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Archive for the ‘package deals’ Category

When you’re thinking about revealing the price of your product or service, think about your target audience. If you don’t, you, you could be pricing yourself out of your audience.  I recommend tailoring your product or services to different audiences.  By doing this you can build several price points into your offerings.

Start with the High Price Points First
When you’re thinking about your target audience, there’s a good chance you may be looking at more than one group of people. If your product or service can appeal to many different groups of people with only a little modification, you’ve got a very valuable product on your hands. In the event that multiple groups may be interested in your product, start with the high price points first.

When you start with a high price point, you can discuss custom solutions, coaching packages and high-cost products with your audience. An audience that can afford to pay a high price point is probably expecting a lot from your product, including some personal attention. For example, you might want to offer a complete coaching package and book about marketing at a high price point.

Then, after you’ve ran your coaching program or presented your executive conference, you can create a package targeted toward a lower price point. Starting with the highest price point first gives you many benefits: it helps you fully-develop your product or services, it gives you an opportunity to ask for more, and it helps to justify the cost when you offer a lower-priced version to other audiences.

Offer Less for a Lower Price Point
After you’ve offered your high-price-point solution to the audience that can afford it, tailor a package for your lower-price-point audience. For example, if you offer a 5-day coaching package to your high-price audience, you may offer a weekend workshop or half-day coaching packages to a mid-range price point. If your product has enough diversity, you could even consider a lower-range price point consisting of just the written materials and a DVD or CD recording of your high-cost event. There’s no shortage of ways you can modify your product or services to suit a lower-cost audience and still capitalize on using the same materials and techniques.

Sales Strategies in Order of Price Point
When you start with a high price point and then offer a product to an audience in a lower price point, you can actually use the high price point to justify your price. Saying things like “People paid $5,000 for this product, but I’m not going to charge you that” gives you the ability to offer your target audience a “great” deal. Likewise, if you offer less for your less-expensive price points, the high-price audience doesn’t need to feel cheated or disappointed, because they got more for their higher price.

Consider whether your product appeals to people in multiple price points, and create custom packages that cater to each price point. By offering a high-priced version to an audience that can afford it, and creating a lower-price version for a different audience, you can increase your earnings exponentially with hardly any extra work!

Bernadette Doyle specializes in helping entrepreneurs attract a steady stream of ideal clients. If you want to get clients calling you instead of you calling them, sign up for her free weekly e-zine at http://www.clientmagnets.com

Have you ever opted to purchase a package deal?  Maybe it was easier to purchase an entire car care package than to pick up each individual item.  Or maybe it was more cost-effective to purchase a year’s worth of housecleaning services, instead of paying month-by-month.

This mindset is a good one for you, the consumer.  But even more importantly, it’s invaluable for you, the business person.

Let’s assume for a moment that you’re selling financial coaching services.  Maybe the individual services are consultation, debt reduction, income building, and investment.  As an expert, you know that almost everyone that’s interested in your expertise will need every one of your services.  You could sell each service individually, but that would complicate your schedule with unnecessary red tape and sporadic appointments.

Customizing your services for every client can be exhausting.  Changing your plan of attack every time you receive a phone call or an email can take up more time than the actual implementation of your plan.  That’s why you need to devise a package and stick with it.  Sure, it’s often a good idea to tailor your services for your highest-paying clients, but for the general public, it’s best to “stick with the plan.”

Consider the benefits of package deals and pre-determined service plans:

• Efficiency. When you are able to follow a tried-and-true plan for every client, you become more proficient, and will emerge from projects as a professional.

• Predictability. Since you’re solving many of the same problems for numerous clients, the chain of events will likely be similar.

• Fashion Advantage. As you proceed with serving clients, you will learn about the most common client needs (and the most common pitfalls).  You can use this information to design future packages that meet needs before they become problems.

• Economics. Packages are less costly to implement.  In the financial coaching example above, there’s one invoice, rather than four.  There’s one schedule, established at the signing of the contract, rather than erratic, last-minute squeeze-ins.

• Organization. When you have a plan, you not only appear to be organized, you are.  There’s a chronological flow that is made known to every party involved.

• Value for the Customer. Packages carry value for consumers.  A package usually requires a smaller monetary investment than individually purchased items.

But remember, putting a package together isn’t about cramming as many services onto one contract as possible.  One product or service that is misplaced can ruin the appeal of the package.  When every component of your package solves a problem for your targeted audience, your total package will be impossible to ignore.

Remember a few simple points when building packages:

• Identify your perfect clients’ most common problems and solve each one with a package component.

• Don’t include services that might only appeal to part of your audience – just one unnecessary item could turn a portion of the population off.  If you’re selling five items, and one of them is seen as unnecessary, customers will opt to buy the other four items individually, complicating your job.

• Don’t leave a service out of the package. Your package should offer customers a clear and complete solution.  If a customer ends up having to buy additional items to solve a common problem, your package wasn’t a “deal” at all.

• Keep mutual benefit in mind. Consider convenience, cost-effectiveness, and time-saving factors for both you and your ideal client when creating a package.

No matter your business, you can almost always find a way to implement the package deal.  If you bundle a number of identical items together, you save time and shipping.  If you bundle a number of related services together, you save paperwork, scheduling blunders, and headaches.

When you use simple packages that apply to the majority of your consumer audience, you’ll not only multiply the benefits that you’re offering, but you’ll multiply your available time and the money flowing into your bank account.  Now that’s a package deal!

Bernadette Doyle is a small business marketing expert. Get more tips and advice at http://www.clientmagnets.com