Tell Stories, Raise Your Prices

Experts who tell powerful stories, charge more money.

Let me explain.

We all have money and time, and we spend it where we see value.

If you are facing objections based on price, then simply ask yourself,

What does this person value, and therefore, what do they invest in?

Increases of value (and therefore, price) are attached to trustworthiness, authority, expertise, excellence, and delivery.

There are several ways that telling a powerful story directly affects these markers.

First, stories turn abstract ideas into concrete images and scenarios.

Experts can fall into the trap of speaking about their expertise in terms of ideas, concepts, specialized terms, and unfortunately, jargon.

By telling a powerful story, you can illustrate these ideas in action. When applied by a person, in a context, facing a challenge, and overcoming the challenge, suddenly these ideas become much more tangible.

Once your target audience understands what you are talking about, they can see it, feel it, and comprehend the consequences of its power; then, they can appreciate your true expertise and unique insights.

Second, a story makes your target audience feel understood.

Stories rely on a character with desires, fears, dreams, and deep moral motives. If you create a compelling character that resonates with your audience, they can feel deeply understood.

Amazing as it is, simply feeling understood by someone, even before a solution is presented, radically increases the perception of your high value.

Think of it in terms of visiting a medical specialist. If they are able to describe back to you your symptoms and the experiences of your illness and tell you what this means, even without prescribing any doses of medication or treatment, immediately you can perceive this person is indeed an expert in their craft.

Third, stories help your target audience see, feel, and experience results.

When you show your character on a journey, overcoming challenges and achieving a desired outcome, your audience follows along.

Especially if your unique insights and process fire off dopamine in their brain as they begin to visualize this process being applied to them and themselves achieving the desired outcome.

Once you have a clear picture in their minds about how this is all possible, and they can feel the results are already achieved for someone like them, then investing in working with you becomes less of a risk and is seen to be more of a sure bet.

Fourth, stories create alignment with deep desires, morals, and motives.

If you create a character going on a journey and achieving a desired outcome in a way that resonates with the morals and motives of your target audience, you gain behavior alignment.

By this, I mean you can achieve a desired audience who are already shifting their behavior before payment is made.

At this point, cost becomes a mere detail, and they simply have to figure out how to work with you.

In summary, we all have time and money, and we invest when and where we perceive value and feel it’s a sure bet.

The notion of being expensive is relative. A cheap solution that doesn’t work becomes expensive. An expensive solution that DOES work becomes cheap.

As an expert, if you start to use powerful stories, you can illustrate your expertise in such a way that your audience understands you, feels understood by you, visualizes the outcomes as though they have already been achieved, and begin to align their behavior with you.

And this, my friends, is how telling powerful stories helps you charge more money.