I have all of my prices on my site and they are rock bottom low. I have been considering removing them for some time as I have heard that just that can improve the quality of my client base. I now have so many ideas that I am going to have to take a "vacation" in order to implement some of them into my site and my business strategies!!
We don't publish our prices. I tried that for a while, but we actually started getting MORE calls when we removed the pricing from our site. It doesn't make a whole lot of sense to me personally (I'm one of those people who tends to find some place else when I don't see pricing), but if it works...
Most of your "better class" of clients understand that you just don't know how much a project is going to cost until you've had a chance to talk with them about it. So it's only an issue when one of these "yahoos" comes through the door looking for a $10,000 web site and only want's to pay $75.
One of the scariest things that I do on a regular basis is turn people away. Probably 40% of all the customers who walk through the door are turned away. A number of them come back because they've been burned by our competition, but most don't.
It's very tempting (especially when times are slow) to say yes anyway and do a job just because your project board is empty. But every time I've given in and done it, I've regretted it.
I used to waste a lot of time chatting with potential customers about their needs and then giving them a rough estimate after I've talked with them. They'd give me a shocked look at the price and hastily walk out the door. And I've lost 30 to 45 minutes that could have been put to better use.
So now, I let them know the average cost of the sites we do before I invite them into my office for a chat. If they have "that look", I politely give them a post card with a list of my competitors and send them out the door. Of those who stay and chat with me, probably 80% of them sign a contract within a week (at least half will sign a contract and write a down-payment check that day).
One of the last classes I took in college before I graduated was a business marketing class. It's probably the ONLY class that I actually learned something useful the whole time I was in college. One of the most important things I learned is that no matter how well you write a marketing piece, it will never work as well as personal communication. Your brochures and other literature can't answer the questions they raise in a customer's mind. They can't "feel out" your customer during the exchange in order to tailor the message specifically to that customer's needs.
So, when you create marketing literature, don't include specifics. Leave questions unanswered. Your goal with your web site, brochure, post-card, whatever... is to get the customer to CALL YOU and ask questions. Once you (or your salesperson) is on the phone and chatting in person, the "sales process" can take place.
One great example of this is a real estate web site we re-did for a client. Her original site included every possible thing you could want to know about every listing. It was very thorough. Her clients had told her that's what they wanted. But what she didn't realize was that if the web site answered all their questions, why did they need to call her? Unless they wanted to buy the property. But what if they were only 90% sure they wanted to buy and they had all of the answers in front of them. They weren't likely to call her and allow her to use her "Salesmanship" to get them through that last 10%. So, we suggested that she should remove certain pieces of information and feature her phone number and email address more prominently on the listing page.
Guess what happened? The number of calls from her web site increased. People called her asking for the information that was left out and as a result she got the opportunity to use her "selling skills" on them. She was able to help them when the house they were interested in really wasn't best for them and she knew of another that was. The result was a 60% increase in sales the first year after we redesigned her web site. And at least 50% of that was directly attributable to the change in philosophy we suggested.
You can do the same thing in marketing your business. Give them enough information so the customer will be interested in your services, but make them call you or email you if they want specifics. YOU are your best marketing, not any brochure or web page that you can create. YOU can talk a reluctant customer into buying, your web site can't.
Of course, your question is probably "so how do I do that?" I don't have all the answers. If you don't know how to be vague, you might want to take a marketing class at your local community college. Or, pay more attention to what your kids say when you confront them about who broke the lamp in the living room. <grin> It's definitely a fine art.
--Dave
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