Re-packaging
Not only products. Also ideas. It’s working around your ideas and offerings to present them in a different way. What’s the impact it can have? It can lead to buy-in from decision-makers. It can shift how your brand is perceived. It can bring in marginal revenue. It can also bring new revenue in orders of magnitude (selling the same thing for a way higher new price). However, it’s not about charging more only for the sake of charging more. It’s about bringing (and articulating) more of what…
Spraying and praying
Reach is not what will deliver you change. Just because you’re in contact with more people, it doesn’t mean your results will shift and/or improve. Hope is not a tactic. You have to be selective and make the hard choices, so that you can focus. Once focused, getting in front of the right people gets simpler (and easier). Instead of the big fish in the big pond, you get to be the big fish in the small pond.
One way is backwards
Set your costs, then your price. Build a brand, then your customers. Set the metric, then the result. We have it backwards. Pricing: find the value, then set a price, then figure out what makes sense for you to charge for that price. Brand: design your customers, they’ll build your brand. And you’ll find the red thread on all of those brands, to make a cohesive one. Metrics: figure out what you want as the outcome. Then think of the result, then the measurement. The metric is the measurement…
Not the only ways
Markup and cost-plus are not the only ways Pricing doesn’t get to be built up from the ground up. (And it’s not math either). It’s not about how much something costs you and how much more you want to make. It doesn’t have to do anything with how much you know, how much time you spent learning your craft, how much effort you put into, or how much you think you deserve. It has to do with how much of the value (what’s important to your customers) they find reasonable for them to pay —and be…
Revenue is the key
Or is it? While revenue is important, it’s the wrong thing to measure to know if your business is doing well and can go a level up. It doesn’t require a rocket scientist to know that more revenue than costs makes profit. Yet revenue is the thing that can make you miss the mark. What happens if you’re underpriced and leaving lots of money on the table? What happens if your costs are hidden and you’re bleeding dry? Revenue is a vanity metric.
Breaking things
“You break things.” I was told that. And it’s been the best compliment EVER. Yes. You do, too. Breaking things.- Seeing how things are (the usual way, how it’s been always done) and moving them to do something new. Intentionally. Moving people to think different. To be uncomfortable. To push boundaries. To do bigger. To feel vulnerable. That’s how you stand out. You break things. Break things.
Fear
Acting on fear closes your options and gives away your power to say No. The real only power you have in the market is your capacity to choose. You can choose what you do. You can choose who you work with. Most important, you can choose who not to work with. Sure, if you have bills to pay and there’s only that non-ideal available, take it. Pay your bills. And find your way to get to your ideal. Where you can say No confidently. Free of fear.
Is it all about you?
You can set up a price on: the market your costs your desired margin your desired profit what you want to make at the end of the year your effort how long it takes you to deliver how long it takes you to produce the conditions of your competitors your passion your revenue goal what you feel your worth is what you time your time costs how long it took you to learn and excel at it Here’s the pattern with all of these: they’re all about you. They have nothing to do with your customer. Nothing to…
The risks of pricing different
Pricing different than the convention (cost-plus pricing, hourly, input-based, market-based, etc.) is risky. It pushes you to think in different terms. Not only on what you do, but on what your customers actually get. It’s harder, more complex and more fluid. It changes on the context, not on the work done or product itself. It changes on the customer. It pushes you to say no to most prospects. It pushes you to detach what you charge from what it costs you. This is all risky, as it means…
Winner, not-winner, loser
If you’ve considered pricing in options (3 being the magic number), the first thing that might’ve come up is naming them Gold, Silver and Bronze. The thing with this convention is that it pretty much says “winner, not-winner, loser”, “you-have-money, you’re-getting-there, poor”. It carries judgement. It implies that the least expensive (or lower tier) is of low- to no-value. You don’t want to buy things of low value. None of your customers do either. Here’s the thing. All of your offers bring…