All about price?

As I recently drove up to a house to pitch for new business, I was a little shocked to see a competitor drive out of the street having just left the house I was going to. I’d been told there would be no competition for this business and as soon as I saw this car I knew it was game on. During the pitch I asked if there were other companies we were going up against and I was told there were numerous.

I pitched hard, I sold the benefits of our company and I formed a relationship with the clients.

When I got home I felt exhausted and a little exhilarated. Going out for dinner that night I recounted the story to the dinner table and a friend asked me if my reaction to knowing how much competition we were up against was to discount my fees. In all honesty I told him it hadn’t occurred to me.

My strategy was simply:

• be real and be likeable (more often than not, people want to do business with people they like).
• sell the benefits of going with our company and the eventual outcome which equated to more dollars in our clients pockets (without us discounting fees).
• appeal to what these people most wanted and that was to feel that their property was in the very best hands.

Long story short, I’m looking across the table at a bottle of champagne and a thank you card dropped off by these clients after we won their business and then delivered significantly above what we had promised in less time than even we had thought possible.

Some clients will simply want the cheapest deal. If that’s the type of client you want, you’re welcome to them. My favourite clients and the only ones I will pitch to are hard to earn, who want the job done properly and are willing to pay a fair amount for that.

What type of clients will you work hard to win?

Kirsty Dunphey is the youngest ever Australian Telstra Young Business Woman of the Year, author of two books (her latest release is ‘Retired at 27, If I Can do it Anyone Can’) and a passionate entrepreneur who started at age 15 and opened her own real estate agency at 21. Currently Kirsty heads up www.reallysold.com the premium online copywriting site for real estate agents and is a co-director of Elephant Property in Launceston,Tasmania’s only boutique real estate agency purely for investment property owners. Kirsty’s other ventures are outlined at her website www.kirstydunphey.com where you can also sign up for her newsletter.