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Unless you provide very
high priced, custom-to-each-client services, the worst way to price your
products or service is cost-plus pricing. How cost-plus pricing works: You
calculate your full costs, including overhead, and set a price where all of
those costs are covered and so is an acceptable (to you) amount of
profit
per sale.
Example:
You plan to sell t-shirts, so you add in your direct costs (materials & ink
for the logos) of let's say $15, add in a piece of your overhead (salaries,
rent, etc.) let's say $12, plus your desired profit of $4 per shirt to
arrive at a price of $31.
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So, you may ask, if
cost-plus pricing covers all my costs and gives me a fixed amount of profit
per sale – what's not to like?
There are three key problems with it:
Problem #1:
The price you establish may be so high that you will lose money through lost
sales. Consumers buy at a price that seems "right" to them. Can you picture
them thinking the following? "Well... this price is much higher than I
expected to pay, but the seller must need to make this much to cover costs –
so I'd better pay it or the seller may lose sales." I can't picture it
either!
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Problem #2:
All cost-plus calculations require an estimate of sales to be accurate. To
figure in overhead, you have to apply it to each product sold. For example,
if your rent/phone/electricity/assistant costs add up to $100,000/year and
you estimate your company will sell 100,000 t-shirts, you apply $1 of your
overhead to the price of each t-shirt to cover that cost. But... what
happens if you actually sell just 20,000 t-shirts? That means you have
$80,000 of costs Which you did NOT cover. That means the fixed amount of
profit you built into each price has just disappeared. In fact, you have
lost money – with a pricing strategy that was supposed to "guarantee" you a
profit.
Nobody can do an accurate
enough prediction of sales volume to make cost-plus pricing work (except for
companies which create a separate bid for each large-priced, custom job they
bid on). After all, the number of products you can sell will vary widely
depending on the price you set.
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Problem #3:
Cost-plus pricing can cause you to underprice your products or services –
thus cheating your company of sales it could have earned. How? Let's suppose
by some miracle you actually guessed right on the units you would sell.
Let's say you calculated you could sell 100,000 t-shirts, and by using
cost-plus pricing you came up to a price of $26 – to cover all your costs
and add $4 profit per shirt. Then you sold 100,000.
Congratulations? Maybe not.
Maybe those consumers who bought at $26 would have been perfectly willing to
buy the same shirt at $29. What happened? You just cost the company
$300,000! That extra money could have allowed your company to
test a
new
product line... or covered losses from another product... or allowed the
owner (you?) to put your kids through college. |
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What's your product WORTH
to consumers?
That's the only real basis
for setting a price. If you can't get enough from a such a price to be
profitable – you shouldn't be selling the product!
How do you calculate
the value of something to a customer? Start with the price of your
nearest
competitor's product. That will be (in
the consumer's mind) a "reference price." What they would expect (all
things being equal) to pay for your product.
Then
add in the value (to
the consumer) of the superior benefits and features your product has over
your competitor's. Then subtract the value of your competitor's features
which are superior to yours.
>>>
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The Tao
of
Pricing
Bringing
Eastern enlightenment to Western
marketing strategy.
Smart
Discounting
Clever are discounts that commit a customer to
you for further sales.
Examples:
Discounted razors, when you sell razor blades.
Discounted ink jet printers, when you sell ink
cartridges.
Premium Pricing
Know your customers. If a man known for his
cheapness buys from you... raise your prices immediately. Even the "monetarily challenged" can enjoy
splurging or treating themselves to a relatively expensive candy bar,
shampoo, or after-shave.
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