Everything starts with the story you’re telling.
One of the most overlooked aspects of pricing is the fact that it never happens in a vacuum. Pricing is always contextual. And to that end, the context for a WooCommerce project isn’t just the work that needs to be done. It’s about the customer, how they define success, the freelancer or agency doing the work, and their experience. Context drives the pricing discussion.
And context is driven by the story you’re telling.
Stories can take a lot of forms, but just imagine the following three opening lines:
- I’m so excited to finally work on an eCommerce project.
- If this project is anything like the last 40 I’ve worked on, we could be done in 8 weeks.
- We have a team of 30 people we bring onto every project. We’re excited to get started.
Each statement tells us something different. In one case, we’re aware that the person will be learning on the job. In another, we know about experience and even some sense of timeline (and maybe cost). And in the last statement we might feel extra confident or extra worried, depending on whether we think we need 30 people on the project – a small store might freak out, and an enterprise organization may feel thrilled.
Use the first meeting to anchor context
When we meet with a prospect, we get the chance to create a first impression or reinforce what they may have already heard about us. That first phone call or meeting allows us to make sure that we set the right context.
- We can reinforce our experience by telling stories of past projects.
- We can build trust by predicting common challenges and how we overcome them.
- We can shape our conversation by hearing what they think are success criteria.
And when it comes to pricing, there’s one other thing we can do. We can create some price anchors by articulating various projects of different complexities (features, sizes, etc.) and the prices associated with each.
As we do that, we’re helping them get grounded in the context of what it might cost to work with us, and it helps set some of their expectations.
The bottom line is that the better you get at listening, the better you’ll get at knowing which stories to tell, which projects to highlight, which risks to articulate and mitigate, and which price points to anchor to.
This is what separates folks that are great at pricing discussions and those who are just getting started. Thankfully, it’s something that you can practice and get good at.
Below we’ll look at several factors that go into the pricing calculus and ways you can use this information to help you in initial and further pricing discussions.
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