Pricing Strategy

Written by LiveLink
October 28th 2023

Pricing Strategy

Pricing strategy is something that many businesses struggle with. And continue to struggle with year after year. Often never getting it ‘quite right’.

Go back to when you first started out. I bet the first thing you did was to scope out your competitors. Local and further away.

In itself, that’s not a bad thing – it’s always good to have an idea about how other businesses and clinics operate. But, it’s not the best way to base your prices on your competitors.

For many reasons.

• When you look at the headline price of your competitor, there are many unknowns. Their service and delivery may be different from yours.
• There may be some hidden extras in their pricing.
• Your competitors overheads may differ from yours considerably.
• Their business plan and exit strategy may not be yours.

Being the cheapest on the block is a really bad strategy. There will always be someone cheaper and it’s the easiest and fastest way to go broke.

Your price is your price. No one elses. And there is nothing wrong with being more expensive than your competitors. In general, it isn’t the best business or clinic that gets the business, but the best marketeer. That may sound unpalatable, but it is a fact.

I’ve found that one of the best ways to set your fee is to look at what you want to do and need to do in your own life. Mortgage, car payments, utilities are the minimum that you need to earn.

So let’s have a bit of fun. Grab a pen and paper and make two columns. Write a list on the left of everything you want to do in the short-term and long-term. New house, car, home improvements, school fees, holidays (as many as possible!), all your bucket-list desires. Then in the next column put a price against them. That is the number you need to be achieving as profit in your business.

When you have that figure, then you will understand how much you need to charge your clients and patients. You may find that you’re never going to reach that figure on your own, so an adjustment in your business model may be required to include employees (scary eh?).

Now you have your pricing and zoot alors! It’s far more than your competitor and you start to panic and retreat. Stop!

Be brave. Set your prices so that you can realistically reach your goals.

Next step is how you position yourself in the market to demonstrate the difference between yourself and your competitors.

And the fun begins.