This one is the 10 of Clubs from the Impact Pricing card deck.

Face it, when you talk to a customer, what you really want to ask them is, "how much would you pay for them?" The problem is they won't answer that question.

First, they probably don't know the answer to that question. But more importantly, in the back of their mind, they're thinking, Hey, I can't tell them the truth because if I tell them it's really valuable to me, they'll end up charging me a higher price. So, I'm going to come up with a number much lower. I'm going to game the system, or play a negotiation game without them even knowing I'm playing.

Of course, that hurts us because we're trying to gather real information, how much would they pay?

One question I found that works relatively well, I wouldn't call it scientific, but it's a great way to get just a perception of people's pricing. And that is, "how much do you think other people like you would pay for this?"

It takes enough indirection in the question that they tend not to think about gaming the system. And instead they think, "Oh, well, that person over there is probably like me, so therefore they would probably pay this much." When you ask that question, what the buyer's thinking in their mind is, how much would I really pay, and that's how much I think other people would really pay.

We hope you enjoyed this example of Pricing Table Topics. What you just heard was done without a script.

If you have any questions or feedback, please email me, mark@impactpricing.com.

Now, go make an impact.

Connect with Mark Stiving: 

• Email: mark@impactpricing.com
• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/stiving/