Hi All,

This morning I received an email that I thought might benefit you. It was basically a question asking for some help with one of his web pages. I won’t reveal his website since I don’t have permission to do so, but the web page he was asking about contains exact pricing for “small”, “medium”, and “large” houses. So that sets the stage. Here’s the email:

Hey Steve,
I want to change the service section of my site to something different . i would still like to give ballpark prices but just want to make it different and improve on it some. Anyway just thought you might have an idea or two. im a bit stumped and just wanted a second head in it if possible.
thanks,

Dave

My Response:

Hi Dave,

Good morning. Hope all is well. I’m not too much of web designer, so I’m not sure how to go about editing the specifics on that service page. I can handle moving text around and things like that, but there are tables and images placed on the page. I’d be afraid if I played with that, I’d mess it all up. :o )

But I would recommend at some point that you not focus so much on pricing. I know it’s a hard thing to avoid. It’s only natural to make pricing a central part of the process. But what happens when you do this is you turn your business into just another commodity. So it’s important that you think different, act different, and look different in your business.

I’ll give you an example. In my breakfast club organization that I was a part of, there was a guy who owned a chimney sweep business. And he cleaned his customer’s chimneys in a tuxedo and top hat. It was his “schtick” or gimmick. It got him an incredible amount of free publicity locally. I mean how many chimney sweeps go around cleaning chimneys in a tuxedo and top hat. :o )

Now this is obviously over the top and I’m not suggesting you buy a tuxedo. :o ) But I want to get you thinking outside the box. There’s a lot of noise out there as you know with consumers being hit from all directions, so in order to stand up and be noticed, you need to approach your business differently.

One thing you may want to do is spend a little time reading the posts on this blog. One post that was posted a few months ago was about this window cleaner over in the UK who had an article written about him and his company in a local newspaper because he was doing something “different”. He was therefore noticed and it paid off for him big time. The link to the article is within the blog post. Again, I think it was posted just a few months ago.

Anyway…this kind of relates back to the pricing issue that you originally asked about. Sometimes I go off on a tangent. :o ) But I would eliminate all exact pricing talk on your website, in any marketing materials you have, in your estimate presentation, etc.

Speaking about the actual estimate presentation, what I used to say is this: “Ok…Nancy, I can do the job for $289 and here’s what we do…” Then I would continue on w/o missing a beat just basically repeating the cover letter to her explaining the quality service we provide. If done this way, then price becomes secondary and is gotten out of the way right up front. The focus was on the quality service being provided to them. When you do a customer’s job, they’ll remember the quality of the job long after what the price of the job was. And with low priced jobs, it’s necessary to cut too many corners (if you want to be profitable) which provides a lower quality job. Just some things to think about.

Anyway…can that guy that you used initially to design your website make some edits to the service page? Here’s an example site I put together as a result of the web templates that I provide for download here: http://www.squeegee.me/
Maybe this’ll give you some ideas.

Another site that is somewhat similar can be found here. You’ll see how the pricing is broken down on the pricing page. The focus isn’t on exact numbers, so there is plenty of room to play with the pricing when I presented a prospect an actual estimate. The last thing that you want is for your prospect to say “But your website said this and now you’re saying this.” The way it stands now on your website, you’re kind of boxed in because of the specific pricing on your site.

I hope this helps. Take care and talk soon.

Regards,

Steve

Filed under: All Blog Posts

Like this post? Subscribe to my RSS feed and get loads more!