How to Work with Clients Who Need You but Can’t Afford You

This guide is inspired by my presentation at the SistaSense Power Circle Conference; “When Your Passion Becomes A Pain: How to Fall Back in Love With Your Business, Rediscover Your Passion and Tap into Your Hidden Profit Potential.”

Service Professionals and Women Entrepreneurs ask SistaSense, “How do I stop giving it all away for free? More importantly, how do I work with clients who say they can’t afford to pay me, but are in need of the products and services that I offer?”

To answer the questions above, I’m sure most of my male entrepreneurs out there would simply say, “Don’t work with people who can’t afford to pay you, period.” Of course as a woman that maternal ‘I want to help’ feeling kicks in and this makes it almost impossible to say no. Trust me I know how hard it is to turn away the people you feel most compelled to serve, but at the same time we all know giving it all away won’t pay the bills. So what do you do? How can this work?

Before we get to the answers, let me first begin with a quick story. A little over 5 years ago I decided to turn my web design business / side hustle into an official work at home business. Starting out on a shoe string budget, my goal has always been to provide women, moms and other minority startups with affordable resources without sacrificing quality for cost. At the same time, as a service professional it’s frustrating when customers want high quality for free or little to nothing. Sometimes that frustration turns into confusion leading us to either start looking for new ways to boost business or a new business to try.

Rule #1: Instead of trying to find a quick fix or a new business venture, consider changing your approach to dealing with potential customers.

In the pursuit of profit have you ever felt powerless to the demands of your customers? Have you ever found yourself in the middle of a consultation impulsively overriding your policies, revamping your packages and reducing your prices just to close the deal? If this scenario happens more times than you would like to admit, try something different next time. Instead of fearfully going into the conversation ready to take any offer, work on improving your position of power by preparing for the conversation.

Write down these rules and let’s talk more about about how you prepare to pitch to clients on small budgets…

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I hope the 5 Rules above have given you a great deal of food for thought. This is essentially the secret in my sales sauce (smile). Being a service professional is challenging, but not impossible. Even though my target audience is overflowing with people looking for free and low cost material, by using the solutions above I successfully broke $50K in annual revenue and have been turning tens into thousands ever since.

For even more insight on this topic schedule a one on one consultation with me and/or join us for the SistaSense Power Circle Conference; in particular for my session “When Your Passion Becomes A Pain: How to Fall Back in Love With Your Business, Rediscover Your Passion and Tap into Your Hidden Profit Potential.”