Knowing Your Value
Knowing your value and understanding the value you bring is essential to anyone in sales.
Without understanding your value, how can you be confident when discussing your value proposition, your pricing or your fees?
My visit to a recent auction last week brought this home loud and clear.
I was there to bid for part of a ship (yes really ) and a chest of drawers. I won the drawers sadly not the beautifully carved bit of the ship.
The item in the photo was on sale at the auction
One of the items was a Chinese Hardwood Brush Box 10 inches high. It was a nice thing to look at and seemed in pretty good condition. The estimate for this piece was £50-80.
How much would you pay for it?
What would that price depend on? Whether you liked it? Whether you needed one? Whether you collected them? Whether you needed a pot for your brushes?
Knowing Your Value – the bidding started
Often at an auction it can be a bit boring waiting for the items to come up that you have an interest in bidding for.
No-one in the room seemed to have any particular interest in this and the auctioneer started with “Give me £80 for it” Auctioneers seem to start at the top end of the estimate and move down to the lower end of the estimate in a little game with the people in the sale room.
However, within less than five seconds, he glanced at his computer screen and he said “I’m up to £4,200 on the net”
£4,200 for a pot listed at £50-£80.
There was also a phone bidder and then battle commenced, Past £5,000, past £10,000, Past £15,000, past £20,000 and finally stopped at £23,000.
£23,000!
Of course, I could not see who the bidders were because they were not in the room, but I assume that they were Chinese and had recognised something about the item that connected them to it emotionally, culturally or perhaps because they knew it was made by a great craftsman or was associated with a famous person in Chinese history.
He or she had an emotional investment in that object which for the vast majority of people in the sale room would have meant little.
Value has an emotional attachment to it something beyond a price tag, something beyond merely buying. It extends beyond the features of the product and helps the buyer realise the benefits to them of the product or service.
Knowing your value
How do you create the emotional attachment to your products and services?
Being clear on the value you bring, and how you articulate it will affect the prices you charge, how much you sell and the profits you make.
Do you see yourself as the £50-£80 brush pot or are you clear about what you can do for your customers and clients and confident enough to be asking £23,000.
If you want help thinking about how you articulate your value, then call us on 0845 450 0988