When You Should (and Shouldn’t) Publish Prices on Your Website
“I hate leaving money on the table.”
If you haven’t said it, you’ve certainly thought it at some point or another.
And I’m totally with you: I don’t want to leave money on the table either. And one way to do that is to publish your prices on your website. Or is it?
I’ve been asked a lot lately why some consultants publish prices on their websites, and others don’t. I certainly can’t speak for them, but there are several reasons why someone might do one or the other, and several questions you should answer to figure out the best approach for yourself.
But the money…
The biggest argument against publishing prices on your website is simple: you may have been able to negotiate a higher price, but your published prices kept your fees artificially low. By publishing a price of say $5,000, you may be missing the opportunity to charge $8,000 or even $20,000 for the same service.
Sure, it’s a valid point.
But the opposite may be true, too. If you don’t publish prices, you’re probably in the “let’s figure out their budget” camp. And if you are, you’ll religiously seek the client’s budget during your sales process. It’s likely that they’ll be reluctant to say their budget, or even know what it is, which means you’ll define a price range. In this case, you might say something like:
Since you don’t have a budget, an engagement like this typically costs between $5,000 and $15,000.
Your prospect will ask “why the range?,” and you’ll say something like “well it depends on how much work goes into your specific project.” Now, you’ve effectively given them a price: $5,000. While consulting should always be a win-win relationship, you’re smart enough to know that your client will prefer a lower price, all things equal. Yet, you’ve effectively set an anchor of $5,000, when you could’ve just picked the middle number and anchored the price at $10,000.
In other words, you just lost some negotiating power.
Another thing to note is that, by definition, you’ll never close a sale without a listed price.
So I have a simple question for you:
Question 1: Do you have more leads than you need?
If the answer is an emphatic “yes,” then you should consider listing your prices.
One thing that listing your prices will always do is disqualify a large percentage of people. In fact, it’ll probably disqualify the majority of people who view your prices. That’s a good thing if you have too many leads.
If you have way too many leads — say more than 3x the number you need — then you should probably consider both raising and publishing your prices. You may want to say something like “Starting at $____,” but I’ll get to that next.
Question 2: How well-defined is your service?
I’ll just be frank about this one: if your service isn’t standardized and well-defined enough for any reader to instantly understand what they’d get for $X, then you can’t publish a single price.
However, you can still publish a “Starting at $____” price.
Let’s look at two examples.
If you’re doing a standardized coaching engagement like Philip Morgan that includes just a weekly call, then you could easily set a defined price. Similarly, Brian Casel’s Audience Ops has a standard price for one article written every week. No problem — another good candidate for a defined and published price.
On the other hand, if you’re selling custom websites that vary with the specific needs of the client, then you can’t publish a set price. Instead, you could publish a minimum price to disqualify anyone who doesn’t have the budget for you.
Question 3: Do you love sales or marketing more?
A while back, I spoke to David Darminin, the CEO of Hotjar. His product combines several different established product categories, yet he charges a very low price. When I asked him why he didn’t charge more, he said something really interesting:
I don’t want to run a sales organization.
You’ll have to make the same decision. If you publish prices, you’ll have the opportunity to get paid without speaking to anyone, or at least you’ll dramatically reduce the amount of conversation required for a closed sale.
If you don’t publish prices, you’ll have the opportunity to establish value during a 1-to-1 conversation with your prospect. On the other hand, you’ll never be able to get paid without talking to someone first.
Do you love sales or marketing more?
If you’re deathly afraid that you’ll lose out on higher priced engagements, then you shouldn’t publish your prices and instead focus on becoming an excellent salesperson.
If you want to avoid sales conversations — now or in the long run — then you should consider publishing your prices and establishing value through your marketing.
Question 4: How close are you to achieving premium pricing?
Premium pricing is easy to see, but truly achieving premium pricing every time you sell an engagement is tough. Typically, I’d consider premium pricing to be about 20% above market rates. If you can regularly command such high rates, you’re doing really well. The holy grail of premium pricing, of course, is being the sole service provider qualified to provide your service.
Said another way, buyers can’t go anywhere else to get what you offer.
If you’ve already achieved premium pricing and can reliably charge a premium price with or without a value conversation, you could consider publishing your prices. If you struggle to charge premium prices, then you’re 1) not delivering enough value to your clients, 2) not establishing enough value in your marketing, or 3) not establishing enough value in your sales process.
It’s decision time.
Back to the original question: should you publish your prices on your website?
You can consider publishing your prices if all of these conditions are met:
- You have more leads than you need
- Your service is well defined and contained
- You prefer marketing to sales
- You have a proven way to charge premium prices
If not, then you probably shouldn’t publish your prices. And here’s the simplest way to think about it: until you have too many leads, don’t publish your prices. You should be having more sales conversations.
