The Debate Over Displaying Price
| Don't Display Prices |
Display Prices |
| We don’t want our competitors to know our pricing? |
Establishes you as a market leader causing competitors to react to your pricing and value propositions. Differentiates you from your competitors that don’t post their prices making it more likely for prospects to contact you. |
| It makes it too easy for |
Giving prospects more information allows them to make an informed purchasing decision that builds trust because you're being transparent. |
| We don’t have any standard prices; we customize our services. |
Display a range of prices based on your services and value proposition to increase buyer trust. |
| If we display our prices, potential clients may think our prices are too high. |
Many buyers assume that if you don’t display a price it’s because you’re expensive and won’t even contact you. Weeds out buyers that aren’t going to buy from you because of their budget or unwillingness to pay for value. |
This is a question that almost all B2B firms debate, but often decide not to display their prices. But, is this the best decision?
These are all valid concerns to think through in determining whether you should display your pricing on your website. But, to make an informed decision about these concerns you need to understand a little more about price and pricing.
If you were selling consumers, there would be no question about displaying prices on your website. In the business to the consumer world, customers not only expect to see prices they demand them or they will depart instantly. Why, because consumers need trust and transparency in what they will be paying for a product or service.
Do you think that the B2B customer demands less? Aren’t trust and transparency in purchasing your B2B products and services just as important to B2B clients? If you think not, you are just fooling yourself. Perhaps, we just think we can ignore these required attributes in the B2B selling process, and unfortunately most B2B firms think they can.
Many business-to-business firms confuse price and cost. Whether you display your price on your web page or not, remember the cost always exists in the mind of the buyer. B2B buyers, like all buyers have an idea either about what they should pay for your product or services or what they can afford or are willing to pay.
Key Point: So buyers are already concerned about cost before you decided to display pricing on your website or not.
Now let’s look at the some other elements other than price that contribute to cost and the buyer perception of price and cost.
First you need to know that price does not = cost because of other factors on the mind of your buyer. Other factors that can:
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confuse your customer
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confusing headline, competing information on the page makes it difficult to know what is important, and layout not focused directing customer to what to do
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confusing marketing message, too much information and marketing information is not customer-centric,
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cause them to be fearful
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is your solution difficult to understand
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do you have all the features I need and want
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lack of trust, transparency
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just make it too difficult an effort for them to make a decision
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too difficult to read your message, hard to read fonts, white on black type, layout presents multiple calls-to-actions, and too many calls-to-action
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ask your potential client to do too much, or make too many changes to implement your solution
Therefore, your price no matter whether it is the lowest, highest or somewhere in between doesn’t really matter, if there is a negative price perception by the buyer. These perception factors are psychological pricing factors and are often overlooked by most business people.
Key Point: Psychological pricing factors are as important or more than your price.
By minimizing these psychological pricing factors, you can actually make your price a positive factor or a negative factor influencing your prospective customer’s decision making. Controlling your customer’s price perception as positive or negative is within your control.
Whether it is on the landing page, on a call or in a meeting be sure your potential client understands the value of your offer. The key to answering the question when to present your price depends on how well you have intensified your value proposition to the prospect. With high value justification that positions your price positively, you can reveal your pricing right up front.
Presenting your price in the form of the highest perceived value possible is what makes price positive instead of price negative in contrast to just saying or displaying the price for your services or product is X dollars. This can be done in a number of ways such as:
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“our price enables you to save $1,500 off of the ________.
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”Things like “lifetime support, free updates, 100% quality guarantee etc.”
Be sure to call out the features with the benefits that distinguish you from your competitors. Every price requires a value justification; if you can’t justify your price, neither can your buyers.
Key Point: Be sure to link what matters to your buyers most, so they recognize the true value in your price.
Key Takeaway:
Understanding these key points about price, we can make a rational decision regarding the question should you display a price on your website selling B2B products and services and say, yes. But with one important caveat, that you must position your price as positive and intensify your value proposition with the buyer.