How To Pivot Value Based Pricing Doesn't Work

How to pivot when thevalue conversation doesn'tgo as planned?OK this is excellent.William, bring yourself online.Good morning.Good morning.OK all right.So you're having aconversation, presumablywith a potential client.And then you're like, well.How much is that worthto you to solve, right?And what did he say?Like $400.$0.45 what did they say?Dream a conversationwith a dream researcherthat he would be able to dothis huge, amazing thing with,like his wildest dream?I said, how much would youpay for that conversation?He said, $300.And what did you say?And I was like, oh,I'm surprised by that.But I didn't say anythingreally beyond thatbecause I didn't feellike I wanted to lead himin the value of that.Like, oh, he said, thephrase that came rightafter that, he's like, yeah, Ijust don't have a lot of money.Oh, that sucks.Yeah, there's adifference between nothaving a lot of money.And how much valueyou put on somethingif you say if you missedyour child's first step.What would you havepaid to be able to getthat no amount of money?Well, let's put someamount of money on it.200,000 and then couldbe in the poorhouse.You've seen me do this valuebased pricing conversationwith people who literallyprobably only do 50ka year, right?And then they're going toprice the whole thing at 200 k.So I think how we set upthe conversation maybeneeds to be re-examined.So when you say, like,what's the big problemwe're trying to solve?And I encountered is the exactsame thing in the Philippineswhen I was like, what is bigproblem that you want to solveand how much wouldyou pay to solve it?Most of thecreatives under $300.Like, you have no problemsI'm interested in solving.Or maybe you're thinkingabout this the wrong way.So they're usingtheir value systemthat they impose on themselvesonto me, and I'm like,I don't like your value system,please don't apply it to me.So let's keep looking fora bigger problem to solve.So two things aregoing to happen here.Either the person hasn't thoughtbig enough, so I would laugh.I'm like, Oh my gosh,OK, let's spend this $300and get this dreamconversation on the road,then I can't help you dothat, but somebody can,if that's whatit's worth to you.Have you thought aboutjust calling this person upand said, I'd like tobuy you three $300 lunch?Problem solved.Move on.And we have to beprepared for this, guys,this is not somekind of gimmick,this is not some kindof mental gymnasticsthat you can leverage everythingand get people to say thingsthat they don't believe in.Sometimes the valueconversation isthis is how much they value it.We've got to be OK with that.Totally fine.Just I can't solve that.Yeah, that was to givea little bit of context,because that was thefirst line on his goals.So the overall objectivethat we were trying to solvewas he wanted to be a waitlist practice a year from now.So he felt like that was part ofone of his steps to get there.So to give a little bitof context, so to that,Oh wait, let's practice,what does that mean?He's a chiropractor andhe wants to have a weight.He wants to be booked outa month or more in advance.Oh, I see.Yeah he wants to havea long waiting list.Yeah, OK.And what's his wait list now?He could get somebodyin the next dayor maybe even the sameday, so it's not even.It's nothing.No OK, so then thequestion then wouldbe if you could be booked outa month or two in advance?What would that be worth to you?What would he say?I mean, that's what wedug into, what would that?I said it differently,I think, and thatmight have been a problem.I said, what wouldthis allow you to do?Oh, OK, Yeah.That's not necessarily a moneyquestion just yet, right?Yeah, that's fine.But eventuallyyou do have to saybecause you're helping himto understand and definethe desired future state.And then you say, well, whatwould that be worth to youand I'm going to giveyou guys a little tip.Here's here's a little tipbased on this very conversationright now.If somebody saysto you, my dreamwould be to do this,you know, fantastic.Well what would that be worthto you if you could do that?$300 and then youhave to say there'sa difference between whatyou can afford to payand what it's worth to you.Do you understand that?And you can say if you couldspend one more day with the petthat you love and thatwould be worth something,and that's differentthan what youcan pay because at somepoint we have to learnhow to invest in ourselves.That makes sense, William.Oh, yeah, that's super helpful.OK And then givethem some examples.Those stories work really well.So because you guys arerelatively new to thisand somebody throws you oneof these curveballs, right?I don't want todeal with that now.So you just move on.I would inviteyou to stay in it.So I'm going topretend like I'm.And he says $300,like, whoa, whoa,that was a little unexpected.I thought you were goingto say, like $100,000.I'm curious whyyou value at 300.Just stay in the conversation.Because you said, ifI can meet Steve Jobs.And have an hourconversation with him.I'd have to think abouthow I can leverage my houseand sell things, youknow, because I want that.I want that conversation.So you just give him a coupleof examples, so, oh, I'mthinking about the wrong way.That's OK.So we also know thatpeople have prioritiesthat are different thanyours, and sometimes they'renot as focused on theconversation as you'd hope.And that's OK.So your job is to bring themback into the conversationand make it easier forthem to understand whatit is that you're asking them.OK, sure.In truth, truth couldbe that the worddream is thrown around a lot.And it's not spoken with theintent that it's meant to be.My dream is somethingthat is not attainable.And it would changemy life, it happened.Well, $300 dream, it'sa pretty modest dream,so either he doesn't knowhow to dream big enoughor we just need to keeprephrasing that until heor she understands.OK were there follow upquestions, I need to hit Mo.And all the follow up questionsare in the under that question,but I don't, I thinkyou guys covered it.William wood wouldbe better servedto say if the follow upquestions were not answered.Yeah and I do want tosay this to you guys.Value-based pricingis the Holy Grail.I've said this before.You don't need togo there on day one.You don't at 23 yearsinto the practice,we're just doingthe last two years.In the very beginning, it'sfixed based pricing, probablymostly based on hourlyestimate, if I'm being honest,at some point it justbecomes project fees.Adding in all kinds ofcreative taxes, as much as wecan dream and add in there.And we've done thatfor a really long time,and we've done reallywell because of that.And if you get tovalue based pricingand you're having a lot ofsuccess with it, fantastic,that's good.But don't worry, it doesn'thave to be step one.It might be step 36.