“Whoa ho, that is expensive.” or “Wow! That is a great deal!”
Isn’t it funny how one person’s expensive is another person’s great investment or yet another person’s junk? One man’s trash is another man’s treasure as the saying goes.
I was thinking about this recently in my daily life, since it’s summertime in San Francisco and that means it’s time to consider a trip to the dry cleaners for my white blazers among other delicate items. Not that summertime matters too much. It’s always fall in San Francisco, except for the 10 days in October where it feels like being on the island of Kauai when it’s warm and sunny and for a few days each year I’m reminded of visits to my grandparent’s small house in the Wailuā Homesteads.
Anyway, I filled my IKEA blue bag with some jackets and blazers in need of a dry cleaning and walked to my favorite cleaning spot in the city on Market and Duboce. There is a lovely lady who works there, and we always end up talking about golf. She loves to play at Crystal Springs and says it’s a great course.
As I emptied my crinkly plastic bag on the counter, I placed each item before her as I would in a presentation at a meeting. Pink blazer from Zara, Navy Blazer from Vineyards Vines, and a brown suede coat from Bogner. Fancy!
As she perused my goods she smiled and said, “Oh, suede is expensive.”
“How much?” I asked.
“$45,” she replied.
I paused, considered the amount and decided that it’s okay to splurge once a year, and plus, it still carried the scent of mountain oysters from a country bar in Montana I spent time at, and $45 seemed a fair price to pay to be rid of this faint but pungent reminder.
After the decision was made, my thoughts carried on to how others make the same decisions, what is deemed a treasure (or trash) and why.
Although determining value is subjective, we can improve our chances of making our services or products more valuable to clients and potential clients.
As I have learned over the course of my career, if a client says they can’t afford it, they either:
- Don’t see the value that you are offering.
- Don’t have a clear picture of what you are bringing to the table,
- Or they sense they could go and find it somewhere else for less.
- A last possibility is that they are just cheap and chances are you dodged a bullet with a pain-in-the-neck client.
If you want your potential clients to say “WOW, sign me up!” without a thought of the cost, take a long look at your marketing and see if the value for the client is being shown, demonstrated and highlighted throughout.
And finally, may we all have nice clients who see our value and whom we can help!
–> Let’s connect and allow clients to see your value through branding. connect now.