Price is a dangerous thing for business owners.

It’s all too easy as a business owner to think that the ONLY reason people buy or don’t buy from you is price related.

“All people want is the best price. Nothing else matters.”

If this statement were true, the only businesses still surviving to this day would be the mega companies, because they can afford to lower their prices the most due to their buying power.

But as we all know, this isn’t the reality we live in today.

There are many, many factors that go into a buying decision and I want to use this article to examine just a few of them, so that the next time you lose out on a quote to a cheaper competitor, or you feel that you can’t sell your product due to the huge amount of cheaper competition, you can re-examine what you could do to get beyond ‘being the cheapest’ to win business.

Price-Busting Secret # 1 – Convenience

If the app-driven take-aways, service stations and food-ingredient delivery services have taught us anything, it should be that people will pay top dollar for convenience.

The thing about convenience is that it can range from extremely obvious, to quite subtle.

An obvious change a business can make to be more convenient, is to offer a delivery service, or provide in-home consultation.

A more subtle convenience can be something as simple as following up prospective customers frequently and repeatedly.

Very simply, following a prospective customer up saves them the thought and effort of remembering to call you back!

A small convenience, sure, but when taken into account, it adds to the value of your offering as a whole.

Really stop and think about what actions you could take, big and small, to make your service or product more convenient for your customers or clients.

Ideas include : delivery, in-home consultation, following up, a downloadable information pack, free disposal/removal of old products, faster shipping, online purchasing, do-it-yourself video guides, related products comparison information etc

Price Busting Secret # 2 – Bundling

When you bundle multiple products and services together, you make it more difficult to make an apples for apples comparison of your product or service to others. This avoids the dreaded ‘commoditization’.

This is why those old info-mercials of the past always threw in 2 or 3 extra products along with their main product, not only to increase the value proposition, but to make the ability to compare their unique offer to their competitors more difficult.

Think of additional products or services you could bundle together with your core offerings to create a unique selling proposition.

Ideas include : inexpensive gifts, free once off repair if broken, extended warranty, ongoing coaching calls and training, free upgrade to a superior product, includes entry into a competition to win a big product, includes VIP membership for a related service etc

Price Busting Secret # 3 – Price Range

Human beings are fundamentally wired to seek the boundaries and options in life.

We want a range of options. One option = All or nothing, I feel pressured to buy. Multiple options = I can see the differences. I don’t feel pressured.

People want to see and understand the ‘cheap version’, the ‘medium/average’ and the ‘expensive’.

We need a comparison to make ourselves feel confident we have a greater understanding of what we are looking at.

No one wants to think of themselves as ‘cheap’. But many of us think “expensive = being ripped off”.

Therefore, we believe it’s most sensible to go for ‘the middle of the road’ option. The ‘balanced’ option.

This is why every website has a ‘starter’, a ‘business’ and an ‘enterprise’ package. 

Try to think of how you can incorporate pricing options for your potential customers.