From costs to value
One way to protect margins is by being more efficient (though always taking your costs as the base for it). What if you forget about your costs for a moment? What would make what you’re offering worth their money to your customers? A way to define that is by what it’s worth to them. Not you. Not your costs. Not your margins. Not your offering (be it a product or a service). You can start by figuring out what it is that they’re after. What’s the outcome they seek. And work your way down from…
Protect your margins
Protect your margins overall. Find ways to improve your efficiencies. Cut costs. Add extras to what they pay. Transfer costs out (to your customers). Control scope better. Adjust your rates to inflation. Sure. Makes sense when thin margins is all you have. And when you know only that cost reduction is what keeps you alive. What if you shift from costs to value?
The price you give (pt. 2)
Being transparent about how you set the price you give. It has nothing to do with your customer. It’s all internal. It’s about how you can capture the most of the value your customer gets from you, and that’s it’s clear to you and the people who are involved in it, at their own levels. aka. from marketing to brand to accounting to finance to sales, etc. “But what about being transparent with them? It feels like we’d be lying.” Understandable. And your customer doesn’t actually care. If they…
The price you give
Being transparent about the price you give. It’s giving the right and complete information to your customer about what they will pay for, beforehand. It has to do with them having the best information to make their decision. And no surprises. That there won’t be fine print. That they can trust you when you give them a price. That you won’t sneak on them. This is price transparency.
Transparency
About the prices your business has. Are you supposed to be transparent about: the price you give, or how you set the price you give?
Your customer sure does hope so.
“We’re dedicated to our customers.” Shit. I’d sure hope so. Would you choose to pay a significant amount of money to someone who’s not dedicated and does an incompetent job? How do you define who’s more dedicated, when everyone also claims the same? Maybe dedication (as effort, or passion, or how long it took you to know how to) is not your differentiator. Maybe it’s the bare minimum expected from you. What makes you different in your market?
Who told you?
Who told you it’s greedy / needy / bad to have high prices? Who told you it’s good to give discounts? Who told you that giving a discount is a show of appreciation? Who told you that a discount is “making the customer feel good”? Who told you that your offering is “too expensive”? Who told you you need to do what your competitors are doing? Who told you revenue is the thing to focus on? Who told you pricing is covering your costs and adding a margin? Who told you things are this way because…
Over delivering
A common belief is that over delivering delights your customers. That’s a misconception. You can delight them with delivering on your promise. Over delivering entails expanding your costs without a defined scope. You train your customer to expect more than what they pay for. You train your customer that if you raise your prices, you’ll expand the scope. You underprice your offering. Delighting your customers has nothing to do with over delivering. It has to do with setting expectations and…
Under delivering
It’s pretty clear on a lot of replies to yesterday’s email that under delivering is not the best option of them 3 (under delivering, delivering, over delivering). That’s great. And even with that, you’d be surprised at how often a large portion of players in the market do under deliver. The bar is SO low that by doing a decent bare minimum, you kinda get away with it. If it’s that obvious to you, what do you think make other businesses not deliver on their promise?
About delivery
You made your promise to your customer (aka value proposition). Delivering it is as important as making it. Which one do you think is best? Under-deliver Deliver Over-deliver
