Hey Square Readers,
Welcome to another round of the Square Readers Book Club! Today we’re starting our next book, Worth Every Penny by Sarah Petty and Erin Verbeck!
This book is all about how to break out of the pattern and pressure of discounting your prices, either to appease or attract customers. It goes into the theory and practical strategies to build up your business to charge what you're worth and have your customers happy to pay a higher cost because your business is worth every penny you charge. This is through offering specialized products and services, creating a well defined brand, pricing yourself correctly, having an over the top customer experience, and marketing everything well.
As we start reading the book, let’s kick off our conversations with a baseline of how you and your business handle this tricky subject.
So let’s talk:
- Do potential customers question your prices? What do they typically say?
- Do you have trouble convincing potential buyers that you’re worth the price? What do you tell them?
For some extra fun, share a selfie of you with the book here in the comments!
Don’t forget to:
Happy reading,
Pesso
We are seeing particularly with Gen Zer's they want an experience, if they get that the price isn't a concern with them. When we set our booth up at State fairs. We use a lot of digital signage, we have 3 TV's running a slide show with our customers children wearing our clothing, We try to make it a festive environment.
Interesting questions. The answer is yes to all and it's evolved over time.
I'm an artist/illustrator. I usually have to put the whole "title" thing because people don't understand what either is and have distinct preconceptions (it's actually misconceptions) for what each is even though they are the same very thing. The image of an artist is starving so... I can't begin to count all the offers to use my art for "exposure" or to donate to a good cause and I could deduct the cost of the materials (not time) involved in the creation of the piece on my taxes. Clearly, we apparently create just because we love doing it. Real compensation is never offered. Right before the pandemic, I had gone down to my local chamber of commerce to share with them why they (very guilty at the time) and all the local businesses had to stop approaching local artists with that ploy for exposure because if they didn't, I was going to embarrass them in public. I explained: my answer to all those offers over the years has been to ask where I can use that exposure to pay for my groceries and which bank accepts exposure for car payments. We all know there is no such thing. What you are really asking for is free art. As if it has no value but you want to use it. It was happening so often, I promised if another business comes to our local art guild with that ridiculous offer... as if it was a decent proposition, I would ask those questions point blank and I promised it would be uncomfortable. I'm not a public speaker but new folks are particularly susceptible, so I now make a point of presenting to the local artists guild every year to educate them on why this is a form of usery in our profession. If our work is worth the exposure, it's also worth paying to use it.
Illustrators seem to be understood as making money doing their art but there's the flip side. People who identify as artists treat them as if they've sold their soul to the commercial devil. Never mind, they are doing the same work as artists with the same materials, but instead they are typically paid for their work. It's a damned if you do, damned if you don't situation if ever that was one but that's the world I live in. I enter and am accepted in art shows and I also put that same work on items to sell. I just wanted to make a living doing what I loved to do whatever it was called.
Last summer it came to a head one day. I had a gentleman come into my booth at a farmers market where I sell the products I designed. He slowly looked at everything and made a point of commenting, "Nice hobby you have here." I think it was his very obvious, condescending delivery tone and the fact he was obviously watching to see how his comment landed, I could feel it bringing out the worst in me. But I was professional in my reply: "I told him I was going to tell him a sort of short story. I had won a small scholarship in high school with my art so that got me started. My parents didn't want me to study art in college so I had to figure out a way to pay for college myself. Realizing I couldn't stretch the scholarship through four years, I decided I would enlist in the military to earn the GI Bill and get on-the-job experience while I was at it so when I finished my tour, I would be both ready to work in the civilian world and finish my degree. Most people don't realize many civilian careers are also found in the military and they use illustrators so that's what I did. When I finished my active duty tour - by the way, in the Marine Corps so you know it wasn't one bit easy, I went back to college to finish my degree because I then had the GI Bill to help pay for it. I earned my one year certificate in commercial art, then my two year degree in graphic design and illustration, then my Bachelor of Fine Art, a four year degree. I went to work for Intel designing their user manuals that shipped with every product they made. I later worked for a local real estate magazine designing their home ads. No one knew I could do all of this other work that you see here in my booth. Everything here represents the full range of what I can do. And when you go to our national parks in the west, you will see my work there too. Look me up on Amazon. I know from the royalties I receive, my speciality books are a big deal in the UK and Japan. Sometimes you have no idea when you meet someone who is famous somewhere else. You just met one of them here in our little town in our little farmers market and didn't have a clue. It's not a hobby, it's my passion and this is how I make my living." For whatever reason, by the time I was done I was shaking mad on the inside. Maybe it showed on the outside too because he apologized, saying he had no idea. That was my point. Don't assume.
I knew from that point on, I was done, done, done with the unrealistic assumptions people make. I made signs for my booth making it clear, the images weren't photographs - they were original artwork created with either watercolor or colored pencil pieces. Now I'm constantly asked if I'm the artist. I reply, yes I am, thanks for stopping to look at my work.
Do potential customers question my prices? At the markets, EVERY year there is always the customer/s that comes up and asks, if I buy two [fill in the blank] at the same time do I get a discount? My answer has evolved over the years. Usually they are asking about notecards or my stickers. If it's my notecards, I ask them to pull the card out of the protective sleeve and then ask them to feel the paper it's printed on. Really nice isn't it? It's 90# cotton fiber paper, not wood pulp paper you usually get in the big box stores. And then I ask them to look closely at the printing... exceptional isn't it? Each of my cards are printed on the highest quality paper with the highest quality inks. Plus they come with a matching envelope. They are absolutely worth $5 each don't you think? Every time that ended the ask for a discount when they bought multiples.
I do the same thing with my stickers... I ask them to feel them - they are premium vinyl stickers, fade resistant and weatherproof so you can use them inside or outside. They quite literally won't wash off. Look at the printing - it's a superb reproduction of my original artwork so it's like having a miniature print only you can use it anywhere. Well worth a $3 investment. Now you just have to decide which sticker you want and where you want to put it. No one has ever asked for a discount on my stickers after that.
Several years ago there was a second vendor at one of my markets who also sold notecards. She did the thing of offering a percentage off if they bought two, another percentage if they bought three. People would mosey through my booth, looking at what I had to offer. Then they would move down to her booth. My husband suggested I should be doing something similar if I wanted to compete. Besides feeling it wasn't the right thing to do, I decided to go take a look for myself. I'm glad I did. I recognized right off she was using clipart. She wasn't creating anything unique and she was printing on flimsy cardstock. Because of her paper choice and printing method, they looked cheap. My products were distinctly different from hers. I decided I wasn't going to compete by lowering my prices. Coincidentally, I came back to my booth just in time to overhear one of my customers telling another that I had the "good stuff". The other vendor at the market with the discount pricing structure... she didn't come back the following year. In contrast my sales have been doubling every year without lowering my prices or offering discounts, neither of which I can afford to do and still have a profit margin. I didn't know the full "why" until I started reading this book. Good timing.
