Recession Busting Secret Number 3

Attract Premium Price Buyers

I’m lucky enough to spend a lot of time talking to business owners about the challenges they face and also the successes they are seeing.

I was chatting to a beauty salon owner recently about how she was doing and some of the challenges she was facing.

Her salon is located in a predominantly Asian community and she is virtually flanked on either side by competing salons.

She employs 15 staff and runs a good quality salon providing good service to her clients.

Her single biggest challenge is competing with the salons almost next door that are able to charge much lower prices than her.

How?

Well, by having poorly trained staff, cash only businesses, a suspected lack of adherence to tax rules, little if any adherence to health and safety and little if any focus on providing quality client care…

She spends a lot of money training her staff, paying good wages to get good staff, paying her taxes, providing employee benefits such as holiday and bonuses. All stuff that she should be doing and is right to do in a quality salon.

Her perspective is that it’s just not ‘fair’ that another salon should be able to run a dodgy ’ship’ and be able to take business away from her.

Of course whether or not it is fair is unfortunately completely irrelevant and the argument that ‘they’ll get what’s coming to them’ may impart a little satisfaction,  and is likely a valid one but in the meantime she’s got to struggle, scrape and barely pay herself to survive. Not quite what she had in mind when she opened her salon.

And it is seemingly an impossible task to compete with

a business next door which charges lower prices for

the same products/services as you.

Stories of clients popping their heads in the door saying ‘why would I come to you when I can get the same treatment next door for less?’ were of course rife.

This is a very common and very real challenge.

How do you as a quality business, help your clients understand why they should pay more to come to you?

Clients, consumers, me, you, are more aware, more informed than ever and we are rarely interested in doing anyone a favour by paying more for something we can get cheaper somewhere else.

If I’ve got two items lined up side by side that are exactly the same and one shop is selling the item for £50 and the other £65, you can be damn sure I’ll be keeping the additional £15 for something else.

Why wouldn’t I?

However, if I’m looking for somewhere to take Tracey (my fiancée – and by the time you read this, who knows, we may be married) for a romantic meal and I line two restaurants side by side, one selling a 3 course set meal for £15 a head and one offering a gourmet a la carte menu with a professional lounge piano player, romantically decorated restaurant, a top quality wine selection and a beautiful countryside setting for £75 a head, I wouldn’t hesitate for an instant to opt for the chap tinkering the ivories…

You see, this challenge of competing with low price competition is fortunately something which can be easily solved and by solving it you can actually lay the foundations to become the most profitable and stable business in your market.

If it were true that people ONLY bought based on price then no one would buy a Mercedes, no one would go to expensive hotels, no one would buy holidays with Kuoni, no one would stay at the Savoy, no one would buy Chanel bags, no one would choose to buy Tesco’s finest food over ’smart price’, no one would send their dog to a ‘dog spa’ (and they do exist) and I wouldn’t pick the higher priced restaurant…

Only about 10% of our population choose the lowest

price option for anything.

That means a whole 90% of the population are happy to pay above the lowest price and a whole chunk of those want to pay premium prices!

On top of that, lower price buyers are much more likely to complain, much more likely to switch to competitors at the ‘drop of a hat’ and much less likely to spend a lot of money with you…

High price luxury buyers tend by their very nature to be the complete opposite.

They complain less, they are more grateful, they spend more, are less likely to switch to competitors and are not only more likely to refer people but are more likely to refer people like them (bonus).

And even better, they are the least likely to be affected by the credit crunch, rising fuel prices, falling houses and economic uncertainty…

So…

For a second, ask yourself this question…

WHO you would rather serve?

Affluent clients with money to spare who are least affected by recession or low price buyers who can barely afford their rent when the price of petrol rises by 2p a litre?

The answer of course is obvious.

Grab your FREE GIFT HERE => FREE GIFT

If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to my RSS feed!