Episode 28 Knowing Your Worth Isn't Enough. You Have to Be Able to Say It.

Most home bakers don't have a pricing problem. They have a delivery problem.

In this episode, I'm talking about the moment — that specific, uncomfortable moment when someone asks how much your cakes cost and you feel that familiar tightening in your chest. Why it happens, what it's costing you, and what to actually do about it.

This episode builds on Episode 27 (if you haven't listened yet, go back — today's episode picks up where that one left off), so if you've been following the June sales confidence series, this is the practical next step.

In this episode:

• Why softening, pre-apologising and over-explaining your prices actually undermines them — before anyone has even responded
• The real reason saying a price out loud feels so exposing (and why it's not weakness)
• Three practical things to try in your next price conversation
• Why the pause after you say your price is more powerful than anything you say next
• What to do when someone says "that's more than I expected" — and why dropping your price isn't the answer
• A simple exercise to do today that will make price conversations feel less strange

Ready to keep working on this? Inside the Profitable Baker Academy this month, we're going deep on sales confidence — from showing up online to handling real enquiries. 

For structured support, training and accountability:
Join The Profitable Baker Academy Membership

https://anniebennett.co.uk/the-profitable-baker-academy-membership/

For regular delves into baking business matters, including taking part in podcast episodes:

https://anniebennett.co.uk/#subscribe

For free tips, insight and real-world business talk:
Follow me on social media

https://www.instagram.com/theprofitablebakeracademy/

https://www.facebook.com/theprofitablebakeracademy

https://www.tiktok.com/@profitablebakeracademy

https://www.linkedin.com/in/annie-bennett-pba/

For her website with all this and more:

anniebennett.co.uk

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:04

Hello and welcome to the Profitable Baker Podcast, the show for bakers who mean business. I'm Annie Bennett, founder of the Home Baking Business Academy, and every week I'll be sharing practical lessons, mindset shifts, and inspiring stories from bakers who are building businesses they love. Because success in this industry isn't about who bakes the fanciest cakes, it's about who builds the strongest business foundations. Let's get started. Welcome back to the Profitable Baker Podcast with me, Annie Bennett. This episode is the next in my June series, and we're talking about sales confidence. In the last episode, I talked about why selling feels so hard. I went into the beliefs underneath the discomfort, the idea that selling is pushy, that talking about money is awkward, that your baking should somehow speak for itself without you ever having to ask anyone to pay for it. If you haven't heard that episode, I recommend you go back to it because today's builds directly on it. Because here's where we are. In the last episode, we named the problem. Today we're going to do something about it. Specifically, we're going to talk about the moment, that actual moment when someone asks how much your cakes cost, or when you need to send a quote, or when a customer says, Can you just remind me what the price was? And you feel that familiar tightening in your chest. We're going to talk about what's happening in that moment, why it feels the way it does, and what you can actually do practically and concretely to get better at it. So let's get started. I want to start with something I've noticed again and again in conversations with homebakers, and it's this. Most bakers who struggle to say their prices don't actually have a pricing problem. They know their prices, they've done the work, or they've done enough of it to arrive at a number they believe is fair and right. They know what their ingredients cost, they have some sense of what their time is worth. They've got a figure. The problem isn't the number, the problem is the delivery. And this is an important distinction because it means we're not talking about going back and reworking your prices from scratch. We're talking about something different. We're talking about how you communicate a price you already know is right. Because here's what happens when you're not confident in how you deliver a price, even if you're confident in the price itself. You add softeners. It's this much, but I can be flexible. You pre-apologize. I know it seems like a lot, but you bury the number at the end of a very long explanation that nobody asked for. You send a quote and then immediately follow up with, let me know if that doesn't work for you and we can have a chat. And every single one of those habits, however well intentioned, however natural they feel, undermines the price. Not because the customer was definitely going to say no, but because you've told them, before they've had a chance to respond, that you're not sure it's right. Confidence is contagious, and so is doubt. I want to spend a bit of time on why this happens, why bakers who genuinely know their worth still find it hard to say it, because I don't think it's something we talk about honestly enough. Some of it is the belief stuff we covered last week, the sense that asking for money is somehow in conflict with being generous or kind or passionate about what you do. If you haven't listened to the last episode yet, go and listen because that's where we unpick that. But there's something else going on that's more specific to this moment of actually saying the number. And I think it comes down to this. We're afraid of being in the room when someone decides we're not worth it. Think about it. You send a quote by email or message, and the rejection, if it comes, happens somewhere else. You don't see the face, you don't hear the tone of voice. You can tell yourself a story about why it didn't work out and move on. It's uncomfortable, but it's manageable. But when you say a price out loud to someone's face or on a phone call, you are present for whatever happens next. And that exposure, that vulnerability is genuinely difficult. And it's not a weakness, it's human. The problem is that avoiding it comes at a cost because the habits we develop to protect ourselves from that moment, the softening, the apologizing, the preemptive flexibility, are the same habits that make us look less professional, less confident, and ironically, less worth the price we're trying to charge. So let's talk about actually what to do. I'm going to give you three things, three specific practical things that I want you to think about. Not as a script or a formula you have to memorize, but as a framework for approaching the price conversation differently. And the first one is lead with the price, not the justification. Now this one's hard because the instinct is almost always to explain first and reveal the number at the end. You say something like, So this would be a four-tier cake, fundant-covered sugar flowers, and it would take me roughly two days to make, and the ingredients alone are quite expensive because I only use really good quality butter, and the sugar flowers are all handmade, and then exhausted, you drop the number at the end. The problem with that structure is that it reads as defensive before anyone has said anything. You're pre-justifying a price that no one has questioned yet. And paradoxically, all that explanation draws more attention to the cost, not less. What I want you to try instead is leading with the number. The price for that cake would be £280. And then if you want to give a context, add it after, not as an apology, but as information. That includes all the ingredients, the sugar flowers, the delivery. So the price first, the context second. That single structural change will immediately make you sound more confident because you're not burying the number, you're owning it. The second thing is practice the pause. This is something that I genuinely think transforms how price conversations feel. And it's also one of the hardest things to actually do. After you say the price, stop talking. That's it, just stop. Because here's what most of us do instead. We say the price and then we immediately fill the silence with something. I know that might seem high. Obviously, lit me over if the budget doesn't stretch to that. I can probably do something different if that's too much. Before the customer has even had a single second to respond. We've already done half their negotiating for them. And the reason we do it is because silence after a big number feels uncomfortable. It feels like something is going wrong. It feels like we need to rescue the conversation. But here's what I want you to know: silence after a price is completely normal. It doesn't mean someone's horrified. It doesn't mean they're about to say no. It means they're thinking. It means they heard the number and they're processing it, which is exactly what you'd want them to do. When you feel that silence immediately, you short circuit their thinking. You make it about your discomfort rather than giving them space to reach their own decision. Practice saying the price, and then just for three seconds, say nothing. Count in your head if it helps. It'll feel like forever, but it won't be. And what happens on the other side of that pause is usually much better than what you were afraid of. The third thing, decide in advance what flexible actually means and what it doesn't. Because one of the things that makes price conversations feel so chaotic is that we go into them without knowing what we're willing to do and what we're not. And so when someone pushes back, when they say, Well, that's a bit more than I was expecting, or could you do something more in the region of X, we make it up on the spot, under pressure, in a moment when we're already feeling vulnerable. And that's almost never going to end well. Either you cave and agree to something that doesn't work for your business, or you hold firm but feel awkward because you didn't have a plan. So the work I want you to do before the price conversation, not during it, is to get clear on your own position. And I mean really clear. Is there a lower threshold below which you won't go? Know it. Have a number in your head. If someone has a smaller budget, is there a smaller product you can offer? Different size, fewer tiers, simpler decoration that would genuinely work for both of you. Know what that looks like before you're in the moment. And equally, are there things that are simply not negotiable? Things you won't reduce, won't simplify, won't change, because they're fundamental to the quality of what you make. Know those two. When you've done that thinking in advance, a pushback stops being a crisis. It becomes a question you already know the answer to. And answering a question you've already prepared for is a very different experience to making something up under pressure. I want to take a moment to talk about something that I think sits underneath all three of those things because I don't want this episode to feel like a set of tips without a foundation. The reason these things work, leading with the price, holding the pause, knowing your position in advance, is not just technique, it's not a trick. The reason they work is that they're all expressions of the same underlying belief, which is my price is correct, I don't need to apologize for it, and I trust the other person to make their own decision. That's it. That's the mindset underneath the method. And if you genuinely don't believe that, if somewhere underneath the technique you're still carrying the thought that your prices are too high, that people won't want to pay, that you're not really worth it, then the technique will feel hollow. It'll be a thin layer of confidence over a core of doubt, and people can usually feel the difference. So I want to separate two things here. The skills we've talked about today, the language, the structure, the pause, those are worth practicing regardless of where you are in your confidence journey. They'll help and you'll notice a difference. But the deeper work, the work of genuinely believing in your value, of releasing the idea that charging properly is somehow at odds with being a good person or a generous baker, that's a different layer. And if you know that's the layer you need to work on, that's okay. Name it. Because knowing which problem you're actually solving is the first step to solving it. Now I want to give you something practical to take away from this episode, and it's a small exercise, but I'd like you to actually do it. I want you to take one of your most commonly requested products, the thing people inquire about most regularly, your signature celebration cake or your most popular bait, whatever it is. And I want you to practice saying the price out loud on your own to no one. Say it as if you're answering an inquiry. Say it without the softeners. Leave with the number, then stop. The price for that will be £195. Say it until it feels less strange, because here's the thing about confidence: it isn't something you feel first and then express. It's something you practice first and then feel. You don't wait until you feel confident before you say your prices clearly. You say your prices clearly until saying them clearly feels normal. And then when you're ready to push it a step further, try it with someone you trust, a friend, a partner, someone who will let you practice the conversation without it mattering. Not because the practice is the goal, but because doing it somewhere low stakes means that when you're doing it for real, it's already familiar. You've said it before, you know what comes after the pause, and you know you survived it. I also want to say something about the people who won't pay your prices because I think this is something a lot of bakers spend far too much time and energy on. When someone says that's too expensive, or when you can tell from the silence that the number was far more than they were expecting, I want you to resist the urge to immediately interpret that as a verdict on your worth. Someone not having the budget for your cakes is not the same as someone not valuing your cakes. People have different budgets for different things. Someone who genuinely loves your work might simply not be in a position to pay your prices right now. Not because you've set them wrong, but because of where they are financially. That's not a problem you need to solve. And it's not a problem you can solve by pricing yourself out of a sustainable business. The right response to that's more than I was expecting is not to drop the price. It's to hold the price calmly, warmly, without defensiveness. And if you have a genuinely different option that works for their budget, offer that. If you don't, let them go graciously. Thank them for getting in touch. Say you'd love to work with them in future if things change, and mean it. Because the baker who can do that, who can hold their price without crumbling, without apologizing, without chasing, is the baker who builds a reputation for knowing what they are worth. And that reputation compounds, it attracts the right customers, it sets an expectation, it makes the next conversation a little easier. Every time you hold your price, you get better at it. Before I close today, I want to come back to where we started. Knowing your worth isn't enough. You have to be able to say it. And I want to add one more thing to that because I think it's important. Saying it gets easier. Not immediately, not the first time, possibly not even the fifth time, but it does get easier. Every price conversation you have, even the uncomfortable ones, especially the uncomfortable ones, teaches you something. It shows you what you're capable of. It gives you evidence that you can do this. And that evidence accumulates. You will not feel confident before you start practicing. You will feel confident because you practiced. That's it for today. Before I go, if you're finding this series useful, I want to make sure you know about what we're doing inside the Profitable Baker Academy membership this month. We are talking about sales, especially the confidence of sales, from how to talk about you and your business online right through to handling real inquiries with ease. If you're not a member yet and this is something you feel you need to work on, the details of how to join the membership are in the show notes. You will be most welcome. We have a fabulous community. If you've been listening to this series and finding it useful, thank you, it means a lot. Please do share it with another baker who you think might find it useful. That's it for today. I'll be back very soon with the next episode. Take care of yourselves, take care of your businesses. Until next time.