How to Handle Price Objections

Don’t you just hate hagglers? The people who complain about your price points being too high… especially when they try to negotiate you down, right?

I wish I could tell you that I have a solution to stop people from complaining about your price points. But I don’t. What I do have is a solution to get those complainers over the fact that you have a price that is “high”. And more importantly get them to not only accept your high price points, but also feel good about handing over their money to you.

Here’s how you can handle price objections:

Create case studies

If you really want to show the value in what you offer, you have to create case studies. The simple ones won’t cut it, you have to give detailed ones… ideally with the exact things you provided and the results.

To legitimize the case studies, make sure you put in testimonials from customers. This can be done in the form of video or text and if you happen to go the text route, make sure you include:

• Their full name


• Company name


• Their picture


• Title at the company

If you want to see an example of a good case study, check this one out from Conversion Rate Experts.

Offer a free trial

One of the easiest ways to handle price objections is to offer a free trial. Remember, just because you are offering a free trial doesn’t mean you can’t take a credit card up front.

With Crazy Egg, one of our biggest objections from people is that our prices are too high. We created a “free trial” offering in which people had to put in their credit card up front. That offer converted at 59% higher than our 30 day money back guarantee offer.

Keep in mind that you will get a lot of people who will cancel your service before their free trial is up, so when you a/b test this you have to also include cancelations into your calculations.

Explain the value

The easiest way to demand a high price point is to explain how much money you are going to either make a company, or how much money you will save them.

If you can explain this in an easy to understand fashion and provide case studies to back it up, it shouldn’t be hard to demand a premium price.

A great way to do this is through sales copy. And don’t worry, your copy doesn’t have to be sleazy. I do this with Crazy Egg, NeilPatel.com and I also used to do it for my Quick Sprout Traffic System.

You could even spice up your sales copy by including a video incase people don’t want to read your copy.

Offer payment plans

When I used to sell the Quick Sprout Traffic System, some people felt it was a bit too expensive. They didn’t like the fact that I was charging $197 for an eBook, and video/audio training.

Instead of reducing the price I tested out a few payment plan options:

• 3 payments of $97.


• 4 payments of $67.

Although both pricing plans in total were more expensive than the original price of $197, the 3 payments plan option converted at 34% more than the original offering and the 4 payment plan option converted at 52% better than the original.

With the 3 payment plan option I still got complaints about my prices being too high, but with the 4 payment plan option, I got almost no complaints. Plus I was able to charge more than the original price of $197.

Explain what you don’t charge for

Just like any good business, you want to go above and beyond for your customers. Which is why you probably provide a few little extra things for your customers at no charge.

When people start to complain about your price points, you should explain how you go the extra mile for your customers and all of the little things you do for free.

You can even express this on your website by bundling all of that extra stuff you provide into a “free bonus” for anyone that purchases your product or service.

Explain why your price points are high

If people understand why your prices are what they are, they’ll be more likely to pay them. Tell them your fix costs, explain what their money is being spent on, and even tell them your profit margins.

People know you are in business to make money, but no one wants to feel like they are being screwed over. If your margins are reasonable and you explain your costs to potential customers, they shouldn’t have an issue.

For example, Single Grain had an issue in which potential customers felt their prices were too expensive. Instead of reducing their prices they explained to the companies why they charge so much, then they broke down their costs and even shared their margins. By doing this they were able to sign on 33% more new customers.

Offer lower price points for less and then upsell

Now this won’t work for all businesses, but you could lower your price by offering a limited version of your product or service. Plus if people are happy and looking for more, it creates upsell opportunities.

I actually had this happen to me when I tried hiring a copywriter by the name of Michael Williams. I didn’t want to pay his fee of $12,000 so he sold me on a smaller package that only cost me $3000. Funny enough, after 2 months, I went back to him and paid an additional $9000 to receive the rest of his services as I had a huge ROI on my initial investment.

At KISSmetrics, upsells make up almost 10% of our new monthly revenue. We’ve found that a lot of companies at first don’t want to pay for our higher plans, but within 3 months of using our product, they’ll upgrade to a higher end plan after seeing a positive ROI.

Focus on how you are better than the competition

If people didn’t see the value in cars like BMW or Mercedes Benz, they would just buy something affordable like a KIA. The fact is a car like a BMW or Mercedes Benz not only has more features than a KIA, but also is better built.

Consider creating a comparison chart that shows how you differ from the competition. This is done on the homepage of Crazy Egg. It provided a single digit increase in conversions, so not a huge boost but better than nothing at all.

It also reduced support questions by almost half in regards to our prices versus our competitors’ prices.

Stress the drawbacks of a lower price point

In many cases, lower prices will come with a drawback. If you can explain the drawbacks of the lower price you can persuade people to pay your premium prices.

A good example of this is RackSpace. They are one of the largest hosting companies and possibly one of the most expensive. They charge a lot, but their uptime rate is phenomenal.

If you ever speak with one of their sales representatives they’ll quickly explain they are expensive, but they rarely if ever go down. They’ll also explain that their competitors may be cheaper but tend to go down more often. Then finally they’ll close hard at the end by asking what it would cost you every minute your website is down.

For this reason they have done extremely well with their high price points. The company is worth almost 9 billion dollars as of today.

Leverage perceptual price points

There are a lot of little tricks you can do to make your price points seem like they are lower than they actually are.

Walmart has actually mastered this. Instead of charging you $50 for something, they’ll charge you $49.97. That way you emotionally feel like you are getting a good deal.

If you want to learn more about physiological pricing, you should check out this blog post on KISSmetrics. It has some great tactics with examples you can use and learn from.

Even the smallest thing can have a huge impact on your sales. Such as removing the “$” sign from your price points, which can cause a boost in sales and reduce price objections.

Conclusion

The next time you are given a hard time about your high prices, don’t give in! Instead use the tactics above so you can charge the prices you deserve.

I want to know how the tactics above work for you, so feel free to leave a comment with your findings or with any other ways you handle price objections.

via Quick Sprout http://www.quicksprout.com/2012/10/01/how-to-handle-pricing-objections/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+Quicksprout+%28Quick+Sprout%29