The day Stan Kovall showed the E for All cohort how to price for profit.
December 20th, 2016….
Today we enjoyed a very informative and refreshing meeting down at the Groundworks in New Bedford Ma. “Pricing Strategies” left little to the imagination and per the usual, I went in open minded yet confident on my ideas of price structure. The topic was presented by Stan Kovall, a mentor with E for All and accomplished entrepreneur. Stan, coming from an engineering background, was well prepared, direct and offered clean, concise definitions of various forms of pricing while tossing in toilet paper and goat skin glove jokes to keep us all on our toes. This session offered some great value to the cohort members and myself. With Stan being so direct with his information, we had plenty of time to ask questions and work as a group to understand how to price and why.
One of my personal take aways from the evening (out of many) was to truly understand Your value, to Your customers. This was something I naively thought I understood and priced for accordingly. Fairly quickly however, I realized I might be off in some of my assumptions. Throughout this section there were different cohort members asking specific questions that you would assume only pertained to their individual businesses, but through the various questions, a common theme arose. It seems to me, we are all trying to produce something of great quality, realize there is a hole in our respective markets, and we are working with E for All trying to bring the best possible product we can. Subsequently, it seemed we were all under pricing to some extent for various reasons. I can’t speak for everyone individually but my initial prices were roughly 10–15% lower than our nearest competitor for the sole purpose of “adding value“ to our service and build our clientele…. I know I know, not the best idea, but I’m learning. After noticing the commonality and asking myself what should I price x or y and why, I started to learn what value (in this sense) means. Value isn’t predicated by a well established brand or following the similar price points of our competitors, it’s more that. It is the effort we put into our product or service and what we do to accommodate /understand our customer as a business.That (for us anyway) defines our value to the customer. Boom, mind blown just in time for our break…
Cue in some amazing food from a Downtown New Bedford staple: Destination Soups (vegetarian of course).
After a small cup of the most flavorful Veggie Chilli I have ever had, I am ready to dive back into this topic and digest; figuratively and literally. As everyone was getting situated, the conversation sparked up again and the group as a whole hit this type of flow state of understanding Stan’s points. Collectively we were all working together on price and how to add value, but at this point, as a group not a individual business. It’s so fun to be in a room with such diverse people whose goals are so very different, but in the end, we are all trying essentially reach the same pinnacle. Point after point, question after question, we all synergistically worked together with the same passion. The energy of the room was intoxicating. As we all rhythmically slowed, Jeremiah and Shelly took the reigns of the conversation and to wrap up the last few minutes of class. Making sure there was no question or thought left unuttered, they proceeded to make sure everyone in the room could be as thorough as they could possibly be on our next upcoming project. As the class ended, My partner Lamonte and I were talking as we walked to the car about how much we got out of the evening. In typical fashion, we ended up talking for another solid hour about the class and our business. As we were refering back and forth to different points and the new ideas it sparked, he sumed the night up perfectly, and I am sure it wasn’t meant to be as profound as I took it. “We should add so much value to our product our consumer shouldn’t even consider a discount”…. Well said Lamonte… well said. Thank you Stan, E for All, Shelly, and Jeremiah for bringing us all together and for giving us such an amazing venue that I am sure made all of our respective businesses that much better. See you on Thursday.
Kevin M. Rose Jr
Unplugged Float
