Ummm – Do we women undervalue ourselves?

Imagine you are working on a new deal … either something you are selling, or if you work in a bigger corporation, an idea you are selling.

You feel pretty good about your “product”,  you would buy it if you were on the other end of the deal, but something is keeping you from making a strong case for the investment. You feel “bad” asking others for money (or time, or attention). It comes from your self-value.

Climb on board the “I ain’t worth it” express. You ARE worth it, but convincing yourself is sometimes a challenge.  Look at it this way:  what if you had the same amount of income but half the amount of work?  Sweet? Yes (and of course we know it would mean you would have more time to spend money, therefore need more money, but don’t go there right now.) So sell yourself as bigger and only worry about half the people.

A male friend of mine, Randy (aka), owns a top notch landscape company and recently gave me an estimate. Yowza – out of the park estimate! At least for that price I feel pretty sure that I would be getting great customer service (exactly …. see what I mean?) and hopefully daily breakfast burritos delivered to my front door. And in confidence, Randy told me later that his business strategy was to take it up a notch in quality AND price so that he didn’t need to have as much workload. I like it. Less work for more money BUT deliver the value. Make it worth it.

Now don’t go cheatin’ people out of their due purchase, but think of the service as a refined, precious commodity. After all, this is your work and your passion – at some level you really value it too.

The term I have heard is “perceived value.” People put a value on something based on the asking price. If it is expensive, you perceive it to be worth more, even though you may have been the one that set an arbitrary price to it.

I wonder … what if you apply that to what you ask for yourself? Take yourself into the indecent proposal realm and translate your value into something that others would be willing to bend over backwards for.