Pricing

I’m fond of saying that pricing is a prison cell in your mind, of your own making. You see yourself trapped within a narrow band of what you can charge. Your competitors are similarly trapped, but the band or cell they are trapped in is different from yours. Some of your competitors are charging significantly more than you, and some significantly less, yet everyone feels restricted, confined by the idea of an elastic demand that will drop with the slightest price increase.

Your two main levers of profit are to lower your expenses and to raise your revenue. (Profound opening, I know. Stay with me.)

The more I get to know procurement professionals through my pet project that is 20% – The Marketing Procurement Podcast, the more I am struck by how bad we in the creative professions are at negotiating.

I’ve written for years on the impact that three-option proposals can have on your closing ratio and your average selected price. Providing your clients with three or four different ways to engage you—at different price points—might be the simplest and fastest path to improving profit.

In this post I lay out the five levels of pricing success and ask you to do an assessment of where you are now. Then I identify the best resources to help you move up from your current level.

The battle to increase gross profit margin isn’t that complicated. By simply charging more you generate a higher top line with no change to delivery costs, thus increasing the bottom line. Battle won, right?

In the Win Without Pitching Workshop you heard me say that I think the ability to navigate the value conversation is the most valuable skill in all of business.  Then we gave you the framework, a few hours of practice and we sent you on your way. Don’t worry if you haven’t mastered this important