Confidence in your price comes from confidence in your service.

I’ve been talking about price confidence in a couple of videos now.

I’ve been talking about the possible scenarios that can be the case when someone says, “You’re too expensive” or “You’re more expensive”.

And I’ve talked about how to be confident in your own price.

Today, I want to talk about having confidence in the work you do and using your confidence and your understanding of the quality of the service and the work you do to make you confident in your price.

You should be doing good quality work and expecting people to pay appropriately.

You shouldn’t be competing against inferior quality work and being more expensive or trying to compete on price with an inferior quality of work.

I talked about this in the last video. 

I talked about comparing what you set on price and quality to your competitors and expecting that if you do better work you should be paid more and charging more.

I want to dig a bit deeper into that discussion today. 

Do you do work that you’re proud of?

What makes you proud of it? 

Why are you proud of the work you do

Let’s think specifically why you’re proud of the work you do and what does that mean for your customer?

What is it for them about you being proud of the work you do?

And these are important questions particularly, in terms of what it means for your customer.

You need to know the answers.

Your customer needs to know the answers and your customer needs to be asking those questions too. 

Recommended Reading: Tell People What Kind Of Trade You Are. Know Your Value Proposition.

If they aren’t asking those questions, and they just imagine that a plumber is a plumber and a builder is a builder then you haven’t done your job as a salesperson.

In my Tools Down Workshop, I talk about helping your customers make an apples to apples comparison.

I’m going to stick to apples for a minute because it’s fun.

Comparing apples to apples is very difficult for your customers to do unless you’re clear and you help them get clear what your apples are like.

If you don’t tell them what your apples are like they’re not going to know. They’re just going to go, ‘Apples’.

There’s a world of difference between beautiful, fresh, organic, freshly picked apples and last season’s apple that’s  been in the fridge all summer and is wrinkly, waxy, and not very nice. 

There’s a world of difference. 

You need to tell your customers what kind of apples you are selling.

And lastly, this is true whether you’ve been compared to somebody else with an alternative product or whether you’re just saying, ‘look at these apples, they’re going to cost you this much’, you still need to do this. 

It’s important to know and it’s important for your customers to know that.

Maybe:

• Sh**y apples are fine for them
• They don’t have much money, and they’ll take shitty apples because they have no apples at all.
• They are prepared to pay extra and a nice premium for those beautiful fresh organic apples
• They want those sour cooking apples because they’re making pie or apple sauce

People want different things and different things attract a different price point.

You need to understand what you’re selling and don’t let yourself be put into the box of just being that trade. They’re not all the same

Please get clear for yourself and for your customers what kind of service your business provides and what kind of work you do.

Real-life scenarios

I’ve got a couple of real life examples.

A customer of mine makes the best electrical switchboards -, big fat serious ones for serious applications like sewage treatment plants and things.

And he’s very proud of the high quality product he produces. He’s really proud of it and his customers know that because his customers only buy them for those high-end applications where the product is going to be visible to the customer.  When that’s not the case, they buy cheaper, shi**y things from my client’s competitor.

He knows what he’s selling, and he knows his customers and everyone’s clear. 

The same with this guy, Joe. He builds for property developers – people who buy a block of land and subdivide it and put multiple properties on there and want to sell and make a profit.

The big thing here is project management and speed. 

It’s important that once all the paperwork has been done you can start the build so you can get it on the market, get it sold and make it profit. 

So his thing is about speed. It’s not luxury, it’s not making your dream home, selections are quite limited. It’s about building a reasonable standard thing that people will come and buy reasonably quickly.

He’s priced appropriately and accordingly, and he sells himself and explains himself in that way.

Different apples and different price points. He’s not a project home builder. He’s not a luxury builder – he builds for developers. 

• Know what kind of trade you are.
• Know what kind of business you have
• Know what that means for your customers

For Joe, it’s getting your thing sold sooner and making you money sooner. 

Find the customers who want the thing you are selling. Don’t bother with the ones who want something different. Tell them what you are. If it doesn’t match what they want, qualify out and spend your time finding the customers who want what you’re selling or you’ll just end up stuck in a price frustration trying to sell something that isn’t really what they want.

Of course, my customers do this. This is something we spend time and effort on. We figure out what kind of service they provide and we target the marketing they do to the customers who will appreciate that.

If you think you want to do that you might consider becoming a client of mine.