Pricing can be hard – particularly if you do creative work. I’ll leave my comments on this one until the end.
Because people form assumptions and associations based on your pricing, and your pricing shapes what people believe about your service, it’s important to be clear about how you position yourself. Your price should be aligned with the extremes you claimed as part of your positioning.
This Is Marketing: You Can’t Be Seen Until You Learn To See (2018) – Seth Godin
For most organizations, particularly small ones, the hard part isn’t the mechanics of charging different amounts. It’s the storytelling. I bring this up because it’s a powerful way to understand the story of your price (and the price of your story).
Cheap is another way to say scared.
This Is Marketing: You Can’t Be Seen Until You Learn To See (2018) – Seth Godin
When people are heavily invested (cash or reputation or effort), they often make up a story to justify their commitment. And that story carries trust. Every con man knows this. The irony is that marketers who need to be trusted often don’t understand it. Lowering your price doesn’t make you more trusted. It does the opposite.
This Is Marketing: You Can’t Be Seen Until You Learn To See (2018) – Seth Godin
I’ll add my own small story here. We all have conversations that change our lives … this was one of mine.
Back in 1997, I’d stormed out of IBM in a strop to ‘start my own business’. I was 27 and probably a little obnoxious. In reality, I didn’t have much idea what I was doing. I figured if I could make £100/day, I might be okay money wise.
That was my first attempt at pricing and it seemed impossibly high.
A few weeks later an ex-colleague called me. He was working with a startup who needed my weird mix of skills.
“What do you charge?”, he said.
Deep breath. “One-hundred pounds a day.”
There was a long long silence. He sighed. I got ready to backpedal.
“No,” he said. “I’ll tell them £600/day so they know that you are serious.”
See Also:
On Assets | On Branding | On Challenging Yourself | On Intangibles | On Selling | On Storytelling | On Your Story | On Tension | On True Lies
Or choose a path towards stories that mean business.
Explore the art and science of business storytelling. The rabbit hole goes way deeper than you think.
The Business Storytelling Glossary lists the concepts, ideas and definitions that use in my work. Your mileage will vary.
