No, that’s not a misprint. It’s not about what you charge, but why.
Once I told a colleague I’d been thinking of charging a slightly lower rate when someone brought a friend along to a coaching session.
He listened politely, then asked, “Why would you do that? Don’t devalue the currency.”
You work hard at what you do, right? You have spent time thinking about what to offer (whether or not you’ve done a formal business plan), time getting your product ready for market or your service fine-tuned: taking classes, reading, going to conferences. If you’re an artist, you’ve taken lessons or apprenticed in some way; you continue to do whatever exercises are needed to build your branch of the great tree of art. You have done everything you can to develop what you offer. And you are worth being paid appropriately for it.
Does this mean you should never review the way your products or services or other creative work is packaged, to see what’s working, what seems to interest people most, what doesn’t get much interest? No.
I asked a farmer if I could buy a couple of jalapeno peppers.
He said he usually only sold them by the basket, but okay, this one time. I asked why he sold them that way.
“I used to sell them individually,” he said, “and nobody bought them. Since I’ve started selling them in baskets, I can’t bring enough with me. They always sell out.”
Did the peppers change? No. People saw more value in a basket than they did in individual peppers.
Maybe that’s because most people think, “Oh, he has peppers, and so does that stand, and that one,” and off they go to compare prices.
So here you are offering a deal. What does the customer do?
Some say, “Great! I’ve been wanting to work with you/buy your ________ anyway.”
Others say, “Hmn. What are other people charging?”
I think it was Jeffrey Gitomer who said, “When you sell on price, you lose on price.” The discount actually prompts them to go and look for the lowest price. Is that how you want to present what you offer?
So do review what you’re offering, to see if you’re packaging it in a way that works for you, that’s in tune with what your customer is looking for and how s/he generally makes buying decisions.
But don’t just randomly lower your prices, on Black Friday, Cyber Monday, or any other day of the year. Instead, pay close attention to what people continually ask you for. Offer more of that.
Offer value.
©2012 Laynie Tzena. All Rights Reserved.
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