I just heard a useful piece of information regarding pricing. The age-old question is: How much should I charge? It doesn’t matter if it’s a piece of jewelry or a coaching service. The quandary of how to price your goods or services is a perennial challenge.

I have always loved my father’s wisdom on the subject, coming from the retail background he did. His response was a question: How much is a black dress? Of course, it depends. What’s the fabric? Who’s the designer? What’s the market–Bergdorf’s or Target? You can see that the decision, while influenced by these factors, is arbitrary.

Carolee Friedlander of Carolee jewelry designs taught me years ago that “jewelry is a blind item” meaning that so many factors go into it that there’s no strict formula for creating the pricing structure. Whatever the market will bear comes to mind. That’s true in the coaching world as well. There are coaches charging $50 per session and others charging $1000. There is no definitive rule on the matter.

A new slant on all of this came via a coaching community I’m a part of. The instructor began bluntly. “If you don’t know what to charge in your own industry…” (Now here I thought he was going to give a lecture on market research and due diligence, but he surprised me) “…then you can only imagine how little your customer knows about pricing in your industry.” Brilliant! And true.

Prices are all over the place in every industry, so why not make up your own? His point, which is one I salute and profess myself, is to put it out there and see what happens. There is too much analysis paralysis (guilty!) and not enough running it up the flagpole to find out who’s saluting.

Lesson learned. Watch for my new offer coming soon…