Pricing Fear Will Rob You Of Your Dreams
I’m going to be slightly challenging here and suggest you have pricing fear, the only reason you’re not charging more for your services are the six inches between your ears. The amount of businesses I go into that don’t charge what they’re worth is shocking. Yes, you need to do some of the positioning and sales process stuff that we’ve talked about in the previous chapters, but on the whole, if you were talking to your dream clients you could almost instantly put up your prices, but probably won’t through fear.
Fear of losing your existing clients, fear of them telling you you’re too expensive, fear of money not coming in, losing your business, your house, losing your team, fear that your clinic isn’t good enough. All of this is in your head and it’s one of the biggest challenges that a lot of clinics face. On the flip side, I do come across the odd clinic that’s charging lots and, to be honest, they often suck at what they do, so how come they’re able to charge so much?
Pricing Fear Destroys Profits
Again, it’s down to the six inches between the ears of the person leading the clinic and the perception that gives potential clients. If they’re charging double what you are they have to be twice as good, right? Not always the case, and remember some clients won’t know what great service is, so they’ll just assume what they’re getting is as good as it gets (remember I talked about giving advice and guidance to help your potential clients understand what good and bad is).
It’s also worth having this as part of your sales process. I’ve had one clinic, for example, who sometimes come across challenges in pricing with clients. Here it’s worth reminding the client what they’re ultimately searching for. Say the client wants to look younger, it’s worth digging around to find out why. It might be that they’re recently single, not feeling that confident (dissatisfaction) and by feeling younger they’re sure they’ll have more confidence, will talk to more people, more naturally, and hopefully meet Mr or Mrs Right (vision). Again, you should be positioning yourself here as a consultant and helping them get the best match for what they are trying to achieve. Show them that they’re in safe hands with you because of (insert your right) and the price you’re asking them to pay is more than worth it.
Pricing Fear Is All In Your Head
The second thing that helped my client put up their prices was a change in the clients they were looking to work with. Once their avatars were built and they started to actually think about the value they were delivering to these clients that had the budget, the price increases became a no-brainer. Actually, even before they had a chance to really start targeting the clients they had selected, clients with the budget they were looking for started to turn up. Not sure if that’s law of attraction but it’s not a fluke, as I’ve seen this happen time and time again. Over the last 18 months, they’ve doubled their prices and I think they have room to potentially double them again, especially having seen the results of some larger, more prestigious clinics that are charging well above what they are delivering. On top of this, when approaching these top-end clients if the price was too low, they wouldn’t see value for money, and they’d just assume that you weren’t that good.
Pricing Fear Is Common, But Can Be Overcome
And price perception is key. A recent story showed that the majority of people can’t tell the difference between expensive and cheap bottles of wine. In an episode of ‘Observatory’ on the hit YouTube channel ‘Vox’, 100 people tasted three bottles of wine priced at $8, $14 and $43 respectively. After a series of questions, tasters rated the least expensive and the most expensive exactly the same. Which begs the question, what’s the point in buying expensive wine when, taste-wise, you’re likely to get a similar experience to cheaper alternatives? In all honesty, it comes down to (and always will come down to) who you’re selling to. Your ‘market’, and their perception of what quality is. Because, naturally, peak prices denote quality to most people, and there is a market that will always buy into that; who will buy into the status that comes with buying expensive, no matter what the product.
By Alan Adams The Clinic Coach
