Many businesses offer 3 levels of service and define them based around the words; gold, silver and bronze. The idea is to show prospective clients or customers (herein called clients) that the value/quality of each service improves as they go up the scale from bronze.
It’s used as a way to justify charging 3 different prices, for 3 different levels of service. However, is it possible that we can improve upon this gold, silver and bronze model?
Ask any athlete, who’s out training at 6am on a cold morning, if he or she is motivated by the prospect of becoming a bronze medal winner. I think you already know what their answer will be – a resounding “NO!” That’s because bronze does not have the same motivational pulling power of gold.
In business, we often refer to the best product or service in a category as the gold standard.’ We talk about those cherished memories from the past as golden memories. Highly valued information is often referred to as gold dust. We use the word gold in many ways, but it always conjures up images in our mind of high quality.
Make gold your starting point
So, here’s a question to consider: Why not make gold your starting point? If you offer 3 levels of service, why not make a statement and start with gold, then go to platinum and then on up to diamond?
In an age where every business is claiming to go the extra mile, this is an opportunity for you to tell the marketplace what your attitude to service excellence is. It’s a bold marketing statement, which requires the very best from you if you are to back it up. But what a message to give your prospective clients and those who work with you, internally and externally.
What do you think?
Sounds perfectly reasonable, from a delivery perspective – aim to deliver top quality service, at all levels.
One drawback is that some clients will want things cheaper, so baulk at paying for the ‘gold’ service and ask for a lower priced option (assuming there will always be something less than gold).
Maybe this is where you can classify your services as gold/platinum/diamond/whatever, but your customers as tightwads/bronze/silver/gold/stellar
Thanks for the comment John.
Sales happen when people believe that they are getting great value. Effective marketing, is showing as much value as possible in a product or service, so that the price always seems attractive.
By marketing the 3rd service (for the same price) using gold as a starting point instead of bronze, you help increase the perceived value.
Of course, the super-bright entrepreneur is ALWAYS looking for ways to pump more and more value into what they do offer. The service needs to meet the expectation.
This was kind of the idea I had with my new product. I wanted to make an affordable writing workbook, but I wanted to make it’s intrinsic value considerably more than just $0.99. I figured the “ridiculous” amount of value I would be providing would prompt customers to upgrade to the intermediate and expert workbooks.
I’ll have to wait until I actually start selling some of the workbooks to measure how well this works, haha.
The concept of service in the USA has pretty much gone to hell in a hand basket.
Hi Jim,
I think this is a great idea for conveying value at all levels of service. Although I do think it may also be a bit like the extra value meals at McDonalds, where there is no small, just a medium that’s really the small. Does that make the large actually medium? I think it probably works from a psychology point of view, especially if you’re careful to avoid using something like ‘medium’ for your smallest package. Making sure to properly convey all the benefits to the customer for all levels of service will also help.
Anyway, great food for thought. Thanks for the post.
Thanks for the feedback Sarah – I was reading http://sazbean.com earlier. Small world eh