Hello I’m Tequila and I am a Business Operations Strategist who helps business owners who are bogged down with business tasks leverage the power of automation and team so they can re-focus their business systems and quickly get back in front of clients in order to increase revenue.
How do I know my services are correctly priced? This seems to be a common question asked while on Clubhouse. You’re offering a valuable service that helps your clients save time, money, or headache. The goal of your sales and marketing should be to demonstrate the value of your services to your potential customers and clients. But, they are no buying.
You’ve done everything you need to do, and you’re still not seeing your revenue anywhere close to where you want it to be.
If this is the case, it’s probably because you’re not making your services clear and easy enough to buy.
How you present your services to potential clients has a major impact on how much you sell. In this article, you’ll discover the five reasons you’re not selling more of your services and how to overcome these so you start getting the business you deserve.
While you want to give your clients as much flexibility as possible so they can choose exactly what’s right for them, too many options can overwhelm them instead.
Imagine you need a piece of computer hardware. You don’t know much about the details, but you know what you need it to do. What if you go to the store to find a whole aisle of products and you can’t figure out what makes each one different? Which is going to get you the solution you need?
A famous 2000 study conducted at Columbia University illustrates this well. Researchers offered jams on a table outside a grocery store, alternating between 24 options and only 6 options.
They found that when there were 24 jams to choose from, more people stopped to look at the jams, but fewer actually bought any.
When there were only 6 jams, slightly fewer customers stopped to look but more of them made a purchase.
Major brands often see higher sales when they offer more options, but this doesn’t mean it’s always a good idea. If you consider it from the client’s point of view, too many options can be confusing.
Keep in mind that your client may not have the level of knowledge about your service that you do. If you make it easier for them to choose, they’re more likely to buy.
How do you simplify your offerings and make it easy for clients to buy? You do it by eliminating clutter and narrowing your offerings down to a few options that are different in clear ways and easy to understand.
Start by looking at how many options you’re currently offering. Does each fulfill a particular need? Or are some of them just filler options you offer because you can? Each should have its own clear, unique value to the client.
Look at your sales. Are there certain services that sell better than others? You may want to narrow down your offerings by eliminating those that don’t sell as well.
If you have a lot of options and it’s hard to see which have unique value and which don’t, another method is to start with your most important “standard” option.
If you could only offer one service, which would it be? How about two? Go down the list like this and the last few will be the non-essential options you can remove.
Alternatively, the other problem might be that you’re not offering enough options. While simplicity is a virtue, you also need to make sure you’re allowing clients to get the service they need, otherwise, they’ll find someone else who does.
If you offer services packed full of features your client doesn’t need, they won’t want to pay the high price. For example, you’re a wedding planner who offers a complete wedding service, but some of your clients just want a day-of coordinator. There’s no reason for them to hire your full service when they only want you for one day, so you can offer a one-day package.
You already have the resources to do this, so it doesn’t require anything additional from you.
Offering a simple option as well is a way to give them a clear choice.
The best way to plan your offerings is to start simple and build up. If you’ve stripped your options down in the last module, now you can start customizing the right options that would give the client the most value.
The stripped-down package is the lowest-priced. You can then add features or additional services at correspondingly higher price points to make a few levels.
A good way to offer multiple prices is to choose your ideal price point and service package. Think of Starbucks with its “grande” size drinks. It’s the middle size, with a bigger and more expensive size for those who want more, or a smaller and cheaper size for those who want less.
You can set your ideal service in the middle and then offer a cheaper, more pared-down version below it and a more advanced version above, with the goal being to sell mostly the middle version (your standard).
If you offer any kind of online or tech service, a great add-on is to offer additional support post-purchase to help people with any challenges they face. You can also bundle services that clients often buy together.
Depending on the type of service you provide, you may be able to offer services together as a process. For example, your SEO services might include website building, content marketing, and social media management services as one package.
Add features and add-ons to services, but don’t make it overly complicated. Create just a few services and try to identify what type of client would most benefit from each.
If you do not see the sales you expect, it may be because you’re focusing too much on price.
Obsessing over price can actually lead to price objections.
Clients will be looking only to save money and not get their problems solved through your offerings. This can lead to a race to the bottom, where you’re constantly offering discounts and lower prices but earning less. If clients are only buying from you because of the low price, a competitor can come along offering an even lower price and steal them from you.
If a client only cares about price, it means they don’t understand the value of your offer. Your mission is to teach them about the unique value you can provide. Then, price becomes less of a big deal. Your marketing should be aimed at proving this value.
Before you communicate the unique value you offer, you need to understand it yourself. You might have some idea of what this is, but you should know for certain so that you can make a promise to the prospective client that you can keep.
Your unique value isn’t just what you do well. It’s what you do well uniquely in your market. It’s the reason a client has to buy from you and not from some other service provider. If this is just price, they can get the same quality and benefits from anyone.
Look at your competition to see what they offer and assess how your offerings are different. Ask past and current clients what they like about working with you and why they stay with you. Gain a grasp of your natural strengths and the things you do well.
If you’re not meeting the clients’ needs, you won’t get sales. However, if you can manage to put together services that address and meet these needs, your sales will skyrocket. Your aim should be to deeply understand what a client needs when they’re considering your service and communicate this to them.
Do you know what your client truly needs from you? You may not have considered this carefully or you might be working off your own assumptions. But what you really need is objective data from your clients themselves telling you what they want from you.
In order to find out what people need from you, create opportunities where you can interact with them and get their feedback directly. You do this by holding focus groups, running surveys, and reaching out to individual clients. Indirect methods include social listening, analyzing competitors, and keyword research.
How well do you know who your ideal client is?
You should identify not only who your client is but where they are when they come to your service. How does your service fit into their overall business? What experience do they have when they come to you?
For example, if you’re a web content writer, your clients might be people who have some experience writing their own content but now need help. Maybe they’ve scaled up or maybe they’re frustrated with the time it takes to write good content. If so, the unique value you’re offering isn’t your expertise at writing but the fact that you can take over this troublesome task for them.
Focus on the difficulties and challenges your clients face and how your offering helps them overcome these.
The key is to keep in constant communication with your clients. Regularly seek their feedback and get actual data whenever possible on their challenges and needs.
Addressing the previous four reasons alone is enough to start helping your client choose the right services to match their needs. However, an even better way to make them happy is to offer detailed, solutions-based packages so they can see right away what they’re getting at what price and can make the decision to buy what’s right for them.
When you focus on solutions, you meet the client where they are. They come to you with a problem for which they need a solution. If your packages explain to them how you solve their problem from start to finish, you’ll see more sales.
Rather than starting with your services, start with the client’s needs. Your aim should be to meet all of these needs in one place with a bundle of your services that takes them from beginning to end, rather than having to buy multiple services or one service and also do some portion of the work themselves.
Levels of service packages.
Offer levels like Beginner, Intermediate, or Advanced with various services depending on where the client is in the process or how experienced they are.
A coaching package with additional instructional help.
Teach clients how to use your service effectively and provide accountability or coaching to make sure they get it done.
A package of additional resources.
Offer pre-recorded courses, templates, or other resource materials that the client would have to create on their own that assist in using your service.
A group version of your service.
Would your clients benefit from using your service in a group of their peers? You can offer a group version where several people buy-in and use it together.
Whatever type of package you offer, make sure you’re providing more value than they’d get from buying the services separately. This will also help to increase sales.
Want to learn more about how you can create service packages that are perfect for your clients? Check out: Pricing Your Services To Sell.
Hello I’m Tequila and I am a Business Operations Strategist who helps business owners who are bogged down with business tasks leverage the power of automation and team so they can re-focus their business systems and quickly get back in front of clients in order to increase revenue.
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