Do you recognise this…

An important customer phones up and asks someone at your firm to do something for them…

“Can you just do this for us…. “ or “Rather than do it that way, it would suit us if you did it this way instead…” (i.e. the non-standard way).

Your people are well trained. They do everything they can to delight the customer… go the extra mile. So with a big smile they agree.

But somewhere in the process the customer doesn’t end up paying for this extra service. You sort of hoped he would, but nobody mentioned anything about it so the job gets done and no invoice is sent… or if it is, the customer is furious because the charge comes as a surprise.

I will let you into a secret. The customer wasn’t sure whether you would charge or not. But they weren’t going to mention it if you didn’t.

Here is a little phrase we train our clients to use that solves the problem. Anytime someone asks you to do something that is outside the normal contractual arrangement, the very first thing your people should say is:

“I am sure we can help with that, let me work out a cost for you”… all one sentence without taking breath.

Get them chanting it out loud at your next team meeting until they say it without thinking.

This little phrase solves the problem in three ways:

Firstly: it puts the principle of charging for the service squarely on the table so no one is in any doubt at the outset.

Secondly: by using the word cost rather than price, it reminds the customer that there is a cost to you associated with providing the service.

Thirdly: it gives them a chance to argue if they want to, before anyone is committed to doing anything…. and that is much fairer to both parties.

A colleague of mine many years ago, having overheard one of his team giving away something, waited until he had put the phone down and asked him to join him outside the front of the building. Looking up at the company sign, he asked the somewhat confused lad “Can you tell me where it says ‘Registered Charity’?”

The moral of the story is it is always best to let people know what they have to pay for (and what they do not) as soon as possible. No one likes nasty surprises.

“Payment Problems: Authorisation Declined Call us Immediately” … the title on a letter that dropped through my letterbox yesterday.

Now I know that my bank account balance could cover this house insurance renewal twenty times over, so I am looking at an administrative cock up. If you are like me when you see a letter like this your heart sinks. You know that you need to set aside at least 45 minutes of your busy day to deal with this… it may take less, but the last thing you want is to have to drop out of a call to a call centre when the end is in sight, to go to a meeting.

Your heart sinks again when you see “We will also charge you a failed payment fee of £25, as described under ‘Other Charges’ in the ‘Policy Payment Arrangements’ section….” … Now you are going to have to work yourself up into a truly Daily Mail tone of indignation in order to get them to waive the charge… adopting the full “Are you doubting my integrity young man?” approach to frighten the call-centre operative into speaking to their supervisor.

Turns out they tried to use a debit card that had expired and sure enough on page two of my renewal letter in small print  … (page one of which reads “NO NEED TO CALL we will automatically renew.” in big blue letters!) …it showed the card details they planned to use including the expiry date as a month before the letter was printed.

A simple piece of computer programming could have been put in place that said – if the renewal date is later than the expiry date, then insert “Please call to give us some new card details as this one has expired” on page one of the letter.

But no… some clever-dick decided to send me a heart-stopping letter that forced me to take time out of my day, pretend to be a Daily Mail reader (stretching my acting skills to the limit)  and make myself angry in order to avoid something deep in their terms & conditions.

There are two morals to this story:

Firstly: If you have to refer to your T&Cs then the relationship with the customer is already broken. Some legally-minded folks fail to see this.

Secondly: Stop people in your organisation from jumping to the conclusion that all customers are setting out to defraud you and need teaching a lesson. If they do they will write this assumption into the company systems.

PS I am now expecting a customer survey asking me how the operative handled my problem. Of course there will be no box to tick that says… Operative was fine (if a little scared), but your systems stink.

Perhaps you have a product that is so unique that you cannot begin to imagine how much you can charge for it. Perhaps it is a software product that has no direct cost attached to it… so there are no clues to be had there… it is always going to be a 100% margin product whatever the price. Perhaps it is a service for which the customer will have no obvious benchmark. Here is a little technique to help you come up with a figure. We call it Relative Value Comparison and this is how you go about it:

Firstly figure out what benefits your product can deliver that could be expressed financial terms e.g. profit made, money saved, time saved, new customers won.

Next try to lay your hands on the kind of figures the client (or a typical client in the sector) would recognise e.g. if your product helps win new customers, then find out what revenue they would expect from an average customer.

Then craft a little sentence that starts with “If our product only….”

Something like:

“If our product only wins you three more customers worth £20k a year, then isn’t it worth giving it a try for £x”

or

“If our product only prevents one breakdown in its twenty year life, if that breakdown results in 24 hours of downtime at a cost of £3,000 an hour that is £72,000. Isn’t it worth avoiding that for £x”

Once you have done this, you need to read the statement quickly out loud and without really thinking about it, put in a value for x that seems to make sense. If you are democratic soul have a few colleagues do the same.

This little trick is a good way to find a price that ‘sounds right’ in the context of the selling process. If it sounds right in your head, then the chances are that it will sound right if made as part of similar justification to a prospective customer.

WARNING: The technique does not work if you then plonk the price on your website without the justification.

The moral of the story is that: The means by which you justify value is at least as important as the price figure itself.

PS The technique also works when justifying a higher price than a competitor. Craft a statement that values the risk of an inferior product. “If our product only saves you having to…. Isn’t it worth just another £20 to be sure you wont need to”