All your customers are price shoppers
Yep. All of them. All they want is the cheapest price.
It’s true!
Except there’s a catch and it’s the same thing that’s an opportunity for you, the business owner.
While everyone wants the cheapest price, it’s only one of potentially a number of considerations when making a purchase.
The problem is, most business owners do a crappy job of offering any other alternatives to a price-based decision and so, when we look at the evidence, we see confirmation of our belief that “all customers are price focused”.
I could go ahead and quote other authors, studies, surveys and so on that prove this point (and I’ve done that plenty of times in the past) but one of the best ways to demonstrate is to look at some clients and their ‘real world’ feedback.
I frequently hear comments from tradies in business via our Facebook group, our Trade Desk members or my own Tradie Wingman clients like:
“Waz I can’t believe it! I quoted the job at our price and the prospects didn’t even bat an eyelid! They just wanted to use us.”
“It was funny. When I asked them if they’d had other quotes they said they had. My heart sank but then the client went on to tell me that despite the ‘other guy’ being cheaper they were going ahead with us because we were so professional!”
I could go on but I think you see the point here. So what are the other factors that people consider when choosing a trade service?
Here’s some of the main ones (feel free to let me know of any I’ve missed)…
· Professionalism
· Thoroughness
· The customer engagement process
· The quality of marketing materials sent
· Friendliness of business owners and/or staff
· Reputation
· Personal recommendation
· Online reviews
· Speed of responses (by the business)
· Feeling that the business cared
· Asking questions that nobody else did
· And more…!
Take a look at your own ‘sales process’ and customer communication and do a quick check. Do you build any of the non-price factors into the way you engage and educate your prospects? Are you demonstrating value to your potential customers from the first communication?
Or are you, like so many, simply rushing to prepare a quote, email it off and then hope for the best?
Whichever end of the spectrum you’re at there’s almost always opportunity to demonstrate more value, improve your process and shift the focus away from price and to also include the other, very important factors that come into play when people make a decision who’ll be their next tradie in business.
Waz
