Why Most Businesses Get Pricing Wrong — Jenny Millar

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[SPEAKER_01]: The prospect of loss actually is twice as powerful in shaping our decisions as the potential for game.

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[SPEAKER_01]: So when it comes to pricing that plays out as a fear of losing customers, often holding companies back from making price arises that would give them real financial benefit.

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[SPEAKER_00]: Plug into the mind of the world's cutting edge innovators, visionaries, and thought leaders, who are rewriting the rules of sales and success.

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[SPEAKER_00]: It's your time to make an impact.

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[SPEAKER_00]: I am your host, Jason Mark Campbell, and this is The Selling With Love podcast.

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[SPEAKER_00]: welcome back everybody to the selling with love podcast and i'm very excited by this conversation because the universe works in mysterious ways i always find myself when i find a challenge that is approaching within the businesses i'm working with or the challenges i'm facing in my own business there always seems to be the right person that comes across my path that is the world's best expert on the subject

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[SPEAKER_00]: And as Black Friday is coming around, a lot of planning for 2027 is in place, we're talking a lot around pricing strategies, how to price the events, how to price the products, the services.

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[SPEAKER_00]: And it just so happens that I have the world leading expert on pricing.

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[SPEAKER_00]: That's going to be joining us today.

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[SPEAKER_00]: Now, this is going to be a relevant conversation regardless of the size of organization you have.

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[SPEAKER_00]: If you're working inside a large organization, a lot of the data points that are going to come from a conversation is somebody to have a vast experience working with a large organization.

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[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, the woman spent 10 years at eBay leading pricing initiatives across 11-year-old kid markets.

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[SPEAKER_00]: And if you're in a smaller consultancy or you're in a business that's in the part of scale up, she has worked with so many entrepreneurial firms and then helped them crack the code when it comes to pricing.

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[SPEAKER_00]: And the one and only Jenny Miller is the one joining me today.

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[SPEAKER_00]: She is a pricing expert and a founder of Untapped Pricing, which is a consultancy, trusted by leadership chains and investors worldwide to help people figure out how to work pricing and why it is the single biggest and fastest lever you can play with to accelerate your growth.

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[SPEAKER_00]: She has recently published the pricing sprint as a co-author, and we're going to put some links to that book for those who want to go deeper into the subject, because this book endorsed by Roy Sutherland of Ogilvie and Francis Fay of Harvard is an entire core principles on how to position your pricing, which also takes into consideration the human aspect.

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[SPEAKER_00]: By no coincidence, we want her on our show for selling with love.

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[SPEAKER_00]: It is my honor to have Jenny

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[SPEAKER_01]: thank you so much.

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[SPEAKER_00]: What an honor.

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[SPEAKER_00]: And again, what I said in the beginning is we're in this pricing decision making framework.

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[SPEAKER_00]: This is a ritual we have to do as an organization.

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[SPEAKER_00]: And it's something that, you know, we do marketing meetings, we do sales meeting, but pricing is kind of a byproduct of that.

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[SPEAKER_00]: It's never been a focus area.

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[SPEAKER_00]: What have you noticed when companies are not

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[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, great question.

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[SPEAKER_01]: I think it's fascinating how pricing is actually one of the fastest ways to change the economics of any business, but it's one of the least understood it's often overlooked on the collected and it's also one of the most emotionally charged decisions that a company has to make I find.

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[SPEAKER_00]: What do you see happen?

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[SPEAKER_00]: Typically, because I assume in large organizations, they've got that kind of figured out.

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[SPEAKER_00]: But I have a feeling you have a few stories walking into large organizations and realizing they're just as emotional as the small entrepreneur who might have price rising reluctance.

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[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, I find that company size is not a good indicator of maturity around pricing.

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[SPEAKER_01]: And we see the same issues again and again.

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[SPEAKER_01]: So discounting has got out of control or pricing has become too complex for anyone to actually understand inside or outside of the company.

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[SPEAKER_01]: a lot of fear around what will happen if prices change and no real understanding or evidence around what actually drives value and willingness to pay.

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[SPEAKER_01]: So if there are human beings on both sides of every price, right?

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[SPEAKER_01]: So you've got the individual or the teen setting prices, you've got the

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[SPEAKER_01]: and then that exchange of value happens at the intersection of those two worlds but they're both imperfect human beings making imperfect decisions and responding to their their unique pressures around them.

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[SPEAKER_01]: So that's what got me so interested in this psychology of pricing and I think it's often looked at as a very numerous or logical field but I actually think it's the opposite.

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[SPEAKER_00]: Tell me more on that because for me when I think of pricing, it's like, okay, you get spreadsheets.

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[SPEAKER_00]: You're trying to figure things out on like, okay, what's the, I guess the maximum I can charge without pushing people away.

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[SPEAKER_00]: So what are we not seeing about pricing right now?

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[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, so maybe if we take both sides of the equation, so the human beings within an organization trying to set a managed price is first.

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[SPEAKER_01]: So every pound or dollar or yen that flows into a company is the result of a pricing decision.

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[SPEAKER_01]: So explicitly or implicitly someone somewhere has decided what price, how to discount it, how to package it, how to present it, and there are typically three things that hold companies back from effective pricing.

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[SPEAKER_01]: The first is loss of version.

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[SPEAKER_01]: So in the 70s, psychologists,

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[SPEAKER_01]: the prospect of loss actually is twice as powerful in shaping our decisions as the potential for game.

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[SPEAKER_01]: So when it comes to pricing that plays out as a fear of losing customers, often holding companies back from making price rises that would give them real financial benefit.

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[SPEAKER_01]: And I meet companies all the time that haven't changed their prices in years as a result.

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[SPEAKER_01]: And then that's further compounded by status quo bias.

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[SPEAKER_01]: We default to the current state as change feels risky.

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[SPEAKER_01]: So that might be current prices or incurring on to competitors, prices or previous decisions.

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[SPEAKER_01]: And those anchors can be pretty strong even if the market conditions change.

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[SPEAKER_01]: and then finally, organisational incentives.

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[SPEAKER_01]: So I'm sure your listeners have seen it play out where different parts of a company have different motivations or incentives.

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[SPEAKER_01]: So perhaps the sales team are there to focus on blending deals.

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[SPEAKER_01]: Finance team is focused on profitability and the product team are focused on conversion.

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[SPEAKER_01]: And so when it comes to pricing, these forces are pulling in different directions, which can mean that pricing is quite inconsistent or there's just an impasse when you try to change anything.

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[SPEAKER_01]: So I think those three factors, the loss of versions, status quo bias and organisational incentives are usually what's hampering or diluting price changes on the

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[SPEAKER_01]: And the longer they play out, the longer you'll be leaving money on the table.

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[SPEAKER_00]: I want to bring the fact that as we're having this conversation, there's almost like a thesis that I feel like you're bringing forward, which is if you raise prices, everything will be better.

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[SPEAKER_00]: Is a recommendation of blank, like let's just raise all prices by 10% and the world will be better.

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[SPEAKER_01]: I think my job would be a lot easier or wouldn't exist if that was the case, right?

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[SPEAKER_01]: So no, I think blanket price prices are really the best path forward.

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[SPEAKER_01]: So what you are willing to pay might be totally different to what I'm willing to pay.

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[SPEAKER_01]: Even what I'm willing to pay might differ by which date is or what mindset that I'm in.

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[SPEAKER_01]: Again, organisation needs to get a grasp of what drives that difference in perceived value and how does that differ by type of customer or by geography or by product and only then can you truly respond to where there might be headroom on price and where there isn't headroom on price and actually price might you might be at the ceiling or beyond that ceiling so you're hampering demand.

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[SPEAKER_01]: And need to think about reworking the product or service to make a more affordable alternative that works for you and for the customer without squeezing your margins or kind of delivering something that isn't ultimately as viable for you.

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[SPEAKER_00]: You mentioned really early that one of the things that is out of control with pricing is that discounting is kind of rampant when it comes to pricing and look I've seen this happen that when you're in a kind of a revenue slump the first lever you want to pull on is let's just offer some discounts on our products and see if we can move the volume a little higher.

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[SPEAKER_00]: And be curious to know what is that happens when a company perhaps leans too heavily on that lever if there's some hidden cost that they might know be aware of and that really ties into pricing.

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[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, absolutely.

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[SPEAKER_01]: So I think many teams that have become overly reliant on discounting.

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[SPEAKER_01]: So to close a sale, to meet their financial targets in the short term, but that can lead to a couple of things.

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[SPEAKER_01]: So firstly, I must training your customers to expect those discounts.

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[SPEAKER_01]: So we're working with a retailer at the moment that has had four days off doing discounts in the last four years.

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[SPEAKER_01]: So almost training customers to only buy when there is a discount.

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[SPEAKER_01]: I think that also primes them.

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[SPEAKER_01]: to make more of a price-led decision, and perhaps oversee some of the other benefits of your brands and your product or service that you're trying to promote.

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[SPEAKER_01]: So for example, in the phrase is, ru-shoringly expensive and worryingly cheap.

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[SPEAKER_01]: So there's got to be your brands and everything that the customer sees around them needs to tell the same story, including the price.

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[SPEAKER_01]: So for a prestige brand or service that you're offering where you're claiming kind of that you have great expertise in this area, I think being too quick with the discount or too deep with a discount can really undermine the other messages that you're trying to get across.

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[SPEAKER_01]: And of course, discounting has a direct impact on your margin.

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[SPEAKER_01]: And so often, pricing strategies are set pre-discounting, but then the reality becomes a much lower margin business.

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[SPEAKER_01]: It can feel hard to back out of those discounting patterns.

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[SPEAKER_00]: I felt that before, I guess that's what you mean when you talk about how the whole pricing element is very emotional as well, right?

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[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.

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[SPEAKER_00]: So I'd be curious for somebody who's maybe looking at their pricing, maybe doubting if their pricing is like at the right level and, you know, particularly, I know working in perhaps services business where the result of what you deliver is very value-based, it's maybe less tangible, it doesn't have as much market competitors to anchor yourself

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[SPEAKER_00]: But there are some practical exercises to do or to think about when you're in the process of deciding, okay, what should I price this at?

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[SPEAKER_01]: great.

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[SPEAKER_01]: Okay, so I think firstly just being aware that value is value and therefore willingness to pay is highly subjective and can change depending on circumstances for the same buyer.

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[SPEAKER_01]: So let's take, if I ask you, how much is the point of bear worth the only answer is to whom?

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[SPEAKER_01]: So to the wine lovers out there, the answer might be nothing, to beer lovers.

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[SPEAKER_01]: The answer still depends on the context because you probably pay a hefty premium for a cold beer on a very hot day where there's only one beer outlet versus for the exact same beer from a supermarket on a Tuesday morning.

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[SPEAKER_01]: So it's highly subjective, it's very contextual.

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[SPEAKER_01]: and what's changed for your listeners who aren't doing this, I would highly recommend finding those opportunities to speak to your customers.

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[SPEAKER_01]: So your customers, your prospects and even just conversations with five customers can reveal 85% of the insight.

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[SPEAKER_01]: So we want to understand, like what alternatives did they consider, what was the role of price in their decision versus other factors, what business case did they need to make inside their own organisations to get this over the line and who influenced that decision.

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[SPEAKER_01]: So you're getting an understanding of who and how they perceive the value that you offer

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[SPEAKER_01]: We've worked with lots of clients where they've often been tied their prices to competitor prices.

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[SPEAKER_01]: And then we speak to their customers on their behalf and find out that their customers weren't looking at those competitors at all.

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[SPEAKER_01]: And so they've anchored their own pricing strategy to a completely arbitrary benchmark and almost given away the reigns of their pricing

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[SPEAKER_01]: and being very reactive to them.

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[SPEAKER_00]: Jenny, as you suggested to go and talk about pricing with past or like customers and potential prospects, I felt something come up in me in awkwardness or a shyness about having those types of conversations.

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[SPEAKER_00]: Is it something you deliberately would suggest to have like yourself as an organization or it sounds like some organization prefer to hire a third party for these conversations.

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[SPEAKER_00]: So I'm feeling like this is the emotional part kicking in.

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[SPEAKER_01]: Yes, and hey, as the Britain, the room here, I think many people and particularly many cultures are extremely uncomfortable talking about money.

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[SPEAKER_01]: And so of course these conversations can feel quite hard.

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[SPEAKER_01]: So yes, by all means use the third party that can be more objective than you can

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[SPEAKER_01]: but also I think it's about how you ask.

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[SPEAKER_01]: So I'll give you four fantastic questions that really can work in an interview setting, a chat with a customer or in survey work as well.

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[SPEAKER_01]: So it's lifted from what's called the Van Westendork price that's a divotimeter, but it's a very well-established

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[SPEAKER_01]: So, at what price would you consider this a bargain like really good value for money?

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[SPEAKER_01]: At what price would you consider this getting expensive?

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[SPEAKER_01]: But you'd still consider it at what price is it too expensive that you wouldn't consider it and at what price would you consider it so cheap you'd question the quality?

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[SPEAKER_01]: And so, what surfaces from those can be absolutely fascinating?

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[SPEAKER_01]: So for some, you might find that the range is quite tight from the same person answering the questions, or as you look across a group of customers or prospects, the range is quite tight, which probably gives you quite a clear direction on your room to play with price.

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[SPEAKER_01]: But in other instances, the answers might be all over the place, which could indicate a couple of things.

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[SPEAKER_01]: So, either you've got different audiences here that value things very differently, or you need to work harder at educating your audience on value.

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[SPEAKER_01]: They're not clear, so they don't know what to benchmark against and yeah, they're not sure what they would pay.

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[SPEAKER_01]: and a great follow-on question to those four four is, like, why did you say that?

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[SPEAKER_01]: And that's where you start to hear what they're comparing to, and it might flush out some of those totally arbitrary benchmarks that you can forget about now, or it might surface some very relevant and components in your customer's minds that you need to be aware of.

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[SPEAKER_00]: That's actually a really good idea.

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[SPEAKER_00]: I think I'm going to be looking at this exercise, particularly for people that have attended previous retreats and seeing, hey, like the answer to those four questions to help me decide, you know, what is it that they compared it to?

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[SPEAKER_00]: Because it could even be some alternatives that are not even in the industry, like I'll take care of.

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[SPEAKER_00]: A random example is someone who might be considering doing consulting work with me and selling, like helping with their sales skills, maybe they were considering this against going to buy a car.

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[SPEAKER_00]: And it's completely unrelated, but they were like, oh, you know, I was thinking about a personal expense versus a business investment.

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[SPEAKER_00]: And then you're like, oh, what?

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[SPEAKER_00]: They were not even comparing different sales trainers like that's.

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[SPEAKER_00]: That would be a weird insight for me, and something that would make me change my messaging a lot, which is not about like, I'm the best trainer you need to hire.

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[SPEAKER_00]: It'll be like, you can always make a future decision to purchase a car, but you can always make a decision to prove yourself so you can buy the better car you've always wanted.

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[SPEAKER_00]: And like, already there, I would have changed my messaging completely.

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[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, exactly that.

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[SPEAKER_01]: So you can then reflect back their language and what they're thinking about in your

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[SPEAKER_00]: It's so interesting, because I'm such an advocate to speaking to the customer directly, to get those kinds of insights, I've never felt comfortable enough to really, like there's a part of me that's like, I don't want to talk about pricing, like they made that decision, but what if I talk about them and it reveals something I don't want to hear, or I feel like there's, again, it's that discomfort with the money thing that comes up, it's so weird.

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[SPEAKER_01]: Yes.

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[SPEAKER_01]: So I think framing that conversation is also really key.

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[SPEAKER_01]: So how you approach someone and ask for their time to talk about these things.

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[SPEAKER_01]: So I definitely wouldn't recommend, hey can we jump on a call and talk about our pricing?

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[SPEAKER_01]: but you want to seek their advice and their feedback.

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[SPEAKER_01]: So who doesn't like to be asked for their opinion?

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[SPEAKER_01]: You're thinking about how to further develop your services for important clients like you and really like to spend half an hour, 60 minutes, just showing you a few things and getting your opinion.

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[SPEAKER_01]: And then I think it can also be very valuable bringing some materials into that conversation.

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[SPEAKER_01]: So people have something really tangible to react to.

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[SPEAKER_01]: So that could be how you're currently showing your retreat, that you're describing your retreat in your materials.

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[SPEAKER_01]: So whether that's a sample proposal, what the pricing page from that or the section on your website and just see if the language resonates with them.

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[SPEAKER_01]: And then another thing that is fantastic to we're starting to move to the other human beings now, right, on the on the receiving end of the price.

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[SPEAKER_01]: And as I think we're cooking together when any of us see a price.

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[SPEAKER_01]: We're not logically and objectively thinking, oh, is this worth it.

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[SPEAKER_01]: We are.

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[SPEAKER_01]: asking ourselves does this feel reasonable given everything I'm seeing around me?

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[SPEAKER_01]: And so there are some fascinating nudges that we can bring in from the world of behavioral science and apply to the presentation of pricing information and choices that can have just as much impact as the price points themselves.

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[SPEAKER_01]: And we found this time and time again with clients who are kind of selling to consumers and clients who are selling to business buyers at enterprise level all the way down.

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[SPEAKER_01]: So how often I think the pricing page of a proposal or the pricing page on a website are pretty awful design-wise.

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[SPEAKER_01]: We might have lots of options, we might have lots of add-ons,

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[SPEAKER_01]: and we've forgotten to help the customer to buy from us in that moment where they're seeing pricing.

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[SPEAKER_01]: We're always looking at the cognitive load of that price information.

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[SPEAKER_01]: So we know from behavioural science that if something is a bit too overwhelming to understand really quickly, then customers do one of two very predictable things.

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[SPEAKER_01]: They either default to the

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[SPEAKER_01]: and we don't want either of those things happening.

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[SPEAKER_01]: So if you're able to spend some time really thinking about the presentation of pricing, maybe it's moving from an itemized price list to really curated choices like a good better best, something that's much easier for the customer to navigate and you can sign post

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[SPEAKER_01]: Then that's something that you can bring into one of those research interviews.

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[SPEAKER_01]: So you can share, like, hey, this is where we're thinking of repackaging or sharing choices to future customers like you.

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[SPEAKER_01]: Like, can you give me your first impressions?

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[SPEAKER_01]: So you're looking for comprehension.

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[SPEAKER_01]: Do they understand the choices?

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[SPEAKER_01]: Do they understand the language you're using?

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[SPEAKER_01]: How would you describe that to a friend?

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[SPEAKER_01]: So you're really forcing them to show to you how they've understood it and how they would describe it in their own voice.

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[SPEAKER_01]: And then you can prefer which would be most appropriate for you.

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[SPEAKER_01]: Like what questions do you have?

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[SPEAKER_01]: What's missing here?

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[SPEAKER_01]: And then you can move into those four found Western door questions I mentioned.

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[SPEAKER_01]: So start honing in on the willingness to pay for their preferred choice that you've laid out.

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[SPEAKER_00]: Hmm, I know from the types of things we've sold, I actually, like, only until recently, we would have a hesitancy of putting the pricing on the website, because we'd actually want people to go through some sort of application process.

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[SPEAKER_00]: First, jump on call with sales, and I've seen that a lot in the B2B space to, like, more complicated solutions, is that still best practice, or is that something we should be challenging

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[SPEAKER_01]: I think it's a decision to be made very deliberately based on a specific organization.

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[SPEAKER_01]: So the reasons why you just articulated why you would put price behind closed doors because you want customers to make contact with you first, you want to understand their scenario, and you want to sort of shape the solution and shape the narrative that sits around it.

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[SPEAKER_01]: and that can be really powerful to pulling someone into the sales process, but also having more control over there and understanding of value, so always best to land on value before you're sharing any pricing.

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[SPEAKER_01]: So that would be the

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[SPEAKER_00]: reasons.

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[SPEAKER_01]: The primary reason for keeping it behind closed doors, I think for other businesses sharing some indication of price can serve as a qualifying mechanism.

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[SPEAKER_01]: So they only make contact having understood your bull part pricing or seen it on the website.

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[SPEAKER_01]: So if the phones are ringing so hot and you're getting a lot of inbound leads where they just can't afford your services.

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[SPEAKER_01]: and you don't want to change the service and introduce something that is lower cost then I think it could be advisable in that sort of instance.

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[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah I found ourselves we had a product as few thousands of dollars but we've constantly found ourselves in conversations with people that could only afford a few hundred and so that actually through the conversations of seeing that is what pushed an initiative to create a self-serve stand-alone product that could serve

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[SPEAKER_00]: And when we started to understand that, hey, this is a market that's looking to do business with us, but there's no pathway for them to get started, because the solutions that we provide were completely unacceptable to their financial limitations.

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[SPEAKER_00]: And then that resulted was that the conversations we did have, were with people that were much more qualified, because we could naturally tell them, oh, what's the budget you've set aside for this kind of investment?

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[SPEAKER_00]: And if it wasn't a lower brackets, we could say, well, a self-serve option is probably the best thing you can do right now.

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[SPEAKER_00]: which you know we're coming towards the end of the year and one of the discussions that's front of mind like we've seen life is getting a little more expensive.

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[SPEAKER_00]: Business is getting a little more expensive.

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[SPEAKER_00]: We are anticipating having to raise prices for most of our offers, but there is again this emotional fear that oh my god if we raise prices we might piss off people, we might make people mad and I'll even add that sometimes we have people internal to the

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[SPEAKER_00]: That feel like, oh my god, we're now selling it too expensive and they almost have their home Resistance around a sense of are we being greedy being charging more and so is that something that you've navigated before and you have any words of advice for that?

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[SPEAKER_01]: Yes.

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[SPEAKER_01]: So, firstly, on almost the cost of inaction with pricing.

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[SPEAKER_01]: So, if you haven't made a price change in a while, that's still a pricing decision.

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[SPEAKER_01]: And let's say you were charging based in the UK, so I'm going to use pounds for now, but if you're charging 100 pounds five years ago,

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[SPEAKER_01]: You'd need to be charging 125 pounds now just due to inflation, to be standing still.

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[SPEAKER_01]: to be standing still.

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[SPEAKER_01]: And I bet in that five years the service has got better, your credibility in the space has got better, your costs have gone up and the value deliver has gone up.

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[SPEAKER_01]: So I would encourage every business out there to be regularly thinking about processing and building a

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[SPEAKER_01]: So that's the cost of inaction, then I think you talked about again, both sets of human beings on either side of the price and how they might respond to a price rise.

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[SPEAKER_01]: So we are as

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[SPEAKER_01]: business buyers and consumer buyers, we are all very used to cost going up at the moment.

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[SPEAKER_01]: We are living in inflation retimes and yeah, the only direction on average that prices are going is up.

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[SPEAKER_01]: So I think how you communicate those price rises is the critical bit.

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[SPEAKER_01]: So I've seen a lot of very overly apologetic pricing.

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[SPEAKER_01]: I've seen communications where companies are trying to almost justify their decisions by blaming it on the government and the cost prices and the economic macro economics, which I don't think your customers is going to resonate very well or a note, doesn't resonate well with most recipients.

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[SPEAKER_01]: and then you've got almost the Netflix approach, which is just very factual, very unapologetic, just this is going to happen on this date, full stop.

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[SPEAKER_01]: So, I think the approach you take to communicating that price change again is very

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[SPEAKER_01]: specific to a business, to the rapport you have with your clients and how you communicate with them along the way.

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[SPEAKER_01]: So if the annual price changes the only time they ever really hear from you, then that needs handling with a different approach compared to if their account manager is chatting to them every week.

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[SPEAKER_01]: So I think just be really deliberate and careful about how you communicate and again optionality is your friend there.

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[SPEAKER_01]: So rather than putting it out as an ultimatum and yes you want to speak to the extra value you've created if you have changed the service or speak to the ROI that they've

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[SPEAKER_01]: got from you if you're able to measure it and those sort of things that help them tie value to the price as they reevaluate your new price thing, but then also give them some way to go if it's not right for them and they genuinely can't afford it anymore.

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[SPEAKER_01]: So that might be a grace period, or it might be breaking up the split between capex and oppex, so they can get it over the line, or it might be a more entry-level alternative that you think would still benefit them, so give them some way to go.

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[SPEAKER_01]: And then you also mentioned in the organization making the price rise, I hope that you're going to have those skeptics that say, oh, I don't think this is the right thing for our customers, or they worry that customers are going to walk a walk away.

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[SPEAKER_01]: Pricing is one of those topics that I think generates so much internal debates and people can have very strong opinions.

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[SPEAKER_01]: So what we try to do at untapped and with pricing sprint is to welcome those opinions.

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[SPEAKER_01]: So there's different perspectives from around the business are really important actually but then to turn them into hypotheses that we can prove or disprove.

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[SPEAKER_01]: So either and when we're in that evidence gathering mode,

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[SPEAKER_01]: We're either doing some research, so survey work or interview work to directly inform specific pricing decisions.

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[SPEAKER_01]: This isn't just sort of very high-level research.

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[SPEAKER_01]: It's very pointed and also running experiments to see how things are under the wild.

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[SPEAKER_01]: And so it tends to be that evidence

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[SPEAKER_01]: and gets a whole team to buy into the way forward because it's only really when you've got all of the team aligned on your pricing strategy and why you're making changes.

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[SPEAKER_01]: Does it then really hold true as everyone's in implementation mode and that's where you will achieve the

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[SPEAKER_01]: because you haven't got that person just sort of on the side layering back in those discounts because they don't quite believe people will pay it or they're worried about their worried about retention.

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[SPEAKER_00]: I have a story I think you'll enjoy is in Canada there was a year there was a huge snowstorm that happened and my family owns a business of swimming pool retail sales and what happened is that a lot of these pools got knocked down in the winter and a lot of people had insurance around those pools.

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[SPEAKER_00]: And when the season started, everybody was coming in for insurance quotes to replace their pools.

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[SPEAKER_00]: And the decision was made in the organization that the prices were going to go up substantially.

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[SPEAKER_00]: And that's where I've witnessed first the resistance from the team being like, Oh my God, we can't raise the prices so high.

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[SPEAKER_00]: Our competitors are charging so much less.

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[SPEAKER_00]: People will be mad.

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[SPEAKER_00]: People will get, you know, annoyed.

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[SPEAKER_00]: And we're going to lose so much of these opportunities of people that are walking in and are wanting to get their pools.

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[SPEAKER_00]: And there was, I guess, an insight from my father, actually, who was like, you know what, let's just test this and see what happens.

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[SPEAKER_00]: And what did quickly happen is that the entire entire competitive field, book their calendars for installation for the entire summer.

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[SPEAKER_00]: And there's only a small window you can install those pools.

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[SPEAKER_00]: and then the only place people could go to get a pool rebuilt for the enjoyment of that summer was the one that was available at the higher price, which was being paid by the insurance companies anyway.

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[SPEAKER_00]: So people demanded to do business with us because they wanted to get their pool sooner and realize the biggest value that people were looking for is how fast they could get their pool and they could pay a premium, which was not even coming out of their pockets.

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[SPEAKER_00]: It was actually coming from the insurance companies that they had already purchased for.

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[SPEAKER_00]: And so

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[SPEAKER_00]: That turned into one of the record profit years, all of the top customers that were very happy because by charging a premium, you could offer a premium service as well and it ended up being the best decisions which overcome some of the internal resistance initially and I always think of this is a beautiful story because the more that you can make a margin on a product sold, the more you can actually serve better especially the types of customers that tend to perceive

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[SPEAKER_00]: Which kind of opens up a brown when you are positioning yourself as a premiumly priced product.

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[SPEAKER_00]: You tend to attract a different type of customer.

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[SPEAKER_00]: I might want to close on this, which is if you want to appeal as a premium brand and attract those types of clients, are there certain things you want to ensure you deliver on if you're going to be positioning yourself that way?

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[SPEAKER_01]: So firstly, water great story about the swimming pools, and I think your dad's mindset around experimentation, just really paid off there.

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[SPEAKER_01]: How fantastic.

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[SPEAKER_01]: So then to your question about premium offering.

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[SPEAKER_01]: As I mentioned before, I think your price has got to tell the same story as,

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[SPEAKER_01]: everything else, all of the other signals that you're giving to your prospective clients, your brand, how you talk about yourself, your service packages, even the naming convention for, you know, how you describe what you do.

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[SPEAKER_01]: So beautiful websites need high prices for that to be consistent,

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[SPEAKER_01]: of beautiful service offerings and I think combining two of the themes we've talked about today, so experimentation and optionality can be very powerful.

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[SPEAKER_01]: So if as a premium service business you put together a bronze silver gold or good better best for

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[SPEAKER_01]: for a certain audience.

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[SPEAKER_01]: And then you start to see what they go for.

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[SPEAKER_01]: And often it might be the high price option in a way that you perhaps didn't expect.

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[SPEAKER_01]: So some will always need maybe due to budget will need that entry level service.

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[SPEAKER_01]: Some will the gold elox effect or play out for some and they need that one in the middle, but others will go for the best that you can offer

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[SPEAKER_01]: and over time you'll see what people go for and maybe then it's time to actually make your gold option the silver option and add some further bells and whistles or price up where people are you're seeing that the moment.

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[SPEAKER_00]: beautiful.

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[SPEAKER_00]: Jenny, I know there's so much more we have to unpack when it comes to pricing and luckily you've just released a book for people to go deeper and so I'm going to encourage everyone to pick up a copy of the pricing sprint.

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[SPEAKER_00]: It just came out in May, it's a beautiful book that will go deeper into these strategies and if you're looking to increase your margins,

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[SPEAKER_00]: It's not just a question of blank it up the price everywhere, there's so many great strategies that you can apply that makes you understand what do value, what do people value the most?

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[SPEAKER_00]: How do you actually start adjusting how you present your offer in a way that that value is recognized and the price doesn't become as sensitive for them to make the decision to buy?

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[SPEAKER_00]: There's a whole lot that I need to apply from the conversations we've had today, and I know that there's so many more resources on your website as well.

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[SPEAKER_00]: So, untappedpricing.co.uk.

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[SPEAKER_00]: We'll put a link to this website as well.

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[SPEAKER_00]: Tums of articles, videos, and insights.

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[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, even before we had this interview, one of the decisions we had around pricing of events were like, who has to make this decision?

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[SPEAKER_00]: Is it the events team, the product team, the sales team, the finance team?

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[SPEAKER_00]: and you already shared some insights on how to nominate a pricing champion and this so much more as available.

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[SPEAKER_00]: Jenny, I've shared the book, I shared the website.

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[SPEAKER_00]: Are those the two best mediums for people who are curious about pricing and know that it can solve some business problems, can find you and learn more?

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[SPEAKER_01]: Absolutely.

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[SPEAKER_00]: awesome.

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[SPEAKER_00]: Jenny, it's been an absolute pleasure.

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[SPEAKER_00]: I was going to ask you one question I love asking on this conversation because you do include a lot of human aspects in the way that you talk about pricing.

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[SPEAKER_00]: So I'll ask you a sales question, which is what the selling with love mean to you.

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[SPEAKER_01]: it means to me confident pricing.

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[SPEAKER_01]: So anyone looking to sell with love, the fact that you don't have to kind of wins or feel uncomfortable, just as you're about to tell them about your pricing, because you understand value, you have tested it out and you feel confident and consistent about how you use pricing as a real lever in your business.

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[SPEAKER_01]: That's selling with love.

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[SPEAKER_00]: Jenny, that's the most directly related to your expertise answer and one of the most beautiful answers I've heard on that question and you are absolutely right.

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[SPEAKER_00]: I love that so much.

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[SPEAKER_00]: So yes, boldly declare your price with that knowledge that what you offer is so much more than what you ask in return.

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[SPEAKER_00]: Hell yeah.

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[SPEAKER_00]: Lovely.

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[SPEAKER_00]: Jenny, it was an absolute pleasure for everybody else again.

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[SPEAKER_00]: The resources are available for you to continue learning from Jenny and of course, if you're going out there, price yourself confidently and go out there and sell with love.

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[SPEAKER_00]: I am your host, Jason Mark Campbell, and this is The Selling With Love podcast.