E101: Get creative on your pricing for more profit with Blair Enns

We’re excited to announce that SEOMonitor has partnered with UGURUS as a sponsor of our show.

Unlimited WordPress tasks for digital agencies at a fixed monthly cost with UnlimitedWP, get 25% your first month with code “das2020” (sponsored).

Blair Enns is founder and CEO of Win Without Pitching, the sales training organization for creative professionals, and the author of two books: The Win Without Pitching Manifesto (published in 2010) and Pricing Creativity: A guide to Profit Beyond the Billable Hour.

Episode highlights:

• The reason for Blair taking on his second project that’s all about pricing.
• The art and science into pricing (value-based pricing).
• The first three rules to the pursuit of scale and the downfall of customizations.
• Common objections from clients being charged different prices.
• How high to go with pricing.
• Best advice ever received: If you’ve got a body in the trunk of the car, you should stop and fix the burned out headlight or don’t speak.
• Habit that contributes to success: Recharge; the idea that time off is not a reward for effort or good behavior time off is a requirement for success.
• Recommended book: Zero to One by Peter Thiel
• Recommended tool: EconTalk podcast

Links

• winwithoutpitching.com
• Pricing on Purpose by Ronald Baker
• Million Dollar Consulting by Alan Weiss
• @blairenns Twitter
• Blair Enns LinkedIn
• Zero to One by Peter Thiel
• EconTalk podcast

Quotes:

• “I realized I knew nothing about the subjects of pricing and value.”
• “He said I really wanna thank you for what you do. We made a lot of money from your advice over the year. And I said oh that’s great thank you, and they said no no no, we made A LOT of money.”
• “I had no qualms about pricing it in units of hundreds of dollars.”
• “There are ninety thousand pieces of information data points that go into the pricing of an airline seat…ninety thousand points. So it’s like heavy on science and the computation.”
• “You cannot decouple the subject of pricing from the subject of selling.”
• “I proved this in the book is wired to answer the question which of these is the best value so you change the question from is this worth X to which of these is the best value.”
• “I said, “I appreciate that you’ve reached out to me.” and I said this, “So, I want to make two points. Number one, I reserve the right to charge you whatever the hell I want. Your decision is whether you pay it or not. And number two, I pulled the invoices and one of the three of you bought a different product I packaged things up and the other three of you who think you paid three different prices, you all paid the same price, you just misremembered.”
• “You will create animosity if you proposed to be paid more than the value you propose to create or more than what they see as a fair share.”

Takeaways:

• You can create packages for the client without tying your agency to three specific packages for every client all the time.
• (1) Press the client, not the job or the service. (2) Always offer options. (3) Anchor High.
• Charge prices based on the value offering.