Be careful how you position your price

After a life long career with just one company, a friend of mine recently asked me how to position his daily price when he went for a number of different consultancies. I said make sure you don't underestimate your value when they ask you how much you want. He is an amazingly skilled individual with the sales skills he has, the management skills he has and the contacts he can leverage.

So at the 1st job which was 20 days a year they asked him how much he wanted and he said £2500 per day. When they said OK he gulped. So at the next job when they said how much he said £3000 a day. Guess what they said - OK. Even bigger gulp - now the question is what do you advise him to ask for next?

There are three issues here that we can learn -
1 - Make sure you position yourself for the value you can create for the other side
2 - Make sure you have a mentor to help you through a time when you can be not quite as self-confident as you might be
3 - You have to be comfortable inside about the pay you receive for the service that you give to be congruent. There may be a learning cycle which you need to go through when you change jobs.

My friend who I talk about in an earlier blog has found that the company he now works for, which is German run has a much different culture than the UK culture that he worked in before. He is not comfortable, so despite the extra money he may not be around for long.

"The grass is not always as green as it seems on the other side until you get there and find that there is cost to you of their sprinkling system"