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Selling

When Customers Bitch About Your Price (Biz Book Friday)

Welcome to Biz Book Fridays! I’ve got a whopper of a biz book habit and I’ll read ‘em so you don’t have to. I bring the juiciest morsels straight to you.

Sooooo, you’ve got a product. You priced it. You’re marketing it. You’re making sales… or you’re trying to.

But you keep getting push-back on the price. Maybe people are writing in to tell you you’re “fuckin’ crazy.” (This has happened to me!) Or maybe people are telling you politely that your product costs too much. Maybe they’re begging for discounts.

That’s what today’s Biz Book Friday is all about.

Today’s source is very excellent (if dry) Pricing with Confidence. (Yup, the same book I used last time, about cake-and-icing pricing.)

Talk, Talk, Talk About Money…

How much of your time & marketing copy do you spend talking about price?

If all you talk about with customers is price, there is no price that is going to be low enough.

And it’s true, too. You know it, if you’ve ever gone to Target (or Amazon) to buy a toaster, a blender, a vacuum, or a digital camera… and found yourself comparing the individual products based a bunch of specs you never even knew about or cared about before.

Just because those specs were there, they became a data point. An important data point.

Price is like that. In our fear, we tend to think it is the data point. But, in fact, it’s simply a data point.

By making price front & center, we give it more power, and we lead customers to shop on price instead of a million other specs they could shop on: design, customer service, value, reliability, performance, enjoyment, clarity, time saved…

Takeaway: don’t fuel your customers’ tendency to obsess over the cost of your products. Encourage them to obsess over its value, instead.

Customers Can Smell Your Fear

Feeling totally wobbly over your price? You better get that fixed ASAP.

The best companies know they have to display a little arrogance about the value they offer in order to send an important signal to potential buyers. That signal is: We are confident in the value we provide and, therefore, the prices we charge.

Customers are like sharks: they can scent fear and weakness from miles away. And when they do, can you blame them for pushing on you for discounts and deals?

If lots of folks are asking you for discounts, this could be why. It may not be that your customers think your prices are too high. It may just be that they scent your blood in the water and can’t help themselves.

That’s just human nature, red in tooth and claw… and in pricing, too.

Takeaway: Confidence in your pricing is something that comes from within. Figure out why you’re feeling shaky, and remedy it. Then go and look for low-confidence signaling in your product, its copy, the way you talk to customers, etc., and root it out.

George Lakoff says “Change the Frame”

Remember the first bit from, oh, a minute ago? “If all you talk about is price…” — this here is the corollary.

When your salespeople get asked for a lower price, what is their response? We suggest it should be some variation of “What do you know about us and how confident are you that we can solve your business problem?” … How does the business pain impact the customer’s financial goals? How does it threaten relationships with their own customers? How does it limit the customer’s opportunities?

When customers start talking to you about price, your first and last reaction is to talk about price right back.

But this is wrong. More importantly, it’s ineffective.

The right way to respond to price concerns is to figure out if the customer: has the pain your product soothes or solves, has it in the degree that they are a good customer for you, has confidence that your product can soothe or solve it, etc.

If they are the right customer for you & your product, this line of questioning will get them thinking about just how valuable your product could be, instead of how much it costs.

If they are not the right customer, this will bring that to light… so you can ignore their opinions about price, since it’s not a good fit anyway.

Takeaway: Don’t get snared into a price conversation. Turn it into a value investigation, instead. Change the frame.

Subscribe for more Biz Book Fridays and gobs more product-makin’ & sellin’ advice, sans the sparkly unicorn farts and meatless aphorisms of other, lesser sites.

30x500 / Selling — No Comments
25
Oct 11

Why I Pass Up $1,450 – & Turn Away Prospective Students

Believe it or not, I turn away students for my 30×500 Product Launch Class all the time.

That sounds kinda crazy, doesn’t it? Here I have somebody trying to give me a fistful of hundreds, and what do I tell them? Oooh yeah, fork it over!? No. I tell them to keep it.

Why? It’s in my best interest — and theirs.

Case Study: Consumers are Death?

Today I got an email from somebody who’s interested in taking my class. He wrote:

Hi Amy!

Your 30×500 offer is really good. My web developer said it’s the best copywriting he has seen.

One thing that stood out for my case.:

(NOTE: It is not for you, however, if you are in love with & committed to serving a consumer audience, such as hobbyists, yoga teachers, musicians, etc! That way danger lies, and 30×500 is about skirting around the danger & ensuring your success!)

My blog [redacted] is about proactive health for concerts and travels. I will offer some guides and classes etc…

I understand that Musicians are a tricky target to go towards. (I will be going especially to all creatives involved in that world)

But to the point for you to exclude anyone who is thinking about taking your class!

Could you explain to me why?

Yep, as you guessed, I could.

Here’s what I wrote back:

Yep: Consumers Are Death

Here’s the reason: selling to consumers is the second best way to kill your business. The first best way is to never start your business to begin with.

Selling to consumers requires a zillion other skills that most people simply don’t have.

You cannot sell simply, based on value — e.g., “pay x and earn y!” — because consumers aren’t going to earn money from what you do. You cannot charge a lot, for the same reasons. And consumer support is worse — they are pickier, more demanding, and less professional.

On the other hand, if you can master cool, and sex, and fashion (or maybe manipulating fears & guilt), then you can sell to consumers easily. But…

The people who most reliably, comfortably, & happily pay are businesses. That could mean anybody from “a person who makes and sells custom jewelry” to “a freelance developer” to “a 5-person consulting firm.”

The point is, they have an upside. They are constantly thinking about money, and about earning more money, spending less, and having a smoother, more enjoyable time — 40 hours+ a week.

I’m not saying it’s impossible to sell to consumers — but it is a major strike against you from the outset. It’s like deliberately picking a bad hand when you play poker. Who would do that on purpose?

That’s why I don’t “allow” my students to do it: my job is to give them as many chances for success as possible.

I’d be remiss if I didn’t try to nip that in the bud.

Footnote: It’s Possible

Of course, many folks have made a great living selling to consumers.

But that can be like a selection bias. Obviously, if millions of people are trying, some will succeed. But most won’t. It’s far more fool-proof to sell to business.

When you sell to consumers, you have to be better at writing and design — because consumers hold more tightly to their hard-earned cash. It helps, too, if you’re especially talented at capturing the zeitgeist and spotting trends.

And in case you were tempted to say, “But APPLE…” — well, Apple is special. I wouldn’t bet on any plan that requires me to be Steve Jobs.

Do you love tough love? Do you wanna make a product you can sell easily to small biz? Welllll, you might enjoy my 30×500 Product Launch Class. Just don’t try to use it to sell to consumers!

Getting Started / Selling — 8 Comments
22
Sep 11

Niches Don’t Work – but Worldviews Do

Hi there! This is an excerpt from 30×500 Launch Class, a class designed to help you create & launch your very own paying product.

30x500 Freeview - Worldviews!.pdf (page 5 of 43).png

“Find a Niche”

When you get into business, you can’t swing a cat without being told you have to find a niche.

What the hey?

Well, niches are groups of people. Typically a niche defines a group of people by slots and numbers: middle-aged housewives, young men with disposable income and technical skills between the age of 18 and 35, white Republicans with an income of $70,000 to $100,000, new mothers, cat fanciers, Rails developers, web designers.

But take any group of new mothers, cat fanciers, young men, Rails developers, web designers, or white Republicans with a firmly middle-class income, and you’ll find they vary hugely when it comes to opinions.

And, let’s face it — external attributes don’t matter nearly as much as opinions do. There’s a reason the saying doesn’t go, “External attributes are like assholes: everybody has ‘em, and they all stink.”

Everybody’s obsessed with finding a niche when what they should be doing is expressing a worldview.

Overcome Inertia & Inspire Movement

The best way to use the Laws of Customer Physics [see below!] to your favor is to take a stand. This is more powerful — and easier to implement — than a massive advertising budget.

If you respect the awesome power of worldviews to direct attention and interest, you can use them to lure the Right People to be your customers:

If your plan is to be bland, to make your product middle-of- the-road so you don’t offend anyone (because you think your market is everyone), then everyone will ignore it equally. Your product will exert no gravitational force; extremely few customers will be moved.

If, on the other hand, you have a worldview (or taste) that drives your product, and you let it out, you’ll exert gravity. You’ll pull the Right People in, when they land on your site or pass by your store, and feel OH YEAH! THAT’S FOR ME!

You’ll also repel the Wrong People. Result: everybody’s happy!

This is positioning. It’s messaging. It’s branding. It’s purple cows, and differentiation, and customer segmentation. Those things are all important — but it’s the worldview, the tastes and beliefs, that drive them. If you try to do big, business-y sounding things before determining your worldview (and the worldview of your customers), you’re going to find yourself in deep doo-doo.

Your worldview, and the worldview of your product, have to get in at the ground floor, and make nice with the worldviews of your Audience.

This happy confluence of worldviews should influence everything, from feature choice to the way you write.

This is the way to make a name for yourself… and make sales. Everything else is just struggling against the tide.

Learn More… Free 39-page Guide to Worldviews!

Yup, I’m releasing two whole lessons from my always-sells-out 30×500 Product Launch Class for absolutely free. Yes, zilch, zippo, nada, nil.

(But wait! There’s more! — just kidding! Who do I look like, Ron Popeil?)

If you’re targeting developers, or even Ruby developers, or designers or even web designers who use WordPress, or freelance writers or even freelance writers in the business space… you’re making a mistake, because you’re working off the very ineffective concept of niches.

And you should definitely download my free guide to Worldviews, with a bonus introduction to the 3 Laws of Customer Physics. (Which cannot be denied & must be understood — unless you want your business to fall as fast as a feather OR a bowling ball in a vacuum)

For serious: check out this lesson. If it doesn’t rock your socks, you lose nothing!

But if it does rock your socks — and boy am I hearing a lot of great feedback! — then imagine what it would be like to have 3 full months of this kind of education delivered to your doorstep. Concise. Funny. Effective. Breathtakingly simple, once you read it. Actionable. Yup, that’s 30×500 in a nutshell.

But don’t take my word for it. Try it yourself. And read what some of my students have to say (below).

Case Study – Adam Brault of AndYet

Adam and his team at &Yet are about to launch a new product called &! (“and bang”), which is a remarkably fresh take on team communication.

Here’s what he has to say about 30×500:

So I’ve had dozens of people recommend, ″The Entrepreneurs Guide to Customer Development″ which is a short version of the longer book. And read it, enjoyed it, thought there was a lot of value in it.

But the thing to me that it did not give was the most important piece which is what 30 x 500 did, and that is the right place to start. And to me the right place to start is everything. It’s demonstrated by the class itself and it’s demonstrated by Amy’s success.

If you don’t start in the right place, you can pivot all you want, you’re not going to get there.

Thanks to 30×500, we’ve got our process and we can just keep working the process and keep improving. And that’s just totally awesome And the materials! Honestly, the materials are so great. Amy is such a good writer. And it’s so entertaining, and really to the point in a way that’s very effective.

I just can’t say enough. I’ve told a lot of people like they should take the class.

I would pay ten times the amount I originally paid for the value that I got out of the class.

Take Charge – Take 30×500!

You don’t have to be a wageslave forever. (Or run on the hamster wheel of freelancing forever, either.) You can learn a system that will help you create paying products, that make money from the outset, with the least amount of stress and wasted effort and the highest possible chance for success.

30×500 will help you immensely.

Drop your name & email in the box below to qualify for a special pre-launch discount of $250:

Funmail Guarantee: Obv there’s no obligation whatsoever. You can unsubscribe at any time. And I promise to send you nothing but free goodies and samples and discounts and awesome stuff like that!

Money / Selling / Slaying Unicorns / Thinking like a Slayer — 4 Comments
18
Oct 10

When Selling Turns You Evil

Does selling make you evil?

Am I evil? Wicked? Slightly naughty?

Well, am I? Some certainly would have you think so.

There’s a lot of people out there who think commerce is evil. The exchange of money for goods and services? Yep, evil. And inherently manipulative. That’s what they believe. It doesn’t matter whether there’s “undue profit-seeking,” or the rude exploitation of information asymmetry. It doesn’t matter whether the seller has some kind of power or edge over the buyer. It doesn’t matter if the seller is the tricksiest, slickest snake in the grass, or the world’s most honest downhome folky grandpa.

Commerce = EVIL. That’s what they believe.

Yep. Lots of people are doing the believing. And an awful lot of them are “in tech.”

Then you have me. I’m not only selling things (gasp!), but I’m selling things that teach other people how to sell things (double gasp!). I’m the meat puppet of mass consumerization! Me = double plus ungood evil. Right?

Anti-Cinderella Syndrome

Now, maybe you don’t think that Commerce = EVIL. Or at least, not so strongly that you’d admit it. You probably don’t think I’m evil, since here you are, reading my blog. (Unless, of course, you’re keeping your enemies closer. In which case, let’s snuggle!)

But I do have a question for you, because there’s something I like to think of as Anti-Cinderella Syndrome, and I see it all the time in otherwise smart, clever, intelligent, thoughtful, and creative people.

If you would be so kind, finish this sentence for me:

I think I could create some awesome products, or have created awesome product-like things already, but I’m afraid of setting a price and selling because…

A. I’m scared people will laugh at me, and/or hate me

B. I’m scared I’ll do it wrong, and screw up my business

C. I’m afraid that, as soon as money enters the equation, I will become obsessed with profit, damn the consequences! I will do all sorts of immoral things. I won’t be able to stop myself. I will lose my soul, doomed to become an evil marketer. The primrose path, you know! The primrose path!

If you felt more than a passing familiarity with Option C, then fret not: you sure as hell aren’t alone. And no, you wouldn’t become evil overnight. In fact, you are very moral. That’s the source of the whole quandry, isn’t it?

Because, in reality…

You Have Anti-Cinderella Syndrome

At some level, you believe that putting on a set of shiny glass slippers would transform you into a different, slicker, eviller person.

Or rather, you believe that that evil manipulation-ness is already hidden inside you, just waiting for the right set of glitzy huaraches to set it free.

There’s something about money — or specifically, profit — that makes you worry you’d turn all green and slimy.

Luckily, that fear? Not based on reality. And there’s an easy way to ensure that particular grim fairy tale never comes true.

Curing ACS

The cure for Anti-Cinderella Syndrome really is simple:

Do good. If you have Anti-Cinderella Syndrome, you’ve got strongly held ethics. Maybe you hold your ethics strongly because you’re concerned about them. But the point is, you have them. So stick to them. Create a product that reflects those morals — create immense value. Help people. Create something that leaves the world better than it was. It’s not that hard.
Make your mission bigger than selling your product. Take your good product, that leaves the world better than it was, and ask, “What’s the Bigger Thing? How does it help people?” That good result and make that your mission. If your fervent mission is to ensure that good result for everyone, including your potential customers, you will never have to worry that you’ll steer them wrong.

I Do Good, My Mission

I didn’t pull this out of my ass — it’s the philosophy I’ve developed while trying to run my own businesses in the most ethical way possible.

Here’s how I figured it out:

Do Good: My products do a lot of good — I help freelancers earn more, and make better decisions; I help people make their web apps faster, and learn new skills; and, last but not least, I help people like you create, launch and sell their own products.

The Bigger Thing: Foster (and encourage) healthier, happier, smarter indie biz.

Ergo, My Mission: Help people kick ass with their small businesses.

My mission is to help every indie biz I come in contact with. That makes it easy for me to navigate any dilemma: When a person has a problem, or wants to know if my products are really for them, I don’t have to worry about whether I want their money or not. I give them the answer that will help their small biz the most. Even if that’s a “No, this doesn’t make sense, please take your $700 elsewhere.” Or even if it’s “You know, your needs are really more suited for our competitor.”

It’s crystal fucking clear.

There, dilemma solved.

The Bottom Cinderell-y Line

If you create a product that’s good news, people will be glad to hear about it. Your audience will love to find out about it, buy it, use it. (Except for a tiny portion of haters, who don’t buy anyway.)

And if your mission is larger than “move product,” then you’ll have a nice and easy ethical guideline to follow. You won’t have to wonder, you’ll sleep like a baby, and again, your customers will be happy.

Also, little woodland creatures will be your friend.

The end.

Want to learn how to create and sell products in a happy, woodland-creature-loving, ethical way? Dream about quitting freelancing for the green fields of product-hood? My 30×500 Launch Class is filling up, so be sure to check it out!