Why every business needs a price list

What I want to talk about today is why every business should have a price list. It’s kind of in the name, but what a price list does is it is a document, or might be on your website somewhere, which essentially just breaks down all the services that you offer and explains how much they actually cost. There’s a couple of really important reasons why every business should have a price list. Actually, I would even say there’s three. Those reasons are; Transparency with your customers, getting your team to be able to put quotes together, and essentially just simplifying your business.

Well, the first one is, with your customers, you want to be as transparent as possible. I often come across businesses where they charge one customer X amount, and then they charge another customer Y amount for pretty much the same thing. I always think that’s absolute madness. What if that customer talks to that customer? You’ve lost your integrity and your relationship straight away.

Maintaining pricing consistency in the business is extremely important. Having a price list, which you can, especially if it’s on your website, it doesn’t have to be somewhere where people can navigate to using your menu, it could just be like a hidden page on your website where people can only get to with a link, but whenever you’re sending out invoices and just having that link there saying, “And just for transparency, here’s our full price list.” Then that price list being on your website, and your customer will then understand, “Actually, I’m looking at the same price list all of the customers look at that.” That is incredibly, incredibly valuable, and what it does is it builds trust, whereas having inconsistent pricing can break trust. It builds a trust with your customers, it makes your customers far more open to further charges if you have to do more work over and above what you’re delivering.

That’s one really important reason, just for that element of trust with your customers, but the second reason is, I come across a lot of business owners where the owner of the business is pretty much the only one that can put a quote together or put a proposal together. I think that’s mad, because as the leads start piling up, you want to get those proposals out to them quickly. You want to have those meetings quickly, so essentially, the prospect knows you’re eager to work with them and you’re going to deliver some excellent results and you’re efficient as a business. By having that price list, essentially, what you’re then doing is enabling your team to be able to put quotes together, because once you’ve worked out what level of services that customer needs, then the team can just go around looking through the price list and compiling it all. That’s another really important reason.

And then the third reason, in my opinion, is when you try and build a price list and you are struggling to build a price list, it means your business is too complicated. Every business should be able to create a price list. So, if you can’t create a price list for your business, it’s probably because you’re doing too much stuff. It’s probably you’re spread too thin, with too many different activities. Creating that price list is a great opportunity for you to actually just say, “Okay, let’s simplify this. What are we not going to do? We’ve got too many things going on, there’s too many variables. We’re working with too many different types of customers.” By creating that price list, what you’re then doing is putting yourself in a position where you do have to have that thought process in terms of focusing your business, and when you focus your business, that is when you get really, really good results, because you add a load of value just by focusing, and your customers will appreciate it and they will pay more for it.