WEBVTT
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The topics and opinions expressed in the following show are
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solely those of the hosts and their guests and not
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those of W FOURCY Radio. It's employees are affiliates. We
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make no recommendations or endorsements for radio show programs, services,
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or products mentioned on air or on our web. No
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liability explicitor implies shall be extended to W FOURCY Radio
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or its employees are affiliates. Any questions or comments should
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be directed to those show hosts. Thank you for choosing
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W FOURCY Radio.
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Welcome to Powerful Business Strategies, where you will find out
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that everything you have ever learned about growing your business
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is wrong. Finally, a show where you'll learn the right
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way to grow your business by learning business and financial
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strategies that your competition isn't doing. And now here is
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your host. Resident of NeXTSTEP CFO Michael Barbarita and joining
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Michael for today's show as an executive moderator is chooky.
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Obia, Yes, yes, yes, this is chooky, and I believe
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that gratitude is undefeated and growth is about the next step.
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It is an honor for me to moderate today's discussion
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with my good friend Michael.
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Michael, how are you.
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How are you, Chooky? How is your weekend?
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Weekend was phenomenal?
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Yeah, Mike Dallas losing.
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Yeah, exactly, yeah, yeah, the Cowboys loss something. I probably
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have to get therapyfore later this week. How was your weekend?
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Really good? Really good? Thanks? Great? And my name is
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Michael barbera president of Next Step CFO, and next Step
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CFO is a fractional CFO and strategic implementation firm. In
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Our vision is to ensure overwhelmed business owners achieve the time, freedom,
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and consistent profits to build a legacy and live the
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life they desire. And our mission is dedicated to guiding
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small business owners to leverage their time, exploding their profits,
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and build a meaningful legacy. The show Powerful Business Strategies
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and our book of the same name, is a step
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toward accomplishing that vision and mission. So with that, I'd
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like to hand it back to my co author and
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moderator for the show today, Chooky Obio.
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Michael, Look.
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I am energized about today's episode. The title for today's
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episode is increasing Prices, and I know that we've got
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quite a few insights, practical insights to share. Before we
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do that, just a quick disclaimer Michael Look. As our
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regular listeners know, fact, we have a number of new listeners.
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Michael and I are both affiliated with a number of
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different organizations, and I currently serve as the managing director
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of business development for Better Price, a global business focused
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law firm. In addition to that, it's truly inspirational to
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collaborate with Michael to moderate a number of business roundtables
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really close to co and then meet with small business
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owners and medium sized business owners and document best practices
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from those business roundtables. And look, this is part of
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the inspiration for our book, Powerful Business Strategies. But please
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note the views expressed in today's show are our personal
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views based on success stories and successful experiences. My mission
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as a fearless leader and moderator for the discussion is
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to ask the right questions and help you as a
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listener to really learn the best strategies that the competition
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isn't doing. And Michael Look, giving your CFO and CEO experience,
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I am truly truly energized by today's episode because we're
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discussing something that a lot of business owners might find
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counter intuitive.
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Increase in prices.
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Yeah, yeah, absolutely fearful even Yeah, it's something that they fare. So,
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as Jokey pointed out today's show, we'll show you how
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to raise your prices and charge your worth without losing
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new business. But please understand that it's value, not price,
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that attracts consumers and prospects. If you can increase the
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value of your product or service, you'll be able to
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increase your prices, your profit margins, and increase your sales.
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And there are some common mistakes made by business owners,
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so you first should first familiarize yourself with price fundamentals.
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But before I get into that, one of the things
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this is really interesting, how one of the ways that
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I increase the value of coming to my ski stores.
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When I was in the ski business, one of the
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ways that I added value was I used to offer
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free freshly popped popcorn. I bought a large popcorn popper
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from a local carnival and when I pop the popcorn,
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you could smell it throughout the store. And the core
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concept in retailing was to get people in the store
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and let your merchandizing sell the product. Even if somebody
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comes into the store and doesn't even want to buy,
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the concept is is that get them into the store
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and have your merchandising sell the product for you.
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Interesting.
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So yeah, so people used to come into the store
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just for the popcorn, okay, and and then and at
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the end then walk out with product in their hands.
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And it was you know, the popcorn was hot and fresh.
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It we kept you know, some some days we had
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to do six or seven batches, and it drove revenue.
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It added value versus going to our competitor. Our competitor
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never ever, our competitor is never ever did such a thing.
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And you're going to see a little later on how
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Japanese auto dealers do a similar thing. And what we
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did with the popcorn alone justified any small price hype
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we may have implemented. And so just coming up with
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ideas to adding more value to your product or service
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is really important when it comes time to increase prices.
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So low price consumers think about this fundamental. Low price
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consumers will mostly consume your time if you're competing on price,
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and it's almost always the case. Typically they're the loudest
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and demanding value, and it's oftentimes it's oftentimes it's thought
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that the contrary is true, with the customers that pay
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the highest prices demand the most value. Not really true.
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If you really analyze who the customers are that are
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allowed it and are heckling the loudest, it's usually the
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low price customers that are the loudest and are consuming
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your time. So who Those who spend the most for
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anything should be entitled to the best treatment, and that's
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exactly what they get. But those customers that pay the
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highest prices, they simply make less complaints about value. Think
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about that, and let's look at two tactics where you
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could rapidly boost your pricing without any noticeable influence on
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your overall number of clients, both of which would improve
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your worth considerably. But here's the most important thing to note.
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The beautiful thing about being in business and price increases
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is you could always test your prices. You can always
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test it with a couple of customers, test it with
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a couple of quotes, test it on the reflay retail floor.
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You're not married to it. You can always revert back.
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So here are those two tactics. First, in cases where
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an uptick and price won't scare away too much customers
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too much, it would be worthwhile to consider simply raising
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your prices just a tad a product or service that
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normally sells for ninety two dollars may have its price
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increase to say ninety seven. What if you just increase
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it slightly, Customers are likely to not even notice the priceike,
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as they likely see no meaningful difference between the new
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and old costs. And one of the things that we
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learned is that even with a small price increase over
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time that could mean it definitely means more gross profit dollars,
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but it also also means an increase in your gross
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profit percentage. Two of the things that we always want
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to look at, part of the vital five that we
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always want to look at, and one strategy is to
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think about raising the prices of anything you sell that
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presently costs between ninety and ninety six dollars, eighty and
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eighty six dollars, seventy and seventy six dollars, and so on,
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and change the final digit to a seven or an
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eight or a nine even but today it looks like
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seven or eight are the sweet spots. So a product
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that's selling between ninety and ninety six dollars, make it
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ninety seven or ninety eight, and doing so will often
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result in no pushback and have no effect on conversion rates.
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You know, once again, if the thought of trying this
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makes you nervous, run a little test, double check your findings.
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In the event of client resistance, you have the option
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to revert back to your previous price structure. It's one
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of the beautiful things about business and about being in
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business for yourself.
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You have the opportunity to test exactly right, Michael, I
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want to pick up on that point. So we are
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getting some skeptics, right, as you might imagine. Right, So
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there's some business owners are a little skeptical here, right, Like,
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let's go back to just the point.
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That you made about testing this, right, I.
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Mean, there's some folks who are saying, well, look, I mean,
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how do I even start to kind of build that
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kind of a test profile.
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What are your thoughts related to that?
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Well, you know, I mean, if you're a retail store,
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change a couple of prices in the store to you know,
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increase them slightly. See what the impact is. If you
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are a service organization that provides quotes, make a increase
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your hourly If you're a service organization you probably have labor,
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increase your hourly rates slightly and do a couple of quotes.
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See what the impact is every or every time, or
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whatever price list you have. Maybe if you even if
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you have a subshop, okay, you change the price just
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one week for one week to test it, the price
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of a ham sandwich, I mean, whatever it is. You
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can always test it and revert back if you get
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the resistance that you're that you may or may not
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expect exactly. And that's and that's really how it's done.
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And that's the beautiful thing about price increases. You can
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test them. You're not married to them. It's not like
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you know, you have to announce them to the world.
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You don't, and so it's really an effective way to
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maximize the optimum price. And so the second tactic tactic
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is something I have suggested with my clients for years
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and it's proven very successful. And by the way, before
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you do any of these tactics, you should always understand
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your competition's pricing, if for nothing else, just to know
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it and know where you stand compare it to your rivals.
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But what I tell clients is if you get resistance
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or complaints due to high prices, twenty five to thirty
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three percent of the time, you're probably priced correctly. If
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you get resistance or complaints due to high prices less
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than twenty five percent of the time, then you're likely
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priced too low. And when you get resistance or complaints
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to high prices more than thirty three percent of the time,
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you should probably keep your prices where they are, except
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if it becomes more than fifty percent of the time,
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and then you should think about retracting some of the prices.
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Michael, Yeah, it's funny.
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You just got a nice kind of compliment here, So
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it seems as though that could be part of the test. Right,
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So you gather these data points and then you use
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some of the thresholds that you called out, For example,
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the twenty five percent threshold, you use that as a
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way to measure the effectiveness of your price increased strategy, right.
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Right, And and you know, if if your complaints a
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below one out of four or twenty five percent, then
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you're probably priced too low. Then you can start creeping up.
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Stop testing the creep you know, not testing the creep up,
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and and and that way you'll be right on top
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of it. Now, it's important to track your metrics on that.
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You know, retails, and retail you ask the people on
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the floor. What's the resistance on price? If if you're
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in the service business, you should keep track of what
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percentage of the time your quotes are denied because of price.
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People will usually tell you if it's price, you know,
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they're they're getting a quote, a smaller quote from someone else.
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That's always and sometimes that line is not really true,
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of course, but yeah, but you know, I think that
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if you kept track of it, you know, customers a
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good deal, they'll keep their mouth shut when you have
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a good when they when when they you know, when
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they're ready to buy right away. So I think I
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have always had success, My clients have always had success
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measuring that using those ratios to measure whether or not
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their prices are in line. So let's talk about commodity
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based businesses because they have difficulties when trying to raise
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price without a corresponding value added component. And notice, you know,
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notice I said without a corresponding value added component. To
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justify a price increase for a commodity based business, you
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have to zero in on what makes your product or
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service stand out from the competitors, and that includes how
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it's delivered. In other words, and you've heard us say
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these words before. If you've listened to any of our shows,
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you need a position of market dominance, and we have
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shows dedicated to explaining that at Powerful Business Strategies dot com.
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And if I have time at the end of the show,
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I'll explain some of the general mechanics of a position
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of market dominance. Again, but you're best served by going
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to Powerful Business Strategies dot com and there'll be a
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show there that talks about position of market dominance. And
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you should listen to that show and get a really
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good idea because it's critical to your ability to increase prices. So,
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and let me give you a quick example of a
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commodity based business who established a position of market dominance. So,