We Can Do Financial Harm To Our Clients

This is a guest post by Bridget Pilloud and Matthew Stillman and is part of the Do No Financial Harm discussion.

Recently Mark Silver asked a very honest and interesting question.

“Can we do financial harm to our clients?”

Yes. We can.

We can do financial harm to our clients in several different ways, most of which go beyond taking money from someone who needs the money for something else.

The exchange of money between a client and a provider is only one of several exchanges a person will make during the process of transformation that your product or service provides.

It’s only part of the energetic equation. When a person buys a service, they are paying for a transformation, typically for their business or for themselves. Most transformational products and services require a client to put in time and effort, and also require him or her to change their ways in the work.

The equation of the energy that a client gives to get an outcome includes: money,time, work, transformation, emotional processing, systemic changes, courage, trust and other efforts. When the energetic exchange that we expect from a client exceeds the perceived value of our service, we’re expecting too much. We need to dial something back or provide something more.

That we focus on the monetary aspect of this exchange is no surprise. We use prices as a placeholder for value. Our economy favors efficiency. We use money instead of a bartering system. Twenty bucks is easier to split up and spend than a chicken and an hour of your time.

We are used to a measure based on money.

We live in an economy of ease where we are used to paying more for conveniences. We pay more to have a valet park our car than to park it ourselves. We pay more for someone to buy and cook food for us than for us to buy raw product and cook it at home.

It is instilled within us that the more we pay, the less we have to do.

The more we pay, the easier it is. – NOT TRUE

If I am a potential client of yours, and in your well-crafted copy you distort my expectations, changing them to believe that through our work together that:

money/success/traffic/fame/subscribers/passion/flow/conversions/customers/happiness/skill/ meaning/relationships/travel etc.

will suddenly come easily and make my life empirically better in all ways, then you are doing me financial harm.

This is a distortion because it removes the effort from the equation. It doesn’t matter what you charge, even if you charge a little, because I am not going to get the outcome that I am expecting. The distortion echoes forward into other transactions. It changes my financial, entrepreneurial, and emotional choices because I expect ease.

When we allow our clients to buy the dream instead of the reality, they are paid in dreams.

It is possible to do financial harm to them even if they never spend one dollar with you simply by not being honest about the experience or process of transformation.

The energetic exchange between a provider and a client is never just about money. We talk about it like it is. We talk about the price of things as if that’s the entire payment. It’s not.

The value of what you provide is made up of the value of your customer’s relationship and experience to/with your product or service as well as the value of your relationship to your customer.

The trouble with prices as placeholders is that money is relative.

One person may use your service and because either they don’t relate to your service, or you don’t relate to them, the service has no value to them. Perhaps they paid you $100, but really $100 doesn’t mean anything to them, it’s not a big deal.

Someone else can come to you and have a great relationship to your service and a great experience. They may also pay you $100, but for them, that’s a big sacrifice.

Each of these clients paid you $100. The value they received is relative, but because they perceive the value of $100 so differently, they both walk away feeling like they got what they paid for.

All $100s are not equal.

Your experience earning this $100 is different with each person too. Some $100s are easy. Some are damn difficult.

This isn’t to say that you can’t or shouldn’t use money.

But don’t mistake it for work or value or affection or support. It’s a placeholder for part of the experience. Bring conscious attention to the use of money as part of the equation, but don’t confuse it for the whole equation.

When we are reduced to being solely a consumer we are reduced from being a whole being to a consuming output.

When we are reduced to being solely a producer, we are reduced from being a whole being to a producing output.

That is how financial harm is done to both the producer and the consumer.

Your pricing plan should take into account the entirety of the exchange. You don’t need to get rid of a standard base price, but there will be times when the client relationship will require you to lower it.

The client is giving a different energy.
You are getting a different experience.

There may also be times when you choose to raise it, because the relationship of you to this client requires a greater effort on your part.

Also, because money is relative, what you charge should have nothing to do with your own personal theory or philosophy about money.Your demographic may have a different view of value than you do. Broadly speaking your pricing should be based on the market more than your conceptual value of money. Why do you think so many things online have similar price points?

It’s more important to think about who you’re charging that to, and the nature of the exchange.

Product Pricing is Different.

With a product, your relationship is not so personal. It is a fixed and finished thing where you interact less. You have to price it according to what the market will bear at the top end. This price has nothing to do with what you think the product is worth. Your personal pricing paradigm does not matter.

It would be easy to think that we’re saying that if someone puts in a lot of effort, we should charge them less. We’re not saying that. It’s an energetic exchange. A lot of effort on their part can equal a lot of value to them. If you are getting more out of the relationship than money, if the energy is different, you have more leeway to charge a lower rate.

If someone comes to you and says they can’t afford you, you need to understand the validity of that statement. Are they really saying they can’t afford you? Or are they saying they choose not to fulfill the energetic exchange. Heart-based entrepreneurs, if they are listening, can tell the difference and respond accordingly.

Here is our approach to not doing financial harm:

1. Create a clean slate : realize that you have had financial harm done to you and you have very likely done it to others. That is okay. It will probably happen again on both ends.
2.  Understand the energetic exchange that you are asking of your client.
3. Listen deeply to the message that you are putting out there.
4. Do not distort the perspective of your clients.
5. Be a gentle friend to all aspects of our own money story, every part within you-the overly-generous, the miserly and the reasonable.
6. Don’t base product prices on your own money story, but on what your market will bear.
7. Meet people where they are with your products and services so that they can make that energetic exchange that moves them in a direction that is valuable for all parties.

We do financial harm when we reduce others to consumers who can pay our prices or when we reduce ourselves to a monetary value.

Bridget Pilloud (@intuitivebridge) and Matthew Stillman (@stillmansays) write at intuitivebridge.com and stillmansays.com respectively. And have teamed up their brains and hearts at stilloud.com to offer a different approach towards inner and outer work. They wrote this long ass post together.