Optimising For Customer Delight And The Peak-End Rule

Jody and Jim (not their real names) run a small web design studio. Their initial pricing strategy was to keep base prices low, putting time caps on every deliverable during the website design and build. New clients were informed about this policy up front. Things like design time and content population were included in the…

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Too Cheap To Be Good

When a friend was shopping around for a logo designer she got several recommendations and then asked for quotes. The range was extraordinary, but no more extraordinary than her reaction. The companies that quoted below what she felt was reasonable were immediately discounted and they lost her business. They were just too cheap to be…

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Value And The Macaron Effect

Let’s face it, a macaron isn’t even a bite. It’s gone before you know it and although your brain knows you’ve had one, your stomach could beg to differ. Macarons have been around for centuries, but I don’t remember seeing the dainty, coloured, every flavoured, sandwiched confections that are ubiquitous now, even a few years…

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The Death Of Retail. The Symptom Is Not The Problem

Georgina owns and operates a speciality gluten free food store in Brisbane and like many retailers she’s experiencing a problem. Increasingly people are coming to browse but not to buy. The perception is that if I can get it cheaper or faster online why would I make the trip to your store? So Georgina has…

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10 Questions To Help You With Your Pricing Strategy

When my family and I were in Venice recently we decided to take a seat in a tiny Cafe in St Marks Square and ordered four hot drinks (anyone who has holidayed in Italy knows what’s coming next!). There was nothing remarkable about the coffee but we walked out half an hour later having paid…

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Confusing Price With Value

There’s a company here in Perth charging $70 an hour to weed gardens. Just weeding, and perhaps a light trim of garden shrubs. Nothing more. They don’t mow lawns (there are already thousands of guys doing that). They do the job that nobody else wants to take on. The job that plenty of time poor…

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Why The Price Doesn’t Always Matter

At the start of the last school year as I stood in a queue I overheard a mother asking an assistant if the $200 calculator she was holding would be coming down in price. The assistant replied that this had been the price for a while, pointing out that the calculator was only required for…

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How To Attract More Of The Right Customers

How can you attract more of the customers you want to work with? Easy. Tell people who you want to work with. Tell them with your pricing and your website copy. Talk about your values. Frame your scarcity. Don’t be afraid to spell it out. When Tiffany & Co (who position themselves as the world’s…

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What Is An Idea Worth?

“A single idea, the sudden flash of a thought, may be worth a million dollars.” Robert Collier If you’re here and reading this article you probably make your living, (or want to) by selling your art. You market your creative genius and your ideas. So what do you think one of your ideas is worth?…

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