Before a price is shown, the page states the accepted work and how the cost is determined.
What you'll learn in this chapter: How should prices appear on your website? Before a list of amounts, show what moves the price, and your order-acceptance conditions. Check competitors for 15 minutes a month.
The next three chapters deal with the stage at which clients compare and decide. This chapter covers the order of price and conditions; Chapter 10, guidance toward the next step; and Chapter 11, the order-acceptance conditions themselves.
Because this chapter covers many topics, here is the flow up front: (1) why conditions come before price; (2) three things to place before price; (3) peak-month multipliers and how to handle price; (4) four reasons consideration stalls; (5) research on narrowing down candidates; and (6) how to look at competitors, and the competitor called "doing nothing."
When you're chased by an ambitious goal, it's tempting to fall back on the "usual approach" of cutting prices. This chapter offers ways to avoid falling back. In digital marketing terms, it covers how to present prices and how to look at competitors (competitive analysis).
Scene: What Price Cuts Failed to Leave Behind
At one company, day after day, they kept losing competitive bids. The president decided: "From now on, we'll cut prices by 10 percent."
For a while, orders increased. But what increased were requests that were all about "as cheap as possible." The specifications weren't settled. The jobs were rushed and full of changes. Only the work on the ground increased, and no profit remained.
Meanwhile, the clients they had worked with for years hardly ever talked about price. What their contacts cared about was whether the company would help them work out specifications.
Perhaps there was something they should have put forward before cutting prices.
Before price, show the conditions: what kind of work you accept.
Price is easy to compare, so it inevitably comes to the fore. But when you're compared on price alone without the specifications being known, poorly matched requests increase and your work gradually drifts toward the cheaper end. Conversely, if prospects can read first what kind of work you accept, inquiries that come only to compare prices should gradually decrease. Of course, the same results can't be promised. Even so, it is well worth trying, both for companies worn out by price competition and for clients searching for a supplier that fits their conditions.
A Common Pattern: Work Drifts Away Through Competitive Bids
With every competitive bid, work drifts to a slightly cheaper competitor. It's a common story. When that happens, the top executive should look for requests from clients who value help with sudden replacements and specification questions more than price negotiation. Put that one point—"they come to us precisely because it's us"—at the front of your website.
Three Things to Place Before Price
The Entrance line: "We accept work from clients who can share the project's specifications." "The atmosphere is good," "We're in a hurry," and "Our previous supplier did it" are no substitute for specifications.
The cost page: Instead of listing amounts, write what moves the price (specification deviations, changes in materials, timing of delivery, and so on) and the point beyond which a quote is required.
The drawbacks page: This is not a page for putting your company down. It is a page that states up front the problems that can occur and what you will do when they do. In other words, disclosing risks in advance.
Measures other than price don't get through as abstract claims either. Not "We respond quickly," but "We hand over a replacement Sheet the same day." When you write down numbers, times, and who does what, the very ground on which you're compared begins to change.
Peak-Month Multipliers and How to Handle Price
2x peak month: Simply placing price further back is enough.
3x peak month: Don't accept requests that lack specifications.
AQ GROW | AI Search Structure