Every entrepreneur thinks about the best pricing strategies and asks – How do I know what to charge for my product or service? It’s a common question. Many business owners are unsure of how to set their pricing. You want to get paid for your efforts, but will your pricing reflect both your value and your worth?
Pricing is a fickle thing. Done properly, it can be used as a marketing tool to attract the perfect client. Improper pricing could be setting you up for trouble such as not getting paid enough for your time, the kind of clients you don’t want, or no clients at all.
So how do you know what to charge? What is the best way to leverage pricing to position your business? We have 7 pricing strategies to share that can help you decide how to best position your value and in turn, set your pricing model.
Are You Making These Common Pricing Strategy Mistakes?
So let’s say you want to be super competitive and make sure that you have the best deal in town. Then, you realize you overshot it and are not charging customers enough. Before you know it, you are too deep in debt from overhead to recover and end up going out of business. When your pricing is too low, you are not making a profit. Regardless of how many customers you get, if you are not covering your expenses and still making revenue your business will be short-lived.
Now, on the flip side, say you know that you are sitting on gold. You know that you’re worth top dollar and you need everyone else to know it too. Unless you have the following, marketing, and positioning to support premium pricing, you are going to have a hard time convincing customers that they should pay top dollar for what you have to offer.
If you enter the market charging far more than anyone else in the industry, you are not going to have any business. No customers for you means no revenue. Without enough steady flow of income, you will run into the same problems as undercharging. You need a healthy volume of business to have any hope of growing.
So how do you avoid these two most common mistakes when deciding on how to charge? Here are some suggestions for pricing strategies that might work for you.
Pricing Strategy # 1: Price to Your Competition
Though most entrepreneurs never want to think of themselves as average in their industry, pricing relative to your competition can be a good place to start. A common way to determine average pricing is the literal numeric value. Take the top 3 companies in the industry and find the mathematical average.
If you are in a commodity industry, you may want to consider slightly underselling your competition. This may be a successful pricing strategy for your particular niche. Just be aware that when you are pricing in direct relation to your competition, you are most likely always going to be fluctuating in reaction to either the marketplace or other companies. This defensive position in pricing could quickly lead to charging too little.
Pricing Strategy # 2: Breakeven
This pricing strategy is most often used when first entering the market as a way of testing the waters. The idea is to charge at a point where you are just able to pay the bills. That’s right, just cover overhead costs with little to no profit. It’s also known as self-liquidating. You have to use caution with this one or you run the risk of going from breakeven to bankrupt. But why on earth would you want to charge at cost, without profit? Great question!
The concept uses a low ticket offer to acquire customers and build a following. The profit, then, comes from high ticket selling when you introduce an appealing secondary offer at a higher cost. Consider this a bonus marketing business tip in a sense. It’s a way to generate leads for a higher price point because the breakeven offer has already drawn them into your funnel.
Pricing Strategy # 3: Price To Time
This is an extremely popular model, especially in the professional services industry. You may know it as ‘charging by the hour’. Some companies adopt this concept by billing a monthly retainer or charging at different time intervals. Either way, you are seeking compensation based on your time output.
We observed that as the world shifts from a job economy to a skill economy, this model is becoming more and more outdated. It still has a place on certain occasions, but in general, charging based on results instead of time makes clients a lot happier and much more eager to pay you top dollar.
For example, when you charge based on the time it benefits you to take longer to complete a project while a client is focused on getting the job done quickly. Shouldn’t you be rewarded for working efficiently? This strategy creates a conflict of interest.
If you charge based on results you have the ability to deliver top performance in a timely fashion and still earn according to how much value you have brought to the customer. More on this in #7.
No fee is too high for success and almost any fee is too high for failure. Click To TweetPricing Strategy # 4: Price To Cost Plus
Often found in construction, this method of charging is used by formulating a total price to complete a job, then adding a markup percentage. This strategy is useful in some cases, but once again, creates a conflict of interest. Spending more money drives up the job cost and results in a larger number for the markup percentage. In this respect, using a preferable material at a lower cost is not as profitable. We suggest aligning the focus of both parties on achieving efficient results.
Let’s say the project price is set at $1M. You as the service provider are expecting to receive $150K in payment. You might consider proposing that, if you can finish the project with equal or better quality at a cost of $850K, you would receive a 20 or 30 thousand dollar bonus. And a secondary bonus amount for finishing ahead of schedule. This way, everyone on the job is working toward the same goal – a time conscious, cost-effective, quality project. You get to reap the benefits of bringing more value to your client.
Pricing Strategy # 5: Price To The Package
Creating packages is a well-known sales tip. It is about the perceived value your package offers a client rather than the actual cost to you. Combining products or services into a neat delivery system with a higher value than the price tag creates an irresistible offer.
But isn’t that called a discount? No. A discount is lowering the actual price. Instead of lowering the cost a customer pays, a package would increase the amount of benefit a customer receives. A good rule of thumb would be a 1 to 10 ratio of cost to benefit. If you are charging $1K for a deal, then the value to the customer of each element separately should add up to about $10K. Now, this doesn’t mean it would actually have to cost you this much, but it should bring this much value to whoever buys it.
When forming packages, anticipating the future needs of your clients can be extremely helpful. If you are teaching a course that is easily performed on a particular software program, consider including the software they are most likely going to need or want. It’s more valuable to them to buy it all together at a flat rate than purchasing each item separately from different sources.
Pricing Strategy # 6: Price To Positioning
Positioning is a pricing strategy that has everything to do with supply and demand. The shorter the supply, the more in demand that product is. If you have the only supply of the thing in demand or limit the supply, you can charge more for it. Dan Lok has only 6 hours a week available for consultations. He has 24 hours in a day, just like everyone else. Since no one can increase the supply of time, the price of his services goes up.
This, of course, assumes valuable positioning, meaning that there is enough of a demand for the product or service you’re offering to warrant what you are charging. Limiting or controlling a supply does little good if there is no demand for it. No one will pay for something they don’t want.
Pricing Strategy # 7: Price To Value
This charging method is used frequently in high ticket selling because clients pay for premium results.
The concept is simple. You price your services based on a percentage of the results you bring to your client. Whatever the amount of increased revenue you deliver to them as value, you get a percentage. You make them an additional $1M, you get a percentage of $1M. If you make them $10M, you get a percentage of $10M.
The focus of both parties is now aligned and everyone is working in the same direction. Clients don’t care how much time or effort you’ve put in, as long as it’s bringing them results. If you can get it done in a few hours a week, you don’t make any less because it’s not based on time. The faster and more efficiently you can do this, the happier your client is to pay you for it.
The more value you bring, the more you earn. There are no caps, income ceilings, and no limit to how many times you can do this, over and over. You’re getting paid by what value you bring to their time.
How To Be Strategic With Pricing Strategies
Now you have 7 different suggestions on how to charge your customers and clients. They don’t each have to be used separately and independently of one another. You can be creative with the way you combine and adapt these pricing models.
You may choose to combine price to time and price to value by charging a monthly retainer while still collecting a percentage on the value of each individual project. Perhaps you are more well known in your industry and want to leverage price to a position with a price to the package. The possibilities are endless.
We suggest that you do give this some thought, though. It’s an important decision that has a big impact on your livelihood. Putting the wrong pricing method on even the best product or service can lower the value tremendously. Be sure that you take into account your industry, your specialization level, and your phase in the market cycle when determining what pricing model works best for you.
Did you notice that some of the strategies we mentioned had a particular industry for which they were best suited? Did you know that there is actually an industry that is best suited for one of the pricing strategies?
What You Need To Know About High Ticket Selling and Pricing Strategy # 7
The price to value model is quite powerful. It highlights the worth of what you have to offer a client and sets the tone for a mutually beneficial relationship. If you combine that with a High Income Skill like High Ticket Sales, your earning potential is limitless.
High Ticket Sales naturally lends itself to a results-based pricing strategy because that is exactly what you are trying to achieve – results. You are converting leads into clients and bringing additional revenue to your client with each sale.
It would make sense then that your client would be happy to pay you a percentage of every conversion amount. If that happens to be a percent of a very large number, the better for you both. More revenue generated for your client and more commission for you is a win-win for everyone.
This method of charging only works, of course, when there are actual results and conversions. So, where can you learn a skill that allows you to achieve valuable results? If you are already in the sales industry, how do you learn to improve your conversion rate?
How To Make Results-Based Pricing Work For You By Learning High Ticket Sales
There are many traditional sales tips and techniques that seem to have passed the test of time. In reality, many of these time-honored practices are actually repelling more customers than they are converting. Phrases and tactics that were once the industry standard now trigger consumer defenses.
If these methods are so appalling, why is anyone still using them? Well, no one has taught these salespeople any differently. It’s the equivalent of teaching technology from an outdated textbook. Unfortunately, the old book keeps getting handed down instead of updated. The information is simply not relevant anymore.
“The Traditional Practice Of Sales As A Business Discipline Has Become At Best Ineffective, And In Many Cases Flat Out Obsolete.” - Forbes Click To TweetYou may be aware that Dan Lok offers a series of programs which teach High Income Skills. One of the most popular is the High-Ticket Closer™ Certification Program. It’s a 7-week intensive course on how to convert leads into sales by utilizing the position of value for the customer. But what you may not know is that Dan condensed this program into a 64 minute and 47 seconds lesson called The Perfect Closing Script and made it available to the public.
You can now learn the value that the skill of closing holds for you, your client and their customer in a single afternoon. Gain a competitive edge in your industry by knowing which common sales mistakes to avoid. Learn what never to say on a sales call. Stop using a pricing strategy based on how many calls you made or a flat rate for each conversion. Learn how to make results-based pricing work for you by learning how to increase your value.
Discover How To Get Paid Based On The Value You Bring
High Ticket Closing is a skill that directly lends itself to pricing based on value and results – not on time, cost, or what competitors are charging. It allows you to get rid of pay caps, sales quotas, and unqualified leads. Stop selling with the sleazy stigma and have both your clients and customers thanking you for your work.
Are you serious about getting paid top dollar for the value you can bring to a business? Are you ready to start getting more sales, closing deals in one call, and making more money in less time? Do you want to learn more about a skill that works with a results-based pricing strategy?
If you are done with sales-killing tactics and outdated training, find out how to generate higher revenue through more conversions. Discover how you can start increasing conversions and getting paid for your worth now by clicking here for The Perfect Closing Script.
