the market sees you.

It changes your marketing, your sales and everything you do.

So keep testing.

And give yourself a flexible approach while you are at it.

There is no reason your price should stay fixed regardless of the outcome you create.

Helping a client achieve a result worth ten might justify one fee.

Helping them achieve a result worth a thousand fairly justifies a higher one, and I cover several proven pricing models you can test for yourself.

Confidence, Not Arrogance

Here is how I like to put the final point.

When it comes to pricing, we want to live in a little village just south of arrogant.

Just south of arrogant is north of confident.

It is the level above ordinary confidence.

You are totally confident in your ability to deliver the outcome.

You are totally confident in yourself.

You are totally confident that you are working in alignment with who you are and with your purpose.

That is super confidence, without a trace of arrogance or cockiness.

And it is exactly that quality that attracts clients and makes them want to work with you.

Why?

Because it makes them more certain they will get the outcome they want.

Be Rightfully, Richly and Royally Rewarded

Remember what you and I actually do in the helping industry.

We help people resolve a problem or capitalise on an opportunity in their lives.

When we set our fees properly, everyone wins.

Our clients get the outcome they want, and we get the outcome we want too.

So test your prices in the marketplace.

Make sure you are being rightfully, richly and royally rewarded for the positive difference you make to so many lives.

And by doing that, you build yourself a business and a life of choice.

It is not what the money makes for you. It is what it makes of you.

If you would like the complete method for pricing your expertise and being paid for the value you deliver, you will find it in my book. Get PAID! here.

And if you would like to test these ideas alongside other coaches, consultants and advisers who are doing the same, come and join us inside The Paid Up Club.

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