ALPHAS1TE

PRO TIP - RAISE YOUR PRICES

Low-ticket clients suck. It doesn’t matter what industry you’re in or what you do, the nickel-and-dime crowd is just absolutely no fun to work with.

They’re the ones who complain about everything. They look over your shoulder while you work and tell you how to do your job. They bitch about wasted material. They’ll criticize your work and try to pay you less than your invoice, even after you gave them an accurate estimate. They contact you nonstop with nitpicking questions.

This is because to them, what they’re paying you is a real chunk of change. If they’re low-income or on a fixed income, they don’t have much to spare, and that anxiety shows.

I don’t blame them for being nervous. I grew up poor, so I get it. It was rare that my family could afford to hire anyone for anything, we were DIYers out of necessity. So I can sympathize. But that doesn’t mean I want them as clients, and I’m guessing you don’t either.

The best way to avoid this is to simply price yourself out of their reach. Something I preach to all of my clients is the virtue of positioning yourself as a premium brand.

Positioning yourself as a high-end brand - which can be done through your quality of service, website, social media, visuals, copy, and of course pricing - raises you into the rarified air of luxury home services.

Individual jobs pay more, so you don’t have to book as many of them. With more breathing room, you have a better quality of life and don’t have to turn and burn jobs as fast. Your clients are more laid back, understanding, and easy to work with, provided you position yourself as a pro and do the high quality work to back it up.

For a multimillionaire, a $50k kitchen remodel is small potatoes. As long as you communicate well and deliver top-tier results, he’ll probably leave you alone to get the job done, and then write you a glowing 5-star review at the end.

But all of it starts with raising your prices. As long as you have the brand image and quality of work to back it up, you might be shocked at how you actually book more jobs, and better jobs. Yes, you’ll lose a few bargain shoppers. But did you really want those anyway?

Today’s Lesson:

Everyone’s heard the old saw “You can have it fast, cheap, or quality. Pick two.”

When it comes to any business service, it really is true. We’ve all been there. What I never hear anyone talk about is… which two would you pick?

For my part, I’d choose speed and quality.

Fast means you can get the resource to accomplish the thing and take effective action more quickly. Quick, decisive action means speed to market or speed of service delivered. Or if it’s internal, you can solve that problem faster and move on to something else. That’s a winner.

Quality means the job gets done right the first time. Quality means that something’s not going to fail five minutes down the road, or that it’s going to break the first time you really push it. Backtracking to make fixes or buying something twice are both wildly inefficient. Not a fan.

And if I had to narrow it down to one, it’d be quality. I want it done right, I’ll pay, and I’m willing to wait.

What about you?

Today's Lesson:

Don't do in the dark what you wouldn't want brought into the light.

If how you're doing business and conducting your personal life was put on the front page of your local newspaper for everyone you know to see, could you stand beside your actions with pride, or would it ruin your reputation?

If it's the latter, do better.

Today's Lesson:

Saying you built your brand, your lead flow, or your social media audience all organically without paid ads is not the flex you think it is.

All you're telling me is you didn't utilize all the tools at your disposal to grow your business, and you're miles behind where you could have been if you'd leveraged a complete marketing strategy.

That's like proudly saying you built a deck with only a hand saw, a hammer, hand drill, and other hand tools, and didn't use any power tools, even though you had them.

Skilled, sure. But I don't think anyone would call it smart. Put your pride aside and use your whole toolbox. Get aggressive, and play to win.