Having been on the other side of the fence for many years, I was recently in the new position of having to speak to a sales rep regarding some potential advertising for a client. And, I have to say, it’s been an eye opening experience.
Firstly, this was a medium new to me so I didn’t know what to expect from the pricing. We had no idea if the money left in our budget was far too much or far too little. So, instead, what I asked for was some indicative pricing. Instead, I received a request for a meeting. That’s pretty fair, I reasoned. After all, I was seeking information so a meeting might be helpful to see first-hand what our options were and how much it might cost. Instead, I was shown all the options but was told a quote would be drawn up once I’d specified what I wanted.
So, we went to town on a wish list and put together a list of everything we’d like to do. We worked on the basis that we’d get the pricing done then look at how it compared to the money we had in the kitty. You won’t be at all surprised to learn that the final pricing, when we received it, was a complete shock! Far more than we had anticipated.
But what interested me when we received the quote was that the document didn’t just contain the price. It also contained the discount as a percentage – stated very clearly, up front. I duly took the quote to my client and we discussed it. At this stage we haven’t made a final decision on whether to proceed and I communicated this to the sales rep on the phone this afternoon.
What I found interesting was the reaction to my feedback that we were surprised at the price. I was told how great a discount we had been given. I was told that this was a really good price. I was told that this level of pricing was normally reserved for long-term clients.
And that’s when this phrase came out of my mouth: “It’s not the price. It’s the value”. And that’s exactly our sticking point. If we’d seen value in the offering, we would have done everything in our power to find the money in the budget.
If you take this story and substitute me for the homeowner who has never renovated before and has no idea what to expect, and substitute the sales rep for a kitchen or bathroom designer keen to close a sale it’s not hard to see how some sectors in our industry end up with such a bad reputation.
There will always be Dodgy Discount Dan (DDD) down the road who is willing to “beat your quote by 10%”. And we all lose when we play the price wars game. Where DDD can’t compete is on value. If you “sell” the value of your work, the value of your design, the value of your workmanship, the value of the end result, the value in the client’s new lifestyle, poor DDD is up the proverbial creek without a paddle – where he should be!
