Building Trust Through Transparent Pricing - Why Openness Matters

In this episode of Live With The Pricing Lady, we're talking about building trust through transparent Pricing, why openness matters. Sit back, relax, and enjoy the episode. Hello, and welcome to this episode of Live With The Pricing Lady, the podcast. I'm Janene your hostess. On this show, we turn pricing confusion into clarity so you can grow your business with confidence. Today we're going to be talking about building trust through transparent pricing, why openness matters. I'd like to preface this conversation today by saying there is no requirement for you to put your prices on your website. However, for some businesses it will make sense and for other businesses it is absolutely mandatory. We're not here to judge or to say what you must do. What I want to do in this episode is help you understand what some of the challenges are, give you some tips that you can use, and we're going to help you give you an idea of how to do a little mini audit for yourself, so that you can understand what is right for your business. Let's get started. First, let's talk about why this is an important topic. Pricing transparency is a foundation for building trust. Now, you may not think that pricing would have that much influence, but actually has a lot of influence because people can read a lot into the context of pricing. So it's important because it is a foundation for building trust and in service-based businesses, trust is usually a big factor in the decision whether or not to buy something. Second of all, lack of pricing tr clarity will make clients feel uncertain or suspicious, which then sends them in the wrong direction. If you don't have the right level of transparency for your business, it may actually be driving people away. Furthermore, if you're unclear, if your messaging around your pricing creates confusion, or if you have too much information. Pricing wise on your website, for example, that can also create confusion. It's not just about whether or not you put prices on there, it's about the clarity of that communication. Next, having prices on your website does not mean you have to give people everything. Last year I had a client who sent me their a link to their pricing page to give them feedback on and, and review it for them. And when I looked at the page, I was scrolling and scrolling and scrolling and scrolling and scrolling some more, and scrolling some more. I felt like I was scrolling forever 'cause they had put. Everything on there of all their packages, of all the options, their hourly rates, their da, da, DA rates. I mean, there's just so much information. Now, if I felt overwhelmed by that, you can only imagine how a customer might feel. So again, there's a balance there between what prices you choose to share with people and when and how it's all combined. The last element of pricing transparency in terms of why it's important is we're talking about building an emotional connection, personal credibility, and rapport with clients. These are absolutely key, and if your pricing is off balance, whether it be the number or the communication or the volume as we just said, then of course that's, you're going to struggle to build that emotional connection or. People are going to struggle to see the credibility. Even if you are very ethical and credible person, they may struggle with that simply because something feels off about the pricing. It's very important. Again, I'm going to repeat this. There is no one size fits all answer to the right level of Pricing transparency. That's why it's so important for you to understand how to go about assessing that for yourself. I do have a guide on my website. We're going to put the link in the show notes, but this guide will help you to assess whether or not even putting prices on your website is the right thing for your business. You're going to want to grab a copy of that. To help you through this process. So now let's take a look at some of the challenges that people face when it comes to putting prices on their website. This could be a, actually a very volatile topic. I've had some, let's say, debates, if you will, about this in, in different forms or in different like when I was giving a talk and we had quite some heated debate around this. Which is quite amusing. People feel very strongly about this topic, but again, there's no one size fits all. But let's talk about some of the challenges. One of the first challenges that people feel afraid of scaring their clients off. So they feel if they put their prices on there, especially if they have higher prices, that people will leave before they even have a chance to have a conversation with them. And that's true, that fear that you feel could keep you from sharing any information at all, and in some businesses that may be fine, but in other businesses that may not be okay. That's one of the questions in the guide I was talking about, is who do you want to get rid of first? The people who are scared of your price, or the people who think, oh, you must be hiding something if you don't have prices on there. Therefore, I don't trust you. Because regardless of what you choose to do one of those two groups of people may filter themselves out naturally, and that's okay. It narrows down the audience, which is not a bad thing necessarily. You just have to decide who do you want to weed out first. That's the first challenge that people have when they think about putting their prices out there publicly. The second challenge, that I see, is in people not knowing what to share or how much to share. So I alluded to this a moment ago, but this is really important. So you may have packages, you may have hourly rates, or daily rates. You may have, Additions or options to your different packages and your different services. And for you, it may feel really confusing to know what of those things to communicate, what's important, and you may feel overwhelmed enough by that, that you decide not to put anything out there. And that in and of itself is also a mistake often because you want to have some information, but you don't always have to have everything out there, as we said before. But making no decision because you feel overwhelmed and confused is not going to help you feel clear and confident about what you're doing in that is ultimately going to have an impact, probably a negative one. The next challenge that people, come to when looking at pricing, transparency is the uncertainty they feel around communicating value. They struggle to understand the real why behind the prices that they have, and especially if you have an offer that feels intangible or it's more related to a transformation. Then that can feel even more difficult to be able to clarify what the value is. And if you can't help your clients understand the value, then how do you expect them to really understand it? So it is extremely important. For you to be clear and be able to communicate the value effectively. And it doesn't have to be a long list of laundry items either. We'll talk about that more in the next section. Sometimes people feel like they have to defend, defend, defend. I'm not talking about defending here, but I'm talking about being competent enough to be able to explain in a very simple way, the value behind what you offer so the clients understand it too. The next challenge people face is feeling vulnerable or exposed by putting their prices out there so Pricing can feel very personal. In fact, recently I ran a poll. About asking people if they would trust AI to set their prices, and most people said, no, it's too personal, which I found really interesting and will be the topic of an upcoming article. But in the context of of today's discussion, you know, Pricing can feel very personal, very individual, and it requires, you know, communicating it effectively requires that you have confidence in their numbers and in the value deliver. So if you're feeling vulnerable, exposed, or if you feel you know the risk of being judged by the prices that you put out there. A lot of people have told me they, they feel greedy if they're talking about prices and money and things like that. Pricing doesn't make you greedy. It makes you smart. I've said that for years, and I will continue to say it for years to come. The point here is that. If you feel that vulnerability or feel like you're being exposed somehow, that may keep you from doing what you should be doing for your business. And the last challenge that people face is being worried about competitors and copycats. So the fear of being undercut, judged, or giving away your trade, quote unquote secrets. You can't see my air quotes here, but I'm doing it so you know about being judged or about giving up those secrets in your business. Now, first of all, your Pricing. There's no need for it to be secret, right? I think that's a really important PO to make here, but I, you know, often I ask people, who do you want to have the information? Is it more important that your customers understand the investment they might need to make or hiding that so that your competitors don't find it out? Rarely it can be, but rarely in the type of service based businesses that I'm working with. Is that ever really an issue? And usually, I mean, if you're in a business where customers are shopping around for the cheapest offer, if that's your your customer persona, then that may be more of a concern. But it, for most service based businesses, price isn't what people are basing the decision on. It's not really what's influencing their decision making first and foremost. It's usually, you know, tertiary or, you know, it's, it's down the list, let's say of, of what's influencing their decision the most. And it's important for you to be aware of that, but then also maybe that can help you. You know, look at that, worry about the competitors having that information in a different way, or maybe not worry at all. So those are the challenges, the main challenges, the five main challenges that people face when it comes to Pricing transparency. Now let's shift over to talk about three tips that I have for you. So the first one is that you need to define your version of transparency. Now the guide that I spoke about earlier about whether or not you should put prices on your website is a great place to start. It gives you a series of questions you can answer for yourself that'll help you logically think through what could be right for your business. And I can't say this enough, there is no one size fits all. Answer to this, it really is business dependent. If your business is one where you're selling, let's say, online courses that are self-paced, where people just go to your website, click on a course, buy it, then that's different. The price has to be there for them to make the purchase. If you're selling a group course where there's live components and you need to, or want to make sure that people are a good fit for the course, so you have a conversation with them before, it could be helpful to have those prices on there. It may not be required. And then of course you have consulting services where you usually have to scope the project before you can give people a quote for it, right? Or an accurate idea of what the investment might be. And in that case, you probably or possibly wouldn't put prices on your website, maybe even not at all. You could still do something indicative. But again, my point here is that it really is dependent on the business. Now, what can you do if you want to put prices on your website? Well, you could, instead of putting everything, you could share a starting rate or a price range. You know, that's one way to go about it. You can and should always make sure that the value is presented before you present the price and logistics as well can help, although sometimes logistics can come after the price. Depending on the situation, but value helps set the tone for what a fair price is. That's why it can be helpful or it is helpful to put a value communication before you're talking about the price. What you want to try and do here when it comes to your vision of transparency is make sure that you can, when it's appropriate, give people some information. So they're not totally caught off guard. You know, way further down the line, if you will, enough information to say, okay, yeah, this could fit my budget or not, but not so much information that they get confused or bogged down in the details. I. Tip number two is to always frame your prices with context. So when you share numbers, give them context. This comes down usually to things like the value, helping people understand the transformation or the process that they may go through. What are the results that they might get. And there are lots of different ways to share these things. That don't feel over salesy or smarmy if that's a concern of yours. Also, how they'll offer a structure to support your clients in getting results can be a really effective way to frame your prices with context. So it's not about just blurting out a number and you know, and moving on with your life, and they can take it or leave it. But you want to be able to communicate around that price effectively so that that price seems like a reasonable and fair thing to be charging for what they're going to get for it. The context around your price, that value communication, the process, the transformation, all of these things can be very important. What is absolutely critical is that when it comes to these things, you have to be communicating. On topics or around things that are actually valued by the client. So if you're, let's say you're a product based business and you have a machine with a big red button and you talk about the big red button and your client hates big red buttons. And having a big red button isn't going to help them. And whatever it is in your business is equivalent. You want to make sure that what you're highlighting to give context to your price is actually, are actually things that are relevant to the customer. So my third and last tip for today is that you want to build the Pricing conversation. Into your process, so it's going to be really helpful for you if you understand where in the sales conversation you are going to bring up price. Now it doesn't mean that a client might not ask for it earlier. Or that it might come up again later as well. But by being clear with yourself about where and when or how you want to talk about price with your clients, then you're prepared for that conversation. Like mentally, you're like, okay, I know it's going to come here, and I feel okay with that. Whereas if you just leave it up to chance. Then you may find yourself in a situation where after the conversation you're like, oh, I should talked about that earlier, or, oh, I should have waited for that. Silly me. By being clear with yourself about what the process is and where the Pricing conversation comes into that you can help yourself to feel more comfortable with having that conversation. Whether you show them or not plan how you're going to talk about prices and when you're going to talk about them with clients, it's important for you to have that conversation. Early enough to weed out mismatches, but not so early that people don't understand the value. So there is a delicate balance in there for you to be able to strike. It's important that you be calm and clear. And confident. Definitely not apologetic. So a lot of times what I hear from people when they say their prices, especially women, is they put a little intonation at the end that makes it sound like they're asking rather than telling This is a big, big no no, no. So if you're practicing with someone, have them listen out for, you know, what's the tone that I'm using? Does it sound confident? Does it sound like I'm doubting myself or questioning it, you know? Get good feedback on that so that you can adapt that if it's needed. Also, watch out for the qualifications. So if you're, if you find yourself when you're delivering the price, if then you're saying, well, you know, here's, it costs this much. Oh, don't use cost. The investment is, the price is, but please don't use cost. That was my own mistake right there. See, you learn by doing. What's important is when you deliver the price is that you don't add qualifications. You deliver the price, you say, but we can do something else if you want, or, but I can offer you a discount. No. Deliver the price clearly, calmly, and then let the client digest it. Even count to 10 in your head, if that's what it takes, let them be the first to respond to that. Don't start caving immediately afterwards. Be strong, be confident about what you've just delivered. And most importantly, practice it. I know that some of you think it's a little bit silly to practice these things, but I will tell you I've seen it with my clients over in time again, that over and over in time and again, that was two statements worked into one. That when they practice this, they start to feel more comfortable. They start to hear the things that they're used to saying that they know they shouldn't be saying. You can really work through a lot of the stumbles and the challenges that you maybe face regularly simply by practicing the Pricing talk, if you will, with a trusted colleague or friend. That is what I wanted to share with you in terms of the tips, and be sure to grab yourself a copy of the guide. Should I put my prices on my website? The link is in the show notes. Before we go, I'd like to talk a little bit more about your challenge for this episode, and that's to do a 10 minute audit of your Pricing transparency. So here are three questions or series of questions that you can ask yourself. The first is, where and how Is my Pricing currently visible or communicated? I. So you may or may not have prices on your website. That's one place of course, but you may have prices in other locations. So it could be like me, I have the Fair price formula, my price setting course on the Maven platform. Of course the price for that is there. It is transparent and it is publicly communicated there. I have, you know, other prices in other locations and I'm sure that you do too. So it's important to think about, you know, what's on my website. What's here? What's there and how is it communicated? Or where is it visible? Second question, how does it feel? So when you look at that or you think about that, do you feel good about the price out there? Do you question it? Is it clear? Is it aligned? Is it confusing? If you were to look at it through the lens of your customer, does it feel overwhelming? Or maybe it feels too vague. So take time to look at each of those locations where you have prices and kind of, you know, just give yourself the quick ten second, how does it feel? What is my first reaction to this? And then the last question is, what's one small step that I can take to clarify or make. Pricing transparency better for my business. So I'm not asking you to have a revolution here. We're talking about evolution. So just what's one small thing that you could do differently to improve upon what you have today. So this little audit plus the Pricing guide that I talked about earlier, will help you be able to take some next steps in finding the right level of transparency for Pricing in your business. And remember, transparency is about clarity and alignment. Not overexposure. I wish you a great day and as always, enjoy Pricing.