Isn’t it strange how people think about money? There are people who happily spend £3 a day on a coffee at Starbucks, but who wouldn’t dream of investing that same £60/£70 a month on SEO for their website / blog or even a private health plan or gym membership!
For those of us involved in sales and marketing, there’s a valuable lesson here! It’s all down to the way people perceive money.
If you sell a service, which has an annual cost of, let’s say £500 – you are asking people to make a £500 purchasing decision.
However, if you tell people they can have that same service for the equivalent of just £42 a month, you are helping them to focus on a far smaller, more manageable figure.
By further chunking that figure down to a weekly investment of just £9.62 or a daily figure of just £1.30, you change their focus completely. Especially if you use something like the Starbucks example I gave earlier, in your marketing.
In today’s economic climate, your prospective clients are thinking REALLY hard before spending their money. This is why it’s important for you to put the cost of investing in your service, into terms that show it’s relative value.
For example, an SEO provider might say:
“For half the price of your daily cappuccino, your business could be getting stacks of targeted leads & enquiries through your website!”
The bottom line?
To a business owner, worrying where her next sales lead will come from, it’s clear that the cost of the SEO service above is infinitely more valuable to her; than the coffee she is currently paying twice as much for!
Find something that your prospective clients / customers already buy, which compares favourably with the cost of your product or service. Then, use it like in the above example – to showcase what GREAT value you offer!
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I suppose the other side of the coin is to ‘chunk up’ the value elements.
I take this to mean painting an effective picture of the real value of what you deliver.
I write content. Many of our clients use us to create content as part of their lead generation program – a special report to ‘incentivise’ newsletter sign ups for example.
Attracting a handful of registrations a day doesn’t sound like it would warrant a large investment BUT if you ask ‘what could you accomplish with a database of over 1000 interested prospects’ (i.e. 1 year of modest sign ups) their eyes light up.
The real value is almost always achieved in the long term whereas the costs are almost always more immediate.
And everything always look bigger up close.
Painting pictures of both the costs and relative value helps buyers bring the two into perspective.
Mark,
I wrote a post all about that recently: http://jimsmarketingblog.com/2008/11/03/how-to-sell-anything/
It’s about how to pump as much value as possible into your product or service – Hope you like it!
Nice post. It’s good to be reminded often about relative values. Cheers!
Love this Jim. Thanks for sharing!!
Awesome persuasion tactic Jim
Thanks for the reminder.
Turning the tables and looking at it from a cost saving perspective, it is always an eye opener when you calculate the daily costs and percentage figures instead of the actual amount.
Good enough….bt wat about business to business sales pitch you cant really put your costing in comparison of Bux…..
Can someone translate the above comment so adults can understand it?
haha! Thanks for the blog Jim… When I first read the title I thought “Chugging it down!” and saw a beer (not coffee). I guess that tells you something about me doesn’t it. How much do I spend on beer a month? Well, let me say It’s comparable to coffee for many others.
Great sales advice. I’ll use it today.
Chris
http://www.professionalsales.com.au