The habit of daily writing for you, so that you rethink what you believe about (your) business, brand and marketing —without the bullshit.
Selling food
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Following, an actual conversation. A new price set. I asked, walk me through the process on how you got to this price. - Well... I grabbed the cost and factored it in.
+ Ok. What did you factor?
- Well... on the standard.
+ What standard?
- The standard for the industry.
+ What kind of industry?
- In the distribution / reseller.
+ For what kind of industry?
- Well... companies like Lidl, or like restaurants. I factored in 30% and the price is good.
+ Are you in the food industry?
- Erm... no.
They're in high-accuracy instrumentation for laboratories. A deeper issueThat new price could have been / still be an acceptable price to charge. At the end of it all, it's above the costs, so it should be a good deal. Unless not all of the costs are factored (utilities, labor, admin costs, financial transactions, expenses, delivery, etc.) making margins thinner. It shows something deeper, though. It's safe. Traditional. Uncomplicated. Because, if it's in the restaurant industry, why not charge 10-20X more? Have you paid for a cocktail at a high-end restaurant? If it's in the distributor/reseller, why not add the premium? And my impression is that they're afraid of being expensive. They're afraid of driving people away with the price. And that's the thing with cost-plus pricing: it tries to build a price based on what it costs, and then there has to be a way to justify the price with a rational. All so that there can be a good-enough reason to bring the value at the end. Cost-plus pricing drives your fear. And leaves (a lot of) money on the table. It makes you be in survival mode, where any money is good money. And that's no way to make a business thrive. |
Rod Aparicio
The habit of daily writing for you, so that you rethink what you believe about (your) business, brand and marketing —without the bullshit.
AI will replace you when it can do the things that you do better than you. If you have bad sales calls. It will replace you. If you are general and superficial. It will replace you. If you're average. It will replace you. If your conversations are forgettable. It will replace you. If you aim to serve everyone. It will replace you. Do you know when it can't replace you? When you're specialized and know your craft. It can't think. It can't reason. It can't imagine. It can't decide. It can't be...
Yesterday's message was about how to help your customers for free. When that option is already out of the way, you can help them Offering options. 3 different layers of value, to 3 aligned outcomes. The Transformation: Thinking bigger for them. The Output: Fitting into what they could afford. The Middle-Point: something that you both could co-create.
You're on a mission to help, aren't you? Giving options lets you do that at different levels. The first one you can try is free. For free? Yes and No. To help for free, yes. To work for free, no. If they can't afford you, this is how you can support them. You can help by sharing what you think and how you see things from a general POV. A perspective. It's not specific to their case, yet it's a good starting point to see what they could do by themselves —or how to get help elsewhere with a...