Last week I chatted about the importance of exposing the ‘bogey man of price‘ as early on as possible with potential new clients. This stops a lot of time wasting with folks who have unrealistic expectations of what decent web work costs. By filtering out such people from day one, you free yourself up to swim on towards (literally) richer hunting grounds.

If the client’s  initial response to your ball park quote/similar project quote or proposal quote is a query that the price ‘seems high‘ then you really need to have a crafted response armed & ready.

Where I went wrong…

In the early days I think I would be offended when a client queried the price; I would want to shake them and say “now listen buddy, did you see the car I drove up in? Yes, that shit heap. Well, I’m not driving that because I’m trying to save the environment!“.

But there is no point in taking a price query personally. Many clients just don’t know what goes into the process of building a decent website. As mentioned before; if they don’t know, then we need to educate them.

So, instead of getting pissy,  what about responding with something like:

“I really don’t envy your position. It’s very tricky comparing website prices between suppliers as it’s so easy to end up making false comparisons as not all websites are the same.

For instance, my quote includes audience research, branding, keyword research, copy writing, monthly web strategy (etc etc) as I feel  this is what your business needs to achieve it’s goals. If the other company is simply quoting to serve you up a quick website template, without really getting to know your business, then it’s no surprise that they are going to be cheaper. And cheaper is not always better.”

Process

Talking clients through your process allows them to buy into the extra value which you are adding into the project mix. And I do mean “talk through” here (more on that in a future post).

Some people say that a client who questions price is always going to be a problem client; I don’t agree; people have every right to ask what they are getting for their money. You, of course, have every right to charge the amount which you believe your services are worth. And, better still, you have every right to elect to work with them or not.

Next week we’ll jump on to another topic but you can bet your boots that we’ll be returning to price again.

Joel