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.

According to an article published on Forbes by Pia Silva (ok, that was three years ago, but still valid, I suppose), she argues that “the debate on whether or not you should put your prices on your website garners some strong opinions (and I’m no exception!)”.

Some believe it is downright stupid to show your prices. They think that if you show a price before you’ve had a chance to demonstrate the value of what you’re offering, many people will look at your price, get sticker shock, and never come back. Or, they’ll see your price, then look for someone else whose price is lower, and then choose the lower-priced option because you haven’t had the chance to demonstrate why you are better than your lower-priced competitors.

So, let’s be more practical and use a recent example. Here’s a video post from @barnardco from Tik Tok:

I believe there are two precious lessons here:

1. Someone’s online presence doesn’t demonstrate their value, which necessitates an in-real-life interaction to prove their worth.

As we just saw, “saving time” through transparency did NOT happen, or it did, at a very high cost: fewer leads. The cause: services in exchange for “exposure”.

2. If you want a healthy, profitable service business, you must have a decent margin on your work. That will never be in line with a customer whose only concern is the price point (a short-sighted way to make business decisions).

With more and more people leaving their under-paid and under-recognized jobs, in an ideal world, budgets should never be set in stone, and clients should not purchase a service solely based on their budget; instead, they should buy based on what value they’re looking to buy, and how much that is ultimately worth to them. BUT, and here’s the problem, we don’t live in an ideal world, and customers, more often than not, can’t always value what is behind someone else’s work.

A well-known story is about a mechanical engineer with over 40 years of experience who was hired to fix a giant ship’s engine that broke down, and no one could repair it.

He scrutinized the engine, from top to bottom. After seeing everything, the engineer unloaded the bag and pulled out a small hammer.

He knocked something gently. Soon, the engine came to life again, and he had fixed it!

Seven days later, the engineer mentioned that the total cost of repairing the giant ship was $20,000 to the shipowner.

“What?!” said the owner.

“You did almost nothing. Give us a detailed bill.”

The answer is simple:

Tap with a hammer: $2

Know where to knock and how much to knock: $19,998

And now, during the Great Resignation, the importance of appreciating one’s expertise and experience has become more evident because those are the results of struggles, experiments, and even tears. If I do a job in 30 minutes, it’s because I spent 20 years learning how to do that in 30 minutes. You owe me for the years, not the minutes. As people get better at their processes and increase the value of what they deliver, then the demand for their services goes up.

Bottom line: listing prices or not is, of course, up to you. I only hope this article helps you in any way.

Cheers,

Sources: Should I Put My Prices On My Website? (forbes.com)
Video by: @bernardco from Tik Tok