I just read a good little story about Picasso.  The great artist was having dinner in a restaurant when a high society lady recognized him and asked him if he would do a little sketch on a napkin for her and autograph it.  He took out a pen and quickly sketched the restaurant, signed it.  The lady reached for it and he said “That will be $10,000.00.”  She was flabbergasted and said “But that only took you a minute or two!!??”  “No Madame” replied Picasso, “it took me fifty years.” and put the sketch in his pocket. 

Wow, is that a lesson in knowing your worth!!!!  He didn’t bargain or bring down the price.  He didn’t charge according to the size of the napkin and the time it took him and most importantly, he was willing to walk away from the sale rather than sell his art to someone he did NOT appreciate it’s full value.

Isn’t that a good way to answer a client who says, you are digital now and don’t use film, your prices should be lower…. “No Madame/Sir, it has taken me xxx number of years of training to capture these images in just the perfect manner, it has taken an investment of xxx time and xxx dollars to update and train for this new technology which must be renewed and upgraded constantly.  This is the fair price for this product.” you reply, confidently.  And if the person does not see the value, don’t panic and start lowering your price.  Not ALL potential clients are meant for you.  If you have taken the time to honestly, fairly and accurately price your products then HOLD YOUR GROUND when someone asks you to compromise your VALUE.  That is not negotiable.

This is probably one of the most difficult things you will ever have to learn as an artist in the business world.  That’s why many artists have agents who do the pricing and client intervention for them.  But the good news is this, once you have actually stood up for yourself and refused to give in to the pressure of pricing wars or customer haggling you will find that word gets around.  You won’t have to do it all the time; people will start to respect you and your work more.  And on those odd times when it does happen, you will be much more confident in your answers.

There are two very important rules that you must remember when you are pricing your work:

1. You don’t have to be able to afford your work to price it.  That means… don’t price a product according to what YOU would be able to pay for it, especially if you are doing “high end” artistic work.  I have seen so many of you doing extremely high end, high quality images which you sell very cheaply.  You are very very busy BUT there is no time left to really enjoy the fruits of your labours and very little profits to renew, upgrade and especially to recharge your batteries, creatively.  Never underestimate the consumers’ power to buy.

1. Believe that you deserve the price you are asking!  If you don’t really believe that you deserve to be paid the amount you have quoted, you won’t be able to SELL THAT PRICE to your client.  That’s why it is so important to do the math that goes with pricing your products as well as estimating the true value of the work.  Doing this gives you a very realistic image of the economics of your business and why you need to charge a given price, which in turn gives you the extra confidence you need to sell it for it’s true value.

The Picasso story was found in – “How to Become a Marketing Superstar” by Jeffrey J. Fox