– by Trevor James

A friend of mine, on a forum elsewhere, is beginning to do marketing to offline businesses, to help them get websites, set up email lists, and such things; and she asked for suggestions about pricing and collecting money.

PRICING TO SOUND SMALL WITH THE RED-HERRING METHOD

One fellow on the forum had a good idea for presenting prices. In this case he was talking about the service of creating videos, and he suggested that she present her pricing like this –

“Make a couple of sample videos to show prospects, and when someone asks, if you can do that for them, the answer should be Yes, for  just $295 for 1, $595 for 3, $2995 for 20″, and collect the first payment.”

He called this pricing structure the “Red Herring” approach. He means that the $2995 quote for 20 videos is not going to appeal to many, but it throws them off the track, and makes the $295 and $595 sound really, really reasonable.

W.C. FIELDS SAID IT BEST — GET THE CASH

My one suggestion is to collect money before doing jobs rather than later. Maybe not always, and maybe not later, but now yes.

At several times over the years, I’ve had various ideas and I didn’t know if the customers would go for them.  I worried whether it would work. For example …

• Will customers give me their social security number? (To run credit reports when providing them with a service, to see if we could extend credit.)
  …
• Will people give me a credit-card over the phone? (This was many, many years ago, when credit-cards were new.)
  …
• Will customers pay me in advance thousand(s) of dollars when we build them an instrument?

When I pondered about these things, I could easily imagine troubles, but it was clear that I didn’t know the answer. And for darn sure I don’t want to choose the answer that would hurt me without testing it. Better to let the Universe tell me the answer.

And it’s easy to find out …

HOW TO FIND OUT? TRY IT.

And so, in my phone conversations with customers, I simply asked for these things. No stuff about it, no apology, no explanation why it was necessary.

Just ask like filling out a form. Their name, their address, contact phone, model or service desired, their social security number, their credit card, etc.

THE RESULTS OF THESE EXPERIMENTS?

Generally, pretty much whatever you ask for, assuming you don’t dramatize the situation, will be what people accept as normal procedure.

So, I’ve noticed that when you’re broke, I don’t know why, but for some reason it’s real easy, in “trying to be fair”, that you defer income. Why? I don’t know.

But don’t.

People will be *happy* to give you money.

RECESSION? WHAT RECESSION?

All this recession talk is often over-rated.

It doesn’t necessarily have to apply to *you*, unless you create it for yourself. Sure, a person can have bad luck now and then. There *is* randomity in this universe and on this planet. But that can also happen in the best of times.

With best planning, you can shift the odds in your favor, but now and then you have to weather tribulation. All part of the deal.

Whatever altitude you assume, people will accept you that way.

Go get ‘em.

WHO IS IN CHARGE?

In every human interaction and every conversation, usually one person is in charge. Or a better way, usually one person is “steering” the conversation. (This is generally done with questions.)

Sometimes in a conversation, the “in charge” will flip back and forth.

But in your sales process, who is the best person to be steering the conversation? Is it you, who knows the product or service? Or should the customer who knows pretty much nothing about it?

Generally, if you simply answer the questions asked by your prospect, it is as if you are in a wheelbarrow, and they are wheeling you all around the pasture, asking about this and about that and about that thing over there.

Now, while it is certainly good to answer prospects questions, it is also very good to have some shape and form to the conversation, and to make sure that the *important* points are covered, instead of just covering random points with no form nor shape.

So, you ask questions to steer the conversation, and you tell what’s needed, and you ask for the sale.

They will thank you for being in charge.

With sales.