Today, I want to show you how to never sell your products based on price again!
Price sensitivity
If you find people are price sensitive, there’s always a reason.
If your product appears to be similar to competing products, yet you are charging more for it, people will think your product is too expensive. All things being equal, people go for the best (lowest) price because it’s all that they have left, to determine whether they are getting value for money or not. If you want to move away from competing on price, you need to provide something different and of greater value to your target customer.
Now, if your product already offers a real, unique advantage over your competitors products, and people can’t see all that great value, you need to focus on how to get your message across powerfully in your marketing. However, that’s not what today’s brief post is about!
In most cases, the price sensitivity problem persists because there is just not enough differentiation between what you provide and what is available elsewhere. That’s what I’m going to focus on here.
The need for differentiation
For 16 years, I have been telling business owners to differentiate their products (and services), so they don’t have to sell based on price.
For 16 years they have asked me, “how?”
It’s obviously impossible to give you a global answer, on how you can be different enough to rise above your competitors. Of course, if there was a global answer, everyone would use it and thus it couldn’t work as everyone would look the same! The whole point about differentiation, is that it has to be different.
So, here are a few ideas for you, based on successful differentiation tactics that business owners have used with great success, to avoid having to sell based on price. See if any of these help you get your creative juices flowing!
- The product is a numbered, limited edition.
- The product is signed by it’s creator.
- The product is recommended to the prospective customer, by someone they respect or admire.
- The product weighs 50% less than competing products.
- The product is made from 100% renewable sources.
- The product is bright orange, when competing products are only available in black or white.
- The product is offered with a lifetime replacement guarantee.
- The product is used as a way to show your membership of a community. An example of this is the iPhone community, where ownership of an iPhone places you in their “tribe.”
The more valuable your differentiation is, the less people will make price an issue. It’s genuinely challenging work to come up with something that makes your product uniquely valuable, but if you are prepared to do the hard work, you can own a very profitable chunk of your marketplace.