Three questions to give you clarity on your prices
Increase your confidence in how you charge for your services
Last month a recruitment leader said to me, “We won’t win any more business if we drop our rates.”
There is some great clarity in this statement, and it’s a question worth considering for your own business.
If you dropped your rates, would you win any more business?
Too often we turn to price as a quick fix way to win new clients. Often this is done in the heat of the moment, with a savvy client negotiating hard on price as we try to think about the right response.
The action of dropping your price can also become a habit, taught to us by previous managers and reinforced by the big sales events we’re bombarded with as customers.
But if you spend some time away from the heat of negotiation to think about what a discount would achieve, you will find confidence in the clarity of how you price your services.
There are two more questions worth taking a moment to step back and consider:
If we discounted less, would we still win the same amount of business?
It’s not an easy question to answer definitively, but if you take the time to think about it you can often find examples and hints from existing clients that will lead you to a likely answer.
The final question:
If we have too many roles to work, would raising our prices be a risk?
We are naturally nervous about making a change that could risk damaging our businesses. By asking the hard questions, we can sometimes find that there is less at risk than we feared… and there is more to gain than we realised.
If you want help in creating a clear pricing strategy that you can be confident in, simply reply to this email and I’ll talk you through the next steps.
Jon
P.S. These are not easy questions to answer. You are unlikely to get a definitive yes or no.
But you’re a business leader. You know there is rarely - if ever - one ‘right’ answer that guides your decisions.
By stepping back and thinking about these questions, what you can do is clarify your thinking and appreciate the situation you’re in. And this clarity will help you decide on the next step you take.
If you want help in creating a clear pricing strategy that you can be confident in, simply reply to this email and I’ll talk you through the next steps.