Would You Compete Solely on Price?
By Cheryl Strege, The Partner Marketing Group
As this image so beautifully illustrates, there’s always a cheaper alternative to just about anything. We all make choices about the perceived value of the products we purchase.
Case in point: I have a friend who has a need to have the first, the biggest, and the best of everything. At last count, he spent $7,000 on his television set. (Just the TV, not the surround sound system, the Blu-Ray and the other components.) To him, it’s worth it and he feels good spending his money that way. (Personally, I think I would puke if I paid 7K for a TV.)
How to Compete on Price
As an ERP partner, you’d love to have many clients just like my friend but you’re also savvy enough to avoid the client who asks for your “cheapest price” for the software and services. As you’ve likely experienced, it’s a slippery slope if you position yourself as the “Dollar Store” of ERP software providers. It usually leads to slim to no profitability as well as high maintenance clients who will continue to expect you to deliver services at near cost. A recipe for dissatisfied clients as well as potentially putting you out of business.
The best path, of course, is finding those clients who already recognize the value of an intelligent partner who knows their business problems and has experience solving them. When you do, you’ll spend no time justifying your prices and all your time focusing on the client’s satisfaction. A win-win for everyone involved!
You’re probably thinking “absolutely agree”, then “how do I find those types of clients?” The short answer is customer case studies. When prospects can read testimonials and case studies as well as see videos of your happy clients extolling the great value they received from your firm, it’s a short(er) path to your front door. Instead of spending time and money trying to educate prospects why they should spend money on ERP, spend your time and money creating the “net” (aka relevant content) to bring in the already convinced prospect who knows QuickBooks or Xero isn’t going to solve their problems.
At The Partner Marketing Group, we face similar challenges. Rather than spending all our time and energy trying to convince ERP and CRM partners to market themselves, we would prefer to focus on the partners who already realize marketing is critically important to growing their practices – but just require a bit of help to get the marketing engine going and maintaining the momentum.
We invite you to explore the website a bit and learn more about the value a sharp marketing partner can bring to your firm.
P.S. I don’t know where the image came from (saw it on LinkedIn) but would give credit if I did.
