Tiny Marketing: Marketing strategies and systems for B2B service business founders.

Ep 126: The Pricing Puzzle: Finding Your Sweet Spot | Guest Expert Peter Giordano III

• Sarah Noel Block • Season 4 • Episode 126

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We dive into the complex world of pricing, addressing how service providers can find effective pricing strategies that reflect their value and meet client expectations. Peter Giordano III shares his insights on the psychology of pricing as well as practical steps to boost profitability. 

• Common pricing challenges service providers face 
• Understanding value versus cost in pricing decisions 
• The concept and benefits of gateway offers 
• Psychological tactics for effective pricing 
• Various pricing models: hourly, fixed, and performance 
• Strategies for overcoming pricing objections 

If you've found value in this episode, drop a comment and let me know what your biggest pricing takeaway was from this episode!


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Speaker 1:

Welcome to Tiny Marketing. This is Sarah Norblok, and this is a podcast that helps B2B service businesses do more with less. Learn lean, actionable, organic marketing strategies you can implement today. No fluff, just powerful growth tactics that work. Ready to scale smarter, hit that subscribe button and start growing your business with Tiny Marketing.

Speaker 2:

Pricing your services can feel like throwing darts in the dark. Too high and you scare people off. Too low and you're leaving money on the table. So how do you find the sweet spot? Today we're breaking it down with Peter, a pricing strategist who helps consultants and service providers price with confidence and how to maximize their profitability. So we're going to cover how to turn intangible strategy into a tangible value, when to reveal your pricing and how to use psychology to make your pricing more persuasive. Plus, peter shares game-changing insights on gateway offers and biteable strategy approach. So if you want to charge what you're worth and have your clients see the real value and feel like they're getting a steal, then this episode is for you. You are listening to episode 126. I am Sarah Noelle Block and this is Tiny Marketing.

Speaker 3:

I'm Peter Giordano III. I am a pricing strategist and I really help consultants and other service providers who sell strategy to really nail their pricing. It's really hard to equate some quantifiable value. So one of the first things I will say and one of the things that I solve is really trying to as closely distill to a quantifiable value as possible, making it tangible even if it is intangible, and being able to have a conversation with the individual on the other side to talk about value. And it's not perfectly purely value-based pricing, but it is being able to try to get to something that is tangible, making it more real. And you talked about the gateway offer in episode 108. We talked about my gateway offer 10K in one day which was literally designed to do that, which was to break off a piece of strategy to make it tangible short-term right, like in lower price and lower risk, so that people can actually more easily buy it, so it's easier for you to upsell or to convert over to your signature offer.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, that is exactly how a gateway offer works is. The idea is to pull them in with that strategy, because you're teaching them how you can get from A to B and then moving them toward the next project. I think strategy works really well in bouncing off of what you said, when you're making it tangible, value-based, and I want to say biteable, instead of looking at a massive strategy. Creating biteable strategies that accomplishes one goal and then moving on to the next goal could be an easier way to sell it.

Speaker 3:

Biteable strategies.

Speaker 2:

I literally just came up with that right now.

Speaker 3:

That's what happens. That's what happens when we're talking Just random things, excellent things, yeah, no. But biteable strategies, is you want? Even let's relate this to pricing, right, let's relate this pricing. And the reason why I think we're talking about this actually I know why we're talking about this is that strategy, all these things being intangible.

Speaker 3:

Price is tangible, like we are humans. Literally everything has a price tag on it. Even if it's free, everything has a price tag on it. We know what price means, like money, we we can viscerally like, we feel it, like we know it, it it's tangible to us, and so the moment that price comes up, it grounds us. Every time it just grounds us.

Speaker 3:

You solve my pain, you can solve my problem, you can really just totally speak to me, but the moment that price comes up, we want to compare. That's just what we do. We compare something versus something else, and so it's like being there's a difference between messaging the pain and messaging the problem, and messaging for attention versus the messaging around price. And so it's when we talk about strategy is hard to sell, and really getting to those biteable strategies and even getting more tangible and more real is it makes it easier to compare against price If we're able to have a conversation in a fit call or a discovery call that basically can get somebody to estimate their value of a project, for example, like if they can get to say I really want a scoped project to make me a hundred thousand dollars and I know this is really vague, but that is a tangible reason of value, right? A hundred thousand dollars, and now you can price accordingly to that number. Now you've been able to actually set aside a comparison apples to apples.

Speaker 2:

That is really smart. So when someone books my gateway offer, which is a strategic spark in that form that they fill out at the beginning of it, it asks them like what's their revenue now? What is their lead gen goal? Where do they want to be next year? Are they getting enough leads now? What is the true value of the strategy I'm giving them? How much money do they plan on making from it?

Speaker 3:

Yeah, you're either pricing the scope or you're scoping the price. In all honesty, I went on in the first conversation in episode 108, which is like the most simple sustainable business strategy is what? Right, your price is above your cost, but your value is above your price. So value is always greater than price. Price is always greater than cost. That's a sustainable formula, right? Being able to iterate on that that is really it, and being able to quantify your valuable value makes pricing much easier. Our ultimate goal is for the client themselves to be wow, that was a bargain in you, to feel unbelievably well compensated. Right, like that's what we want.

Speaker 2:

So what I'm hearing so far is that when you're deciding on price, you need the price to hit the sweet spot where they feel like this is a steal and you feel like you're well compensated, and they should. The client should be able to equate it to a certain value, so it's easy for them to understand why it costs what it costs and why it it should cost that much a pricing strategy is much more than just how much to charge, and we've been focusing in on the value should help inform us to know what to charge.

Speaker 3:

But there's much more to that right there in. From a pricing strategy perspective, there is like when do you reveal the price right? How do you use behavior, economics and psychology to anchor the price in a different way? How do you make sales, economics and psychology to anchor the price in a different way? How do you make sales objections more palatable? How do you actually position your service as it relates to price? How do you make every single sale from a financial lens profitable?

Speaker 2:

All right, let's pause there, because I want to deep dive on a few of those things that you talked about. So one when should you reveal it? Should you have your pricing on your website, or do you wait until after the discovery call?

Speaker 3:

I knew that question was going to come up. There are multiple answers to this and I don't want to be just that. It depends type of person I currently have.

Speaker 2:

It depends is coming.

Speaker 3:

That's because it's a strategy, right? So here's what I would say is, if pricing is also a filter, right. If you show somebody your price, it's on your website and they choose to book a call, they've already subconsciously equated some version of value. They know that there's possibly an affordability, right. So now the conversation changes where you're focusing in specifically on scoping what and so forth. So I would say, in a sense, that if you do have your prices on your website, you know what, when a good moment to do that is if you are jam-packed with clients right. You want to use pricing as a filter. Or if your strategy is to use pricing as a filter, right, Because your time is now of the essence, like you are now competing against your calendar.

Speaker 3:

But there are other times where I would suggest no, you don't actually reveal it. Because if you do want to have the value conversation and you're having a conversation with a $10 million organization and what they specifically want is for you to save them a million dollars, you can actually equate your price to that value and by showing it cost $2,000 to do your process, that's actually not hurt you from an anchor perspective. So I would say, is if you're focusing much more on the value-based process and you can more effectively wait and hold off to have the nice fit calls, the discovery calls. But if you are super productized, you have a growing sales pipeline and you're competing against time and you want to use that as a filter or you want to really structure it in a way in which is clear before they talk to you. Then you can put it on the website. It's perfectly fine. So there are. It depends in this answer.

Speaker 2:

Okay, so just to reiterate if you have a solid sales pipeline and productized offers, it makes sense to put it on your website so you can filter out anybody who wouldn't be a good fit anyway. And if you are doing value-based pricing and there's more nuance to your offers, especially like custom offers which a lot of service providers have, then it doesn't make sense to have it on your website.

Speaker 3:

That's correct.

Speaker 2:

Okay, now let's talk about anchor pricing. Can you describe what that is?

Speaker 3:

So anchor pricing is really the psychology of when you see some higher number, the less number seems just much more affordable or just seems so much more in reach. You can use anchor pricing in terms of making a high number look small. But there's also like another new aspect, that which is like the decoy effect. If you've ever heard of the decoy effect, the famous example is the popcorn. Like this is the jumbo size popcorn for 50 cents more, Right? And so what you're doing is just anchoring a high number against the low number. It is anchoring value against each other.

Speaker 3:

So it's like the small popcorn cost five bucks, the middle option costs 750 and the jumbo costs $8. And you look at that and say, wait, what? For only 50 cents more I get all that extra. And that's the decoy, right. And so you can move your pricing strategies to drive behavior, to let the individual pick what you want them to pick. Now here's the thing is, some people will say it's an ethical strategy. Some people will say it's not and in the grand scheme of things, like you are still driving behavior in everything that you do. As long as you can stand by every single value that you can create in all three of your services, that it's not just a true decoy, then it is an ethical strategy and I still would advise doing it in certain instances.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, okay, I hadn't heard it called that before. I have a training inside the tiny marketing club. I call it popcorn pricing.

Speaker 3:

There you go.

Speaker 2:

Where you're pricing strategically to get people into the offer that you actually want to sell.

Speaker 3:

Yes, yes, and the one that you actually want to sell is not just the one that you can probably deliver the most value, but it's also one they'll see the most value relatively speaking, because for you you might be amazing at your lowest offer and you can use a decoy effect to drive people to your lowest offer. You can use a decoy effect to drive somebody to your highest offer, and I know the term decoy is really hard to swallow. At times we can call it the popcorn, but in reality that's what it's doing. It's really just driving behavior towards the offer that you want, and that is a pricing strategy.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, and it becomes easier to forecast too when you use that, because you have a baseline that you can use for forecasting. If I get this money leads, this is how much money I'll make.

Speaker 3:

Totally true, no, absolutely true, and right and not. But the thing with that is, let's talk about this, which is decoy pricing is most effective, or this anchoring effect is much more effective when it's like you can see it optically, visually, right If you can see it on a website, or so forth.

Speaker 1:

And we see this all the time with like StatsBase.

Speaker 3:

Now, can it be in a call? Or I did this like a call even though we're having a live call, like this is can you do it? Yeah, of course you can. You can still anchor people. You first drive, you say 10,000 first and then you say 1, thousand land. That's a version of anchoring, but it's really effective when it's optic.

Speaker 2:

Okay, that makes a ton of sense. So we have decoy pricing, we have anchoring, we have equating your pricing to the value or, probably more likely, the goal that they have.

Speaker 3:

All right, here's another one too. The endowment effective means hey, we've put our blood, sweat and tears into these services, we know their value. Even though it's not tangible, we can feel it, we know it. It's hard to explain it, and so I think sometimes that endowment effect is a psychological bias or cognitive bias that actually harms the value conversation or harms the pricing objection conversation or harms, like, our own ability to value and price our service as well. So that's just another layer of pricing psychology.

Speaker 2:

How do you overcome that?

Speaker 3:

That is so hard.

Speaker 2:

No, that one's hard.

Speaker 3:

No, that honestly, in all honesty, that, like we have cognitive biases for a reason, right, these are the internal battles that we have and it does take sometimes coaching and conversations for us to actually see as my favorite line is, it's hard to read the label from inside the jar and sometimes even in pricing or strategy or value conversations, in order for us to actually get out of these cognitive biases or these pricing strategies, have somebody on the outside helping you read the label, right, because it's really hard to read the label from inside the jar.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, whenever I'm thinking through a new offer, I always schedule a bunch of connection calls with people who would be a good fit for it and I don't try and sell them on it, I just talk through the offer and ask them if they think the pricing should be on it so I can workshop what people are valuing that kind of offer at. And that has helped a lot. And it also leads to pre-selling an offer, because if they hear and they're like, yeah, I would pay this for it, okay, do you want to?

Speaker 3:

In the service game. Sometimes it's not even competition In the service game. Sometimes it's not even competition, it's really just being able to define your value against your price, and just being present and being known and being the person to talk to is part of just the game, and so pricing isn't only a numbers game, it is also a feeling game, and that's what we're trying to make clear.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, so that means that leaning into building your visibility and your authority around your specific offer and your messaging and proposition is extremely important, because once people start thinking about you as that person, then they're automatically going to see more value in what you do, that's absolutely correct.

Speaker 3:

There's ad hoc pricing, which is if you're like in boutique consulting, the scope always changes and so you need to have a framework to deal with kind of ad hoc and defend against scope creep. There is price optimization, which is you already have an existing offer and you want to make sure the pricing strategy is optimized to fit both your goals as well as the client's value.

Speaker 3:

And then there's what you just mentioned, which is price discovery, and that's like setting a brand new price for a new offer, even like a new business model and so forth. And while pricing from the start I've always said is exceptionally impactful because it has downstream implications, I think the first go about it is you can actually start with one type of pricing and then change. I think that there are five and I'm going to go down this path. It's like there's hourly pricing and we talk a lot of people talk about hourly pricing, especially if this is a service, particularly in the service business is if you are selling something that is repeatable or if it's a scoped offer, is that you're not just selling hourly but it's fine to start there.

Speaker 3:

Sometimes you don't have your your stuff dialed in. If it's only a new offer, then yeah, you can go actually right to value. I like that. That's number two right Is what's the value? Right that you can equ, start right out fixed. You can say, hey, the project costs this. But the problem with that is, I think fixed pricing really requires you to be really dialed in to your service delivery and fulfillment. And if you're doing a new offer, it's hard because you're still exploring, unless you're just it's just an add-on function, or it is something that you have done, but done differently, or it was a part of another offer. What are your thoughts of that?

Speaker 2:

Yeah, I'm thinking about me five years ago, how I priced my offers at the beginning. I started just timing how long it took me to do everything involved in that offer and then I equated an hourly rate. It was like at the very beginning I just divided my salary and then added something like 50% to cover the additional costs and overhead and things like that. So that's how I came up with my hourly price and I priced it a fixed amount, a project amount based off of that, Because I also really don't like the idea of telling someone how many hours it's going to take and this is what I'm charging per hour, Because then they start to think, why does it take you so long? Or they want to know what you're doing hour by hour. And it really causes a power imbalance when you charge hourly and you're displaying your pricing that way too.

Speaker 3:

The more clients that you have, the more solidifying you are. You're creating for that value-based pricing or that fixed based pricing, or even if it turns into a retainer. The other option is like performance-based that one's really hard. That's a really big risk. It could be super upside, but performance-based that one's really hard, that's a really big risk. It could be super upside, but performance-based ends up being like requires a lot of tracking and so forth. So I guess, ultimately, how I'm answering this question is the first time you price a new offer is not going to be the last way that you price that offer.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, I can testify to that, yeah exactly. That changed how I price a million times.

Speaker 3:

And that's fine as long as the like now. So, as you go into this. So now we're talking about a new offer, right Now we have a new offer, and where it sits matter, right, is it a gateway offer, is it a signature offer? Is it an upsell? And the reason I say that is if it's a gateway offer, you may strategically sell, undersell its value 10x, I want 10x the value, I want 20x the value. I'm intentionally making sure that is my pricing strategy. Your signature offer, you may say I still want them to feel that value-based. I want it to be 3x or 4x and so forth. So I guess also the question that we have to ask here is what type of offer is it? What type of service is it? Where does it fit in your profile?

Speaker 2:

That is to talk about, because, yes, gateway offers need to be high value, low cost to get people excited and hooked in on you, like you created something that is going to change my business and it only costs this much is it's a hook, so we can bring them into a larger offer. The signature offer and your signature offer needs to be priced at a point that will help you hit those annual revenue goals, because if you're not able to hit those, pay your bills, live the life that you want. What's the point? Why did you start a business?

Speaker 3:

Yeah, one of the things that we've talked about, you and I in the past on numerous occasions is I call it max revenue or business model. Yeah, one of the things that we've talked about you and I in the past on numerous occasions is I call it max revenue or business model max, and I think you've called it something similar, which is like really understanding what is the capacity that your business actually enables you, and this, if I have to say, it's the relationship between price, the time it takes for you to fulfill your offers let's call them your active offers.

Speaker 3:

Every business needs business development time. It's really like the direct revenue generation time. So if we could find the relationship between price, the time you invest in revenue generating activities and how long it actually takes for you to fulfill your services, you are going to find the max revenue or the max business model, based on what you actually offer.

Speaker 2:

Yes, that is exactly how my old coach taught me to do it. This is the revenue I want to make for the year. Now, how much time does it take me to execute that offer? How many can I realistically sell and then I'll know what the pricing is? But you also. It could be unrealistic, so you also have to compare that to what does the market say that they'll pay? Right, you might want to charge 10 000 for something that other people are charging 4 000 for yeah, you got to.

Speaker 3:

It's pricing is relative. It's a comparison game, so it's also relative, not just the value that you provide, but it's who you're providing it for, is it? A $10 million company. Is it a $100,000 company, friends?

Speaker 2:

Huge difference, just them. They have clients that are midsize and they're family-owned manufacturing companies. That's who they sell to. Their clients make somewhere between $15 million and $30 million a year. They're US located and the value proposition that they have what they do is they help their clients find the bottlenecks in their operations and streamline them through tech, sops and structure. The consultant, who is so low, has a goal of making $300,000 this year. So how would you guide them through deciding their pricing?

Speaker 3:

Is there a pricing model that is being typically used? So, for example, performance-based, value-based? Are they pricing hourly? What currently might be their structure?

Speaker 2:

Based on the consultants I've worked with. They started at hourly.

Speaker 3:

So we have an hourly rate, and so let me, I'm going to do public math real quick right here. This is scary.

Speaker 2:

Grab a calculator I feel.

Speaker 3:

So the thing is what we talked about. So let's just go back somewhere which is, even if you work like 40 hour weeks, and all that we can use 40 hour weeks is you still need time for biz dev and you still need time for admin. So we're talking about, if it were five and five, so 30 hours, that's I'll have to do the public math. Is that that $250 an hour at 50 weeks, $200 an hour? I wish I did public math better in that sense. So we're talking about $200 an hour at 30 hour weeks for, like, basically, 50 hour weeks or 50, 50 week years, all right, so this person would have to be doing $200 an hour. And so, if it's an operating consultant, so even if it was doing hourly, is one of the things that you had said in the manufacturing companies is that what they were doing was SOPs, they were doing automations and they were doing other operational aspects. So honestly, as I'm hearing this, let's go to value.

Speaker 3:

So now, so my first conversations would be around time, because my so if I hear operation consultant, I hear manufacturing. A manufacturing company at that scale is going to have multiple employees. So now what they're either going to do is they're going to create efficiencies, which is going to either A save them time, or, b it's going to create efficiencies to save them time and then to repurpose time, or it's going to allow them to save costs, probably on new hiring, employees and so forth, like that. So to me, in my brain right now, if we want to make this as tangible as possible, we really start focusing in on this time element. That's probably the value lever, and so now it's really getting clear on what the time framework is to talk to manufacturing companies about.

Speaker 3:

Now here's the thing If this ops consultant works with the same exact, identical manufacturing company every single time, this makes it a lot easier, right? If it's a $20 million manufacturing company that is four years old, that does this and this, now you can actually start to use your framework and have proof behind it that says, hey, I say 5%, and 5% means this, right. But if it's a manufacturing company between 15 and 30 million one's 50 years old, one's 10 years old, and now we have to use a little bit more of a higher level framework to start to understand and quantify time. So one of the first things that we now know that we basically need to price at $200 per hour or some version of a fixed price of that is to start to have the fit calls or the discovery calls based on time.

Speaker 3:

What is it that you want? We buy wants? What your manufacturing company actually want is that I want to save 10 hours a month. Right, I want to save 10 hours a week and it's really starting to hone in using the framework to get to that first value based conversation.

Speaker 2:

Yes, let's say that she has been doing it for a while and she's seen on average that she saves them about 10 hours a week in time 10 hours a week.

Speaker 3:

We're talking about 500, right, 500 hours a year for this manufacturing company. 500, right, 500 hours a year for this manufacturing company, sound right? So, look, I fixed my public math this time. Here's the thing. It's about 500 hours.

Speaker 3:

One of the things that we can do is, in our calls and our conversation, ask questions that are going to allow us to get to some version of dollar per hour. Maybe you could go at a super high level and just figure out how many employees are. And one of the things is you can make assumptions. Which is right 50 hours a week, 40 hours a week, how many employees? You can just get a sense as to what's the cost per hour. Right, you can just get a framework for it.

Speaker 3:

So you can start to understand that if it were basically like the value of this company and the hourly rate in some sense is a hundred dollars an hour, right, now we're talking about 50,000 worth of value, right? Isn't that what? 500 times a hundred is right, $50,000. So $50,000, we now have just a simple framework that we can begin to have the value conversation if they want to save that much. And so now we're talking about $50,000 worth of value. And again, not perfect, but we've now changed just this we're going to help you create inefficiencies and we're going to make things more efficient into something that is dollar value. It could be people value. You could be growing without having to add any additional staff time and so forth. Like that. This is like the first step of my conversation with somebody would be like help me understand what you really want and getting it to a monetary term.

Speaker 2:

Okay, so we have the value of the project at $50,000. And it takes her I think I said 15 hours to execute it. She needs to average $200 an hour in order to hit her revenue goals.

Speaker 3:

All right. So this is probably an instance like the way in which I had this conversation is it doesn't you can, you don't have to go to the hourly route. So we just said that if it's taking about 15, 15 hours for a $50,000 worth of savings, that's right. Now you're starting to get into really high ROI territory. Now you're starting to get into really high ROI territory. But here's the thing is, when we talk about pricing to value, is you want to deliver the value? Right, you want to deliver the difference between the 50,000 and the cost, or for them, the cost would be the price. So what is it? One of the things is like what is it that you actually want to deliver? And while you're somebody saying it's like well, you're a pricing tribe, just don't you tell me exactly how much you want to charge.

Speaker 3:

But if you go back, if you go back to a few things that we said, which is we're in the service game, a lot of this has to do with emotion, it has to do with psychology, it has to do with the feeling which is I want the client to be like, wow, this, they're a bargain. And you would be like I feel very well compensated. And so if you past experience says that you find that 10 X is that number, that you start to revolve around that to be 10 X? Another question, and I'm just going to go down this path. Another question is to actually ask the budget question. There's nothing wrong with asking the budget question.

Speaker 3:

Ask the budget question right how much do you want to invest in this? This is another anchoring process. If they're like $5,000, there you go. $5,000 at that point is now a 10x to gain, and $5,000 divided by 15 is actually $333 per hour. So you feel it's above your rate, but it's also in line with their budget. While I think hourly is fine, there are other ways and there are better ways to start to align your pricing strategy. What to charge with their perception of value, with their budget? Right, it's starting to make it a little bit more tangible.

Speaker 3:

Now, this is all high level you and I just created this scenario variables that we could have that are probably included in this right. But we can get to it if we start to quantify it, if we start to ask questions and we feel confident in what we deliver and we actually have some strategy walking into this conversation.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, After we went through those questions, you went in two different directions on possible ways to price. So you had the option of just asking what their budget is and seeing if it aligned with what would make sense for you. And then the other one is how much do you want to X their value? And then you can price it according to that. So you can you have something that you can compare it to.

Speaker 1:

Right.

Speaker 2:

And now my brain has rewired on pricing.

Speaker 3:

Everything's changing. Yeah, look, we're having pricing while we're talking about this. What to charge is a lot of times is part of the conversation. It does be behavioral economics as well, but there's a whole elements of pricing strategy around that, Like in the proposal, like this is a very simple call, but there's a lot price objections, right? What do you get when you have price objections and so forth? All right, To me, there's three price objections, because the messaging around pricing is very different from the messaging that we said is to talk about pain or the problem. I either don't have the money for this, I don't see the value, or I see the value. I just don't trust you. Those like, when it comes down to pricing objections when it comes down to pricing. Those are really the only three. And guess what? It's fine If the person doesn't. If you only have 6,000 in your bank account and you see something that costs 10,000, sometimes you're just limited in the amount of money that you have.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, he just can't fund it.

Speaker 3:

Value. I don't understand what you're trying to get to me. That's on you. You really just have to get really clear. And this is that, van. This is that value conversation. And then the third one like I see the value, like we just talked about the value in our really simple example right here, which is, if they want to price at $5,000 for $50,000 worth of returns, like they can see the value. That's a 10 X. The problem might be like I just don't trust you. Like meaning, meaning it's a credibility gap.

Speaker 3:

I think, that's on us too, and what we have to do there is we have to either do risk reduction, which is guarantees, but you can add guarantees. You can add. You can risk reduction for pricing in terms and methodology of payments. You can show a ton of social proof Like you can tell. You can ask for case studies. You can actually have them talk to past clients. But objections open the conversation. They don't necessarily close it.

Speaker 2:

No, I agree with you. Every single sales conversation it will have some kind of sales objection to it and as far as that trust, being patient, is incredibly valuable to you. It will make you so much more money Because when you're creating your content the right way and you're nurturing those leads that may have been like I'm going to think about it they will trust you from that. They will learn to trust you because you earned it through that content. I have found that the longer I've been a content creator and showing value, the more often sales conversations just become logistics conversations.

Speaker 3:

Yeah, I'll say this. It just made me think of something and I have to share it, which is we talked about the decoy effect but, like also in some of these sales conversations and some of these pricing conversations and some of these offer conversations, please give some options. Give options, because if you just give one option, the answer is either yes or no.

Speaker 3:

Yes, that's true, if you give multiple options, the answer is which one do I choose? So this is the whole optionality. This isn't the decoy effect. This is give options and you can give variations to them so that they can see value. Variations to them so that they can see value. And if, for some reason I'll say this to any other price objections is if somebody says it's too expensive or they want a price reduce or it's outside of their budget, which is perfectly fine you can always ask them what do you want me to take out? And you can also gracefully walk away.

Speaker 2:

Yes, I think that's something that our egos often don't allow. But de-scope you don't have to do absolutely everything or set up your project in milestones, so you're hitting one goal and that's a standalone project, and then they'll make some money and then you can hit the other one in another milestone. So there's lots of different ways you can move around pricing objections.

Speaker 3:

It's not just one instance. You're not just buying one thing. You will market around pricing objections. It's not just one instance, right. You're not just buying one thing. You will market as you fulfill. Because while we might be one thing to somebody who doesn't know us, once they get to know us we have more skills and there's economies of skills, right, Once you start to work with somebody, you have other skills. There's tangential skills, you have other skills, there's tangential skills. And instead of bringing in an expert for absolutely everything, you might have one, two or three really high valued skill sets and you can actually start to say oh, guess what? I could also help you with that tangentially. And by you already knowing their business and by you already having that skill set, you're actually saving them time and efficiencies as well and you can start to do those bundles and discounts on their time and on their pricing.

Speaker 2:

When you do a gateway offer, you're identifying the entire scope of what they'll need now, but also a year from now. But you can build out projects based off of that, knowing what you can upsell six months from now, based off of what you'll be able to accomplish today with them. And the other thing is creating offer ladders so you don't just have the one offer, you get them to one milestone and then you move them up to the next milestone and the next milestone. It's all within your skill set. You're not a generalist, but you have a natural progression and a place to move people as they move on to that next phase.

Speaker 3:

Yeah, the other thing, too, is what you've talked about a lot in terms of networking is like having also people around you that you can insert for some of their problems, and just you being in the business with the offer ladders is also knowing somebody and them already having worked with you, is also super valuable. Right, I know this is not necessarily pricing, but this is a value add that you can bring to any company is the network of people that you've worked with and partnered as well.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, it is still like increasing the value of that particular customer, and in a more scalable way, because someone else is doing the fulfillment. Can you tell everybody how they can find you and work with you?

Speaker 3:

Yeah, definitely. I am most active on LinkedIn, so you can come find me there. The other place you can go is to my personal website, peterjordan IIIcom, all spelled out and it will link to everything you need to know.

Speaker 2:

I hope you liked our conversation. If you've ever struggled with pricing your services or felt stuck between charging what you're worth and what your clients are willing to pay, peter just dropped a masterclass on how to create value-based pricing. My key takeaway is pricing is part psychology and part strategy, and when done right, it creates a win-win your clients feel like they're getting a bargain and you feel well compensated for your expertise. If you're ready to refine your pricing strategy, make sure to connect with Peter on LinkedIn or visit his website he just said it a second ago for more insights. And if you found value in this episode, be sure to like, subscribe, drop a comment and let me know what your biggest pricing takeaway was from this episode.

Speaker 1:

Thank you, you love all things tiny marketing. Head down to the show notes page and sign up for the wait list to join the tiny marketing club, where you get to work one-on-one with me with trainings, feedback and pop-up coaching that will help you scale your marketing as a B2B service business. So I'll see you over in the club.

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