Finding out whether you’re charging what you’re worth is about two things – making sure you’re charging enough and checking that the service you provide is worth the price you charge.
First things first – are you charging enough? The easiest way to find out is to conduct a market survey. And I’d recommend you outsource this task. Just provide whoever will be conducting the survey with a simple brief of a common job and ask them to call ten competitors in the area for a quote.
The results will tell you where you sit in the local market. For some of my clients this exercise has given them the confidence to increase their prices and they’ve seen sales go up by 5-10 percent.
But it’s equally important to make sure that you’re worth what you’re charging. Gathering feedback from customers on the phone as soon as the job is finished is a good start. And, once again, this is best done by someone other than you! I’ll be covering tips for doing this effectively in a future blog but we’ve all heard the stats – customers who have a bad customer experience will tell on average 10 people! But they won’t necessarily tell you. Unless you ask them.
There’s nothing wrong with charging more for a premium service, as long as it is a premium service. But how do you know if you are hitting these levels? Part of that is about the image you’re portraying. I covered aspects of this in video one. But consider what your offline and online image say about you:
- Are your vehicles sign written?
- Are they clean and tidy?
- Does your team wear branded, clean uniform?
- Can your business be easily found online?
- Does your website look professional?
- Is it up to date?
- Is it easy to navigate?
- What are the images like?
My final tip on being worth what you charge is to think about what you do that portrays you as an expert in your field. So, share useful information relating to your industry on social media and in your marketing. A great tip is to include articles on your website answering questions that customers often have – it establishes you as the expert and means that your website will be found by people searching for information on your specialist subject. People appreciate being given advice without being expected to give anything in return and it makes them inclined to use, remember and recommend you because you have built trust. And they will often be prepared to pay more for the services of someone they perceive as an expert.
If this information strikes a chord with you then there are lots more top tips and practical advice in my book ‘Build and Grow – How to go from Tradesperson to Managing Director in the Construction and Trade Industries’ And you can buy it from Amazon via this link http://amzn.to/2CBok2L.