Several years ago, I was trying to gain a deeper understanding of the business model I run. In support of this, I began to network with other agency owners. One of the things that surprised me was how much other agencies charged. I came across several agency owners that billed hundreds of thousands of dollars for the same kinds of projects I had billed thousands of dollars for.
This leap in pricing fascinated me.
“How do you do bill for those kinds of amounts?” I wondered.
We tend to project our own value onto what we sell.
For me, as a small fry agency owner, I couldn’t see how website design and development could ever be worth hundreds of thousands of dollars.
But the reality is that for the people who buy those sorts of websites, it’s a reasonable expense for what they value.
Who those people are and what they value was the answer to my question.
For example, if the buyer is a marketing manager at a large corporation selling consumer goods, they might value someone:
- With a track record building consumer focused websites
- Who has a brand marketing perspective
- Who can set things up to integrate with their cross channel advertising platform
- Who can build websites that can get hammered with traffic and still keep kicking
The intelligence of their motives, their reason for buying, form the differentiating criteria for anyone who wants to sell to them.
The better you understand who you serve and what their reasons are, the more profitable it is to market, sell, and serve them.
Featured image is Rene Descartes by Frans Hals the Elder. Used under public domain.