March 27, 2017
Leveraging your intangibles
If you’re getting push back from prospects about your fees, it means that your prices are getting close to (or perhaps exceeding) their perceived value of your assistance.
To increase your fees beyond this point and still expect to close new business, you have to increase the perception of value in your prospects’ minds.
One way to do this is to anchor you fee against a bottom-line financial improvement.
For example, let’s say you’re proposing a $10,000 project. You could anchor the price against the savings like so:
“You can expect to save $100,000 per year once this project is completed.”
...or you could anchor against a projected revenue increase, like so:
“If your sales go up even 1% based on these changes, you’ll make an additional $100,000 in the first year alone”
Either of these scenarios would make your price a no-brainer for the client.
But some kinds of work can not easily be tied directly to bottom-line financial improvements.
This is where intangible benefits come in.
Intangibles are by definition are pretty fuzzy. They are things like:
- Decreased risk
- Improved morale
- Better reputation
- More trust
- Peace of mind
- Pride of ownership
- etc
These sorts of things are valued very differently by different people and in different contexts.
Not everyone will be in a position to value the intangible benefits that you provide.
But certain people in certain situations will value these things VERY HIGHLY.
So ask yourself:
What sorts of intangible benefits are your clients already receiving from working with you?
How might you attract clients who value your intangible benefits most highly?
IF you can identify and articulate the intangible benefits you provide...
AND you can attract clients who value these intangibles highly...
THEN you can increase your fees significantly without adding any cost to your side of the equation.
In other words, you can deliver more value to your clients with the same level of effort, which allows you to raise your prices without increasing your costs.
More profit for you, and probably more profit for your clients.
Hit reply and let me know what intangible benefits you provide... I’d love to hear what you come up with :)
Yours,
—J