Price Comparison is critical in this economy!
Price comparison in a fragile or down economy is of utmost importance and crosses industries…
My friend, Lisa, owns a territory of FIVE GUYS chain restaurants, here in NJ. Her sales are UP close to 50% over this time last year. The reason? The down economy!
(for those of you who don’t know FIVE GUYS, it is a restaurant chain that serves high quality burgers & fries made from top quality, fresh ingredients)
Here’s why - in a “good” economy, people “traded-up” from the franchise burger places (McDonald’s, Wendy’s, Burger King and the like). In a “bad” economy, people “trade-down” from other chains (Fridays, Applebees, etc…).
When people compared FIVE GUYS with the franchise burger places, i.e. lower end places, the value AND price was higher at FIVE GUYS. The result was a 50/50 choice… A) lower price and lower value vs. B) higher price and higher value. Now that the economy is not as good, there is an additional set of customers. These new customers are those who choose between FIVE GUYS and a chain place where a lunch or dinner with the the family could easily cost twice as much. In fact, in some ways, the better quality burger at FIVE GUYS is a higher value than one can obtain at a chain. So these new customers choose between A) higher value and lower price vs. B) higher price and lower or equal value.
This is similar to the topic of today’s Ambition Mission Community webinar - “Comparing Price: Why comparing your managed services offering to an IT department compels prospects to say “I’ll take it.”. The prospect is more likely to engage in a managed services offering if what they compare the offering to is higher in price and equal or lesser in value. This is the case when comparing a fixed price, managed services agreement for a small business customer to that customer having an internal IT department or dedicated IT professional on staff. The benefits to the business with the managed services offering are equal if not higher than the business hiring full time IT pros and the managed services offering is a mere fraction of the cost.
Here is a slide from today’s webinar that shows where the value and price questions are answered for a customer in realtion to 1) a T &M solution, 2) an in house IT Department or IT Pro, and 3) a proactive maintenance ans support (managed services) offering:
Good luck and happy hunting…
Let Ambition Be Your Mission!
~Matt