Let’s be honest now. Given what’s going on in the world, have you had a few ‘freak out moments’ about your business? We have. We’ve both cried. We’ve both taken afternoons off to lie under a duvet or watch mindless TV. We’ve had moments where we’ve had to prop each other up, just to keep going moving forward. One thing we haven’t done in order to keep the business going? We haven’t slashed our prices.

I’m guessing that last statement might sound a bit arrogant.

Who do we think we are? Businesses are struggling, taking loans, furloughing, going under. What makes us think that we are above offering a few cheap projects in order to keep the lights on?

Don’t get me wrong, we have discussed it. But, we decided price slashing wasn’t a path we wanted to take. Here are three reasons why:

• We don’t want to devalue our work. We are really good at what we do, as, I’m sure, are you. If we start offering marketing support services for a cheaper price than usual, the value of our work, in our clients’ eyes, will also drop.
• If our prices are suddenly 50% of what they were, we’ll have to look after double the number of clients to achieve the same revenue. And, as far as I know there aren’t any more hours in each day right now, so that would mean less time to spend delivering and thinking about each client, further devaluing our offering.
• We love what we do, but if we start doing it for buttons, we’ll start to resent the work, and the people asking us to do it. Not a good result for them or for us, and, again, that resentment is likely to be apparent to our clients, and further undermine the value of what we are offering.

There are many more reasons not to reduce your prices, but hopefully I’ve done enough to convince you to climb aboard the ‘I must not reduce my prices’ party bus with us.

So, now we know this bus isn’t going to Slashville, Tennessee, let’s figure out were it is going. In the current market climate there is definitely reduced demand for most services, so what can you do to keep attracting new customers and keep your business afloat?

Here are just a handful of other things you can do to make your offerings more attractive than ever, without having to reduce your prices.

1. Repackage your services, so your customers pay less, but you don’t lose your margin.

You could reorganise what you’re offering. Turn your one-to-one services into a group mastermind or online course and sell it to more people for a lower price. Break your service up into smaller pieces so that your clients buy a bit at a time, making the cost more palatable and manageable for them.

2. Add things in to make the value you are delivering even bigger, but keeping the price the same.

You may well need to go the extra mile to make a sale, so you could add in special bonuses, such as extra one-to-one time, useful templates, or a review session to make your usual offer seem more appealing than ever.

3. Change your payment terms to make your offer more affordable for your customers.

You could change the way that you do business to make it easier for your customers to say yes to investing in your services. Usually our payment terms are 14 days. We have adapted them for our newer services, existing clients can now pay within 60 days and new clients pay 50% upfront and balance within 60 days. This can make it easier for clients to come on board, while offering a bit of a safety net for us.

4. Sell through a partner and reduce your marketing spend.

Finding referral partners to sell your service for you, is a great idea right now. If you have people in your network who are selling into the same target market as you, there’s a good chance that existing clients of theirs also need what you provide. You could build your network of these referrers and offer incentives for converted referrals. You’ll make more margin on each client when there is no marketing cost involved in bringing them on board.

5. Introduce a free trial or discounted period

You could introduce a short period where your service is free, or discounted, in order to give potential clients a risk-free opportunity to try you out. Once people have tried something, they may realise they’d prefer to stump up the cash to keep you on, rather than go back to the way things were before.

It’s your turn. Any more ideas for making your offerings more appealing without cutting prices? Share your thoughts in the comments, we’d love to hear them!