If your systems were in place, could you charge more and work less? In this revealing episode, we tackle a hard truth many service providers face: the market has evolved, and “good enough” isn’t good enough anymore. Today’s savvy clients expect exceptional, consistent service delivery – and they’re willing to pay premium prices to get it.
Discover why unreliable systems aren’t just an operational headache—they’re actively preventing you from attracting and retaining premium clients. Learn why some service providers struggle to maintain their rates while others command premium prices with ease. We’ll explore:
- The true cost of inconsistent delivery
- Why competing on price is a race to the bottom
- How better systems create higher perceived value
- The link between operational excellence and premium pricing
- Simple ways to assess your current systems
Whether you’re a consultant, coach, or service provider, this episode reveals how improving your operational consistency could help you charge more while working less. Stop leaving money on the table because of inefficient systems.
The Business You Really Want helps visionary women entrepreneurs build sustainable, fulfilling businesses aligned with their values. Join hosts Gwen Bortner, a seasoned business advisor with 40+ years of cross-industry experience, and Tonya Kubo, marketing strategist and online community builder, for practical strategies and empowering insights to help you navigate the challenges of running a values-driven business.
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Watch the episode here
Listen to the podcast here
Charge More, Work Less: Developing Better Systems
If your systems were in place, could you charge more and work less? Have you ever thought about that? Has that question ever crossed your mind? That’s the question we are asking and we hope to answer. My name is Tonya Kubo and I am joined as always by my favorite business operations expert, Gwen Bortner. We’re here to have yet another hard conversation. Are you sick of them yet? This one revolves around how your systems are affecting. Not just your efficiency, but also the perception of your value in the marketplace. Ouch. It hurts me, too. It’s okay.
Gwen, we’re totally riffing off the cuff here based on a recent conversation we had together about working with service providers. Since you are the one who said, “This has to be an episode. We have to have this conversation in front of other people because it’s not enough to have it privately.” You need to set the scene for us.
I love that you said that because that is the whole purpose of this show. That was why we started the show, to say, “Let’s start having these conversations in public,” that you and I have very regularly in private. We were talking about what has been happening in our world and things that we have seen. What I heard you say and this is how I responded to it, was, “These things are happening because their systems aren’t in place.” This has been true with about 4 or 5 different vendors. If you’re one of our vendors, don’t say, “That’s me,” unless it might be you. It might not be you.
Let me just interrupt to say if it is you, we’ve already had the conversation. We’re not passive-aggressive like that.
No, we’re not but it is the thing. What we also heard was, “Yes,” and they can’t work with a higher end client because a higher end client wouldn’t put up with this level of system behavior. As soon as you said that, I went ding, ding, and ding and that’s where I did have the like excited comment to say, “People always think that systems is about improving their bottom line,” which it often is by reducing expenses. What they don’t realize is that having good consistent systems in place also allows you to charge more.
People always think systems are about improving their bottom line by reducing expenses. What they don't realize is that having good and consistent systems in place also allows you to charge more. Share on XThis is just an example. What if you did the exact same amount of work but we’re able to charge your clients 50% more because those clients expect that level of systems and organization and all of the things that if you aren’t having to add more people, add more time, and add more anything. All of that is going to go right to the bottom line. Now, often the system is helping stuff go to the bottom line because it’s taking away expenses.
People never talk about how systems could in fact increase your income because we don’t typically focus on the back end of the business because systems are typically associated with the expense part of the business. Is it the difference of are you organized? Are you consistent? Are you able to deliver a product in a way at a level that a higher-level client who’s willing to pay more would expect. Therefore, pay for or are you working at a level that means you’re always working with the client who can’t afford to pay more and that means that you’re stuck there all the time.
The Importance Of Systems
There’s a lot of places we can go here. When we were talking about this, I was recounting a conversation I’d had with a service provider. I do sometimes. When I’m doing chief marketing officer work for clients, I will be the person who brings on subcontractors for projects and I’ll do that project management piece. I was working with one service provider who I adore. We work well together. They produce a reliable product but we were working with a corporate client.
When they delivered their piece, now because we’re working with a corporate client, we were charging corporate rates. She has a completely different rating scale for a solopreneur than she does for corporate clients. We’re charging corporate rates and what I got was exactly what I get when I worked with her and solopreneurs. I was like, “This is not going to fly.” She was like, “What do you mean? That’s what I always give you.” I’m like, “Yes, but you’re getting paid twice what you typically get paid for this project.” With that comes the expectation of A, B, C, D, E, and F. Why am I not receiving that? She said, “Quite honestly, nobody’s ever asked for that before.”
When we were talking about rates, that is my rate for corporate clients but I don’t work with people who even know what that is, much less expected. I don’t have a system in place to provide that. I had to be in that uncomfortable position figuring out what to do, which was not fun, by the way. As a result, I no longer work with that individual when I’m working with corporate clients because they’re just not there and they’re not interested in being there.
This is one of those places where people will say, “You should work with corporate clients. You can charge more.” Yes, and they do have different expectations. Part of that is very reliable, consistent, and high-quality deliverability. There is no way that happens without systems.
Can you talk a little bit more about those systems? What did the systems look like?
In the last episode we talked about being flexible, there is way less flexibility in it. People don’t have lots of choices, both for the customer and for the people in the process. They know what they’re supposed to do. They know when they’re going to do it. We don’t allow any deadlines to slip. We know how long each piece is going to take. If we say it’s going to take a week, it takes a week and that’s it. If something comes up, there is great communication around the fact that, “This very unusual thing happened,” either to an individual or within the process itself and the project so that it’s communicated early.
All of the other people including the client know way ahead of time that this is not working the way that it is supposed to work. We’re going to do what we can to get it fixed and if we can’t, this is what it’s going to look like. If we can’t, do you still want it? There’s this whole much more clear communication process every step of the way knowing what all of the pieces are and nothing is left to assumption. It is all very clear of what’s going on because otherwise, people are investing in big big bucks often for corporate clients. One of the things is their reputation is on the line.
Usually, the people who are hiring you in a corporate world are not low-level people. They’re usually higher-level people. They do not want to put their job on the line because they may be able to get another job but no one wants to be let go once you’re above a pretty low level. No one ever wants to be let go. When you’re starting to get into the director or vice president or executive vice president or senior vice president level, in anything that feels like a larger corporation. When I say larger corporation, I’m not saying like 8,000 people. I’m talking to 50 to 100 people.
There’s too much at risk there to not be getting the high quality. We have worked with some folks that deliver a great product when they deliver it. Notice I say when they deliver it. I can’t count on its going to be on time in the way that I want without any errors consistently. I can’t recommend them to any of my networks. I have this broad network where I’m dealing with solopreneurs and dealing with people who work with corporations. When someone says, “Can you work with this?” It’s like, “I know someone who’s good. I can’t recommend them because I know they can’t deliver in the consistent way that you need to deliver.” Systems is about consistency.
I feel like we’ve discussed that often enough on the show that we can refer back to an episode or two. I’m thinking of what’s most helpful for our readers next. We can go two directions. Direction one is we can walk through our decision-making process and what we need from our service providers based on price point in order to be satisfied with service and then to recommend them. What that will do is that provides a playbook to the service provider who’s listening.
The other approach we can do is we can do some this versus that scenarios where this is the level of system organization I expect at this price point and this is the level of system and organization I expect at that price point to help people understand the difference between a $1,000 a month service versus a $2,000 a month service. Where do you want to go with this, Gwen, since this is your idea?
I’m going to say one more thing which is neither of these.
I love that.
That’s how we roll around here.
The Tonya side of me just crumbled and is now wallowing in the puddle of tears somewhere in my chair.
The Impact Of Economic Downturn & Savvy Consumers
Not that we won’t do the other, quite honestly. The thing that struck me as you were saying both of those things that we didn’t bring up that is important because what is happening out in the universe is a lot of service providers are saying, “I’m not getting the same level of business that I was getting before.”
I have a lot to say about that, Gwen Bortner.
I knew you would, which is why I brought it up. Here’s the thing, what was an okay get by level, even though you may not be able to charge more for it, you may not get the business if you aren’t delivering it. This, to me, is the bigger problem. We talk about the things that no one’s talking about and one of my special gifts is I see trends and patterns before most other people see them and I say things. I was like, “That can’t be right,” then about a year later, it’s like, “It’s exactly what she said.”
Even if you cannot charge more at an acceptable and good enough level, you may still not get the business if you are not delivering it. This is the bigger problem. Share on XThis, to me, is why I got excited about this episode is you need to be able to stand out as a provider and when you’re doing adequate work like everybody else is, then what you’re fighting on is price. The only way to win is to lower your price and that’s a race to the bottom. When you’re providing “the same” service, but at a different quality level. That gets noticed. When someone says, “My person does this and this,” and it’s like, “That never happens to us.” They’ll be like, “Who do you work with?” That’s when people leave one person and go work with somebody else.
This is why a lot of people are struggling in the market that are in whatever service provider business. Whether it’s what I do, what you do or the vendors that were using. It doesn’t matter. There has to be a different quality level to distinguish because everyone’s trying to price and it’s like, “I’m going to raise my price.” At some point, it’s like, you’re not worth it. You are not worth that price, so then they go to a competitor who may be newer. Maybe it isn’t as good as you are but it is delivering functionally the same quality of work at 20%-30% less. How do you compete? You either improve your level of service or you drop your price. That’s my third thing.
Let’s pull a few things out of here. The first is, I can’t walk out my front door. I cannot open up an internet browser tab without being confronted with concerns about economics. My friend, Rachel Allen who’s a copywriter who always says, “This is like the 9th internet apocalypse we’ve lived through.” It’s like online businesses are dead. Nobody’s buying. Nobody’s buying courses or coaching. We hear this all the time. Looking at your business especially, our retailers are like, “People are just a lot more price sensitive.”
What it has to do with is a gift so to speak of the pandemic is that the pandemic created a much savvy consumer. With all that time on their hands, they learned what other options are out there. Now that life is busier, they value not just their money anymore but they value their time and energy. Part of that better experience, those solid systems that deliver consistency on time all the time. Part of that is making my life easier as a consumer.
It’s saving me from decision fatigue. It saves me time and energy. I’m just going to speak for myself here, but I know that I have clients that are the exact same way. I’m not going to look for alternatives as long as I experience an improvement in my life every day that I work with you. Honestly, looking for an alternative, whether it’s cheaper or whatever, that’s more work that I don’t have time for.
It’s a lot of energy and time. People are often shocked that I have worked in a month-to-month fee structure for years and years. I don’t ever have minimum contracts these days at all then people can leave. It’s like, yes but I also have people who stay for years and years. Why is that? It’s because they are getting the level of service that they expect to be getting for that and they don’t have any interest in doing that research that you’re talking about.
At the same point, I have people that’s like, “I think I’m done. Great.” They come back when they needed again because they don’t have any interest in looking for somebody else to solve the problem. They know that I will jump right on it and what I will do. They have that experience. I don’t ever worry about how long someone is going to stay with me.
That is not a worry we have around here.
I attribute it to making sure that my highest priority is delivering high quality service, whatever it is that we’re doing. Do I charge for it? Sure, I do. I am by far not the cheapest person doing anything that I’m doing. I’m also not the most expensive either but by the same token, I don’t worry about that piece because for the most part, there’s very few people that will compare to me because of the level of quality that I’m offering.
I know these are going to be hard things for people to read.
That’s also what we do.
Practical Steps To Improve Systems
It is what we do. You’ve never been one to shy away from being relieved forthright with what we do. Rather than just stating the problem, which at this point what we’ve identified is that if you’re struggling to get clients, if you’re finding that business is faltering, the first place to look at is not the news to tell you about the economic downturn.
It’s at your own internal systems and processes and determining whether you are providing the absolute best service that you can be providing. Are you setting yourself apart far enough from the competition to make others recognize the true value of what you offer? Are you delivering that value? Now what we need to do, Gwen, we need to give people some suggestions. They need to be able to walk away with some practical advice or at least some tips to implement in order to put their systems in place. That’s how I’ll say it.
The first thing that I would say that you want to look at is how consistent your delivery is. What I mean by that is how often is what you said you were going to do and what happened the same in every little spot that it can be measured. We don’t have a lot of deadline driven things because that’s not the way this business works. One of the things that we do have is client meetings. I have a lot of client meetings.
What you promise to do and what actually happens needs to be the same in every spot that it can be measured. Share on XYou live your best life in client meetings.
I live my best life on Zoom, which I know freaks people out but it does. For me, one of the things is, how often do I have to reschedule a meeting? Rescheduling a meeting is not a problem in my world because that’s their side but how often do I have to reschedule a meeting? How often am I late to a meeting? How often am I unprepared to talk about whatever we’re going to talk about? Those would be the three that I can think of right at the top of my head.
How many times am I feeling on what I should be delivering? Once I start seeing that to say, how often and how big of a failure? For me, you know because we’ve talked about it, rescheduling a client meeting needs to be a very rare occurrence. It does happen. You get the flu and you’re sick. We’ve had situations where planes did not do what planes were supposed to do and up in the air, we’re not going to have the meeting because it’s like illegal to have videocall on the plane. They say that. It does happen, but how often is that happening? That’s a big one. How late am I to another meeting? If I’m a minute late, sometimes that’s just Zoom being weird and not letting you in.
Not telling you people are in your waiting room. That’s what’s happening there.
Those things happen but am I five minutes late? Am I ten minutes late? Anything beyond ten minutes, to me, that’s like not even attending the meeting. How often are those things happening and saying, are there things that we need to do to shore that up? That would be the first thing. It’s, where am I not delivering what I said I was going to deliver? Once we’ve identified them, then that’s where I would focus first.
We’ve worked together for a few years. What I’m going to add to this conversation is from a practical standpoint of how we approach that because you’re right. I have seen you cancel client meetings due to sickness probably twice in the few years. Scheduling snafu once and that was the plane’s fault. Not our team’s fault. Part of the systems piece that we have in place that makes this all work is, you have a booking calendar that allows clients to book during your working times.
We, as a team, are more than happy to facilitate the book, especially if we work with some organization. We’re working with the assistant of the assistant. We’re happy to do all of that but we do plan A is for the client to be in the driver’s seat of scheduling the meetings. Now, here’s something that I see with a lot of my clients and a lot of my peers in the consulting world. I sent out the booking link. The client knows they get one meeting a week or one meeting a month. Whatever it is.
They have my link and they booked it. If they don’t book it, it’s on them. They are 100% in the driver’s seat. Part of what sets us apart is we track their booking. If they’re supposed to get a meeting a week and we look ahead to the next month and we don’t see a meeting a week, we reach out. Is there a problem with the booking link? You would not believe how many times the booking link fails and nobody tells you about it. I am amazed. They just assume it’s them.
This is true.
They’re like, “I must be dumb.” “My computer must not like it.” “It must not like my computer.” “That’s my stupid tax.” Whatever they want to say, but it’s amazing how often they won’t tell you that your booking link is broken, so we reach out to them. Was there a problem with the booking link? Is there somebody else that we should be working with to get these meetings on your calendar? Only because you’re the person who signed on the dotted line doesn’t necessarily mean you’re the boss of your own schedule.
Just because you are the person who signed on the dotted line does not necessarily mean you are the boss of your own schedule. Share on XWe also had the hard conversation. I don’t think any consultant reading this wants to know this. If it goes too long where we’re having trouble getting their consistent meetings, we don’t continue to take their money. We have the hard conversation of, are you in a place where you’re able to take advantage of the service that you bought? When I started working with you, you had some larger corporate clients and their schedule wasn’t their own even though they were senior VP level. They had people who were higher up than them in the food chain who very freely would pull them into ad hoc meetings. They were standing you up almost left and right. Not quite left and right.
It was often.
We had to have the conversation of, we can’t move the needle for you because you can’t make your meetings. We understand that’s not even your fault. We’re not blaming you. We get it but we shouldn’t be taking from your budget in this way. Those are all systems that we have established. We have a tracking sheet that tracks every client how many meetings that they are supposed to get based on their level of service.
We have a system in place where we’re looking three months ahead and going, do we have enough openings to accommodate these clients? We try to book most of them just a month ahead because we don’t want a bunch of cancellations either on their end or on our end because of travel and such and you can travel quite a bit for speaking.
We have a system in place to double check that system. We have a whole communication plan. We already have templated emails that we send out when we need to based on what might be happening so that we provide, I call it a wraparound service. We are not just focused on the service that we deliver but we’re also focused on supporting them and taking full advantage of the service we deliver.
I love that you shared all of that. That is exactly right and knowing what you’re supposed to do and doing what you’re supposed to do are two different things. We talk about accountability all the time and that’s part of full accountability. We’re accountable to our clients but we also make sure our clients are accountable to us in both sides because that’s where we both feel successful. That’s when the difference starts coming into play. It’s when everybody feels successful when rarely is any either side surprised.
To me, that’s the very first thing you look for. It’s, are people surprised or they not surprised on a regular basis? If they are surprised, are they delighted surprise because it’s like, “Nobody ever shows up always on time.” “I’ve never had someone who didn’t cancel on me at least once a month or rescheduled once a month.” That’s a delightful surprise. I want to be able to do that but it needs to match what I say that I’m going to do. That, to me, is the very first piece that you’re looking for and most of the time, the way to get there is simplify what you’re saying you’re going to deliver.
A little bit more about that for me.
Don’t try and deliver everything that you could ever possibly deliver. Think about the things that you can always deliver at an exceptional level. There’s a story. I want to say it’s a Mike Michalowicz’s story. Possibly out of Profit First, but with all of his books, I can’t tell you which one it is.
Do not try and deliver everything you could ever possibly deliver. Think about the things you can always deliver at an exceptional level. Share on XHe has written a lot of books.
I’m pretty sure it’s a Mike Michalowicz story. I may even be giving the wrong credit here, but he talked about someone who was a painter and was an excellent painter and was doing all of the painting things. Someone said, “Because you’ve got the ladder, can you also make this repair on my roof?” The guy was like, “I can make that repair,” because a lot of the people who do that work often are very handy.
It was like, “I could start doing roof work, too.” He makes the little repair and then start saying, “I could also do roofs.” It becomes this thing and what happens is, he’s dispersing all of his attention to 1,000 different things and what he’s excellent at is painting. Now, only 10% of his work is painting and 90% of his work is doing all of these things that he’s somewhere between B and C- at doing instead of having 90% of his work being his A+ work of painting.
I think that’s in The Pumpkin Plan.
It might be in the Pumpkin Plan. It wouldn’t surprise. As I said, I’m pretty sure it’s a Mike Michalowicz thing but that is the thing. Often as entrepreneurs, we like doing lots of things. We are capable of doing lots of things. We are interested in lots of things. As we work with the clients, it’s like, “Could you do this?” “I could do that and I could do that.” All of a sudden, we’re doing a lot of things and it’s not that well. As opposed to doing the thing that they hired us for very well.
You’ve laid that out beautifully, especially for the service provider but we’ve also seen that, I’ll call it Frankenstein business, but fracture of a business with some of our product-based businesses.
It happens exactly the same way.
I’ve seen you talk to people about this. It’s when the brick-and-mortar store front wants to include an online shop. Rather than just putting on their website what product they have in store. They’re letting people purchase it online and have that delivered to them. You’re the one who points out that’s two different businesses.
Focusing On Core Strengths
These days because of COVID and all the other things, do you need to have an online shop? Yes, but should you expect it to be 50% of your income? No, not unless you develop a whole business model around that piece. Can it support your brick-and-mortar customers? Yes, it can. Maybe there’s someone that only comes to your area three times a year, they want to support you the rest of the time. Positively that is a great thing to do but the but a business model where it’s generating an equivalent amount of income. That’s a different business model. That is different than a brick-and-mortar model.
That’s two different types of business and two different types of customers, where I thought, you were going to go with the product piece. It’s also saying, “I’ve had a customer come in who wanted this thing and I didn’t have it. Now, I carried this thing, too.” That doesn’t make sense either, because now it’s the same thing. You’ve brought in a whole shelf worth of X. Whatever X happens to be and you’re only selling it every once in a while, because the bulk of your customers don’t want X. That was a bad use of money and the same thing, that’s another fracture of the business. Focus on who is your customer, what are you do, and stay in your lane. Whether it’s a product lane or a service links. Stay in your lane. Know what your lane is.
For us, I don’t provide any of the people who do the work. People are often like, “That means you’re going to write up SOPs.” No, I’m not. There is not one chance on Earth you’re going to ever have me bill you for writing up an SOP. It’s not ever going to happen. I can. Have I done it before? Positively. Do I know how? For sure. Is that part of our business model? Absolutely not. Will I refer you to people who could? For sure. I have great referral networks but that’s your own engagement. I know how to stay in my lane. I don’t say, “We could do that and we could do this.” Stay in my lane.
To expand on that a little more, our service delivery doesn’t include helping you to decide when you need to update your SOPs and prioritizing the SOPs that you need to tackle but the actual hands-on doing. There are other people who have much stronger systems in place to provide that level of service. We love referring to those people because as our clients can expect consistent delivery from us. We know that our clients are going to get consistent delivery from them.
They wouldn’t necessarily get consistent delivery from us.
Not if they want an SOPs. That is for sure. Again, only because I can, doesn’t mean I should. Gwen, we are out of time. I think our conversation is probably one of our most important to date. While it’s about pricing and the value of your offer. It’s about what’s happening in the market and why some people might find that they’re losing clients. It’s about the true cost of inefficiency. Though, it’s not true in every industry. There is a strong relationship between reliable systems and the perception of value others have when it comes to working with you.
Not to mention your reputation in the marketplace. Though context always matters, it is worth. Asking yourself dear readers the hard question that we kicked off the episode with which is, if your systems were in place, could you charge more and work less? I’ll add, would you get better referrals? That’s something to be paying attention to as well.
If you’re ready to finally confront your systems and your business operations, Gwen and I are always here to help. You can visit us online at TheBusinessYouReallyWant.com. Click on the services tab at the top to learn more or continually read to this show and see how you can make incremental improvement to your own systems and operations over time.
Mentioned in This Episode
- Profit First by Mike Michalowicz
- The Pumpkin Plan by Mike Michalowicz
- Systems – Harnessing The Power Of Consistent Behavior
- The Hidden Systems Sabotaging Your Business Success
About Your Hosts
Gwen Bortner has spent four decades advising executives and entrepreneurs in 45+ industries. She helps women succeed in business without sacrificing happiness by identifying their true desires and aligning their business functions. She spots overlooked bottlenecks and crafts efficient plans toward sustainable success that center your values and priorities. Known for her unique approach to problem-solving and accountability through the G.E.A.R.S. framework, Gwen empowers clients to achieve their definition of success without sacrificing what matters most.
Tonya Kubo is a marketing strategist and community builder who helps entrepreneurs build thriving online communities. As co-host of The Business You Really Want and Chief Marketing and Operations Officer (CMOO) at Everyday Effectiveness, she keeps conversations on track and ensures complex business concepts are accessible to everyone. A master facilitator with 18+ years of experience in online community building, Tonya takes a people-first approach to marketing and centers the human experience in all she does.
