How To Increase Your Prices Without Adding Content Or Bonuses

Hey, they, if you were feeling old bullish in December, 2020, about how you're going to increase your prices in 2021, now that the actual time to do it has here and you're feeling a little bit nervous. We just need a little bit more confidence. This episode is for you. Unfortunately for the most part in our online world, we sell nice to haves or the luxuries. We're not selling bread or milk or shelter. So as much as we would like to believe that we are, we're really not essential. So we have to take a step back and think about why people buy from us when we're pricing in its most basic form. Money is an exchange of value. Money will change hands. When the value that your customer believes they're going to receive is more than the value of the cash they're being asked for. And the greater that difference, the faster money is going to change hands. So we see this come into play a lot in value stacking, maybe early bird pricing in the online sales space, you know, pay X today, and you can get six X or 10 X of value through all these bonuses. Or if you buy now, you can say even more money, which then makes the value proposition look that much more exciting. And these are great tactics for selling they work, and it's why people are teaching them. However, if you don't have a bunch of stuff to value stack, creating a bunch of mediocre bonuses is not going to make you feel great. It's not going to make the customer feel great, and it's not going to be good for a long-term relationship. how do we get our customers to see our value in a different way? Let's do an exercise. Take a moment and think about your favorite client. What do they value you for? What is the results you get for them? Maybe you're a designer and you're an expert at listening to a non-designer talk about the gobbled mess in their head and producing the best infographic that they didn't even know they needed. Maybe you are a coach who is the only person your clients can be completely open and honest with. Maybe you write, copy that converts into sales. What is it that your clients value you for? At the heart of why they value? That is not only the service that you've given them. They value you in particular to provide that because they trust that you will consistently deliver that result for them. That all trust is being able to be consistently relied upon to do what you say you're going to do. If you want to raise your prices, you do not need to go and find some giant value stack. You do not have to create some scary early bird scarcity that isn't real. You don't have to fake the value. You need to increase your perceived value and to do that, you need to be more highly trusted to deliver on those results. Makes total sense. In theory, but how do you put on your to-do list for tomorrow? Go builds trust with clients. Now, there are two ways of doing this. One is quick. One is long. I'm gonna start with the long one because you need to be doing this regardless. And this is thinking really carefully about your customer journey. So if somebody has just met you and you pitch them a 15 K product and they know nothing about you, chances are the trust is not going to back up the value proposition. So what you want to do with your customers is invite them in and lead them on a journey that builds trust with them while making progressively bigger offers. This trust point and value point will be different for every single customer. Now I did a 2020 episode with DeSalvo Davis, all about customer journey, which has been one of my most popular. If you are stuck in how to gently take your customer from not knowing you to being your raving fan, go and listen to that episode. the offers that you make have to match the trust that you have earned. That trust can start with things like testimonials and social proof. It needs to continue through engagement through content, through smaller products. Maybe some people might need to buy every small thing before they buy the big thing. Some people may need to be on a call with you. You need to be thinking through all the time, how can I increase my perceived trust? Okay. And I continue to deliver on what I've said I was going to do for this customer. So you've made them some kind of promise when they gave you their email as a starting point. What is that promise and how do you consistently deliver and go over and above? What they're expecting to build trust. The second quickest way for you to earn trust with somebody is to borrow it from someone else. If someone is referred to you, you automatically get the same level of trust that they have in the person who referred them. So if somebody mentor who they trust implicitly says, Hey, this person is who you need to pay money to for this result. If they trust that person implicitly, they are going to trust you. Implicitly. The only thing you have to do is not destroy that trust on a sales conversation. You have to be able to back up what you've been through. Think about when you have bought anything for not necessarily in your business. Think about when you bought anything at home. If a friend who said this is the brand to go with, you probably stopped shopping at that point. And just look for that brand. It's the same thing in online business, Somebody else has said, I trust Diane to deliver this result. Automatic trust built for you. You've simply borrowed the trust level of somebody else. While you're thinking longer term about how can I build trust through a customer journey? Also be looking for those opportunities to borrow trust from people in your network, from past clients, from people who've worked with you, from peers in your industry, who know your abilities. What's interesting to me is online entrepreneurs get so up in their heads about pricing. In a corporate space where someone is paying you a salary nine times out of 10, people think I'm worth so much more than this. They're not all up in their heads about like, Oh, I wonder if I'm actually worth my salary, but we have somehow managed to equate what we offer with who we are. So what I want you to do to step back from that kind of examination of your value in the coming weeks is I want you to look at everything you bought, not the essentials, ignore the essentials, but I want you to think about anything that you bought. That's a, non-essential asked yourself why you bought it. What made you think that the price was a fair exchange of value? What made you choose it over other options? What were you looking for and why? And then I want you to come back and I want you to apply that same logic to your own business. Why would your customers buy from you? What makes your price the right price? What would make them choose it over alternative options in the marketplace?