Yesterday in A turning point for patient voices I said that the market for patient voices is maturing, leading to a need for two new initiatives:
- Mentoring new patient speakers … via my Speaker Academy blog series
- A new price policy for myself
I said today I’d present the pricing policy, but first I need to establish a foundation:
Prices must have integrity
I’m no student of formal pricing theory, but I do know this: Some list prices are real, and some are cheesy – fake prices that nobody actually pays:
- Some list prices are inflated so the real price can be advertised as “40% off!!”
- Some list prices are a starting point for negotiation (e.g. car sales)
- etc.
Why do some marketers play these games? Because consumers tend to like thinking they got a discount. That’s fine with me, but it’s not my approach. I prefer to deliver value and charge accordingly. Prices must have integrity, and discounts must be based on rules that you actually enforce.
Why it matters
This isn’t just a vague abstraction; it has practical impact: if there’s no integrity in your pricing, three things can happen, none of which is good for your reputation or your business:
- You find yourself in whining contests: “But we realllly want you. Can’t you lower your price?”
- [Mostly in academia] You find yourself in what I call “honor-whining”: “It would be such an honor to hear your thoughts.”
- You can detect this because when you say no, they say it again louder. :-)
- But that’s misguided:
- For speakers who have a full time job, a conference is a field trip, so honor may indeed be motivating. That’s fine with me.
- But when you’re a patient who’s barely scraping by, honor doesn’t feed the kids; honor doesn’t pay the rent.
- If one client works hard to raise the funds you quoted, it dishonors their commitment when you give a lower price to someone else for no reason.
- In social movements this is easy to understand if you view your client as a committed partner in supporting your cause. It makes no sense to dishonor them, eh?
Whatever you choose – free, small price, big price, growing price – your price should be real. When different situations call for different prices, have rules, and stick to them.
Tomorrow I’ll publish rules that have evolved from my thinking this year.
_________
Thanks to my mentors
My mentor on this, way back in the beginning, was Kent Bottles MD (@KentBottles), then at ICSI. He was the first person to ever offer me pay for a keynote – $2,000. The speech was a big success, and in later phone calls he advised me: “Word gets around – people talk.”
This has been reinforced this year by discussions with Executive Speaker’s Bureau, who has booked me for a series of talks at state hospital associations. They’re smart business people, and from my own experience in years of sales and marketing, we agree: If your price doesn’t have integrity, people lose respect, and they start gaming you.
Consumers like to think they’re getting a deal, but since you (and I) are in the B2B space, that means we need to think more like CEOs than Target shoppers when it comes to pricing our services. What value are we delivering via content creation and presentation of that content? What improvement(s) will our audience see in their own organization after our ideas are shared? Is there opportunity via a longer relationship – i.e. project development, strategy consulting, or a player to be named later?
Too often, I see ePatients who are authentic experts approach their new business with a B2C head, when they need to develop a B2B brain. We are, in the best cases, businesses selling to other businesses. We’re not flacking t-shirts, or even books, although many of us have written at least one of those. Our product is the contents of our brainpans. Setting a fair value on that is Job 1 … as you well know.
Looking forward to seeing your chart =)
You know, Casey, again the pricing issue comes back to “If there’s no economic value in what I say, that’s fine – have a nice life.” If WE (the speakers, the patients) don’t know that we have value, we won’t enforce it – and we’ll likely go out of business.
Heck, even with my insistent attitude, it took me three years to break even.
Time is money. It is that simple. And time is a limited commodity. Either they want you, or they don’t… And if they want you, they must compensate you.
I do feel that patients and their insights have been traditionally undervalued. How much, I leave as an exercise for the student… But I recall an incident not long after my toddler was diagnosed with diabetes. He had a catastrophic low, and I gave him glucagon as I was taught to, then (foolishly in retrospect) brought him to the ER. We sat in a cubicle for 3 hours. Every doc and PA in the place came in, checked him out, listened to my story, said they thought I had done the right thing but they wanted to consult with someone else, and left. After the fourth or fifth consult, I realized I was a “teaching moment” for the staff, few of whom (if any) had encountered a type 1 diabetic so young. I really felt I should’ve billing THEM when the invoice came. It leaves a rather nasty taste in your mouth… I mean, don’t get me wrong, it is a positive thing to be able to offer knowledge to people who need it, but it must be done on MY terms, not theirs, if it is to be anything other than, well, vampirism.
This is far afield from the prices of speeches, but my reaction to your story is that it would be fine with me if people TOLD me their wanted to do that, and I agreed, but certainly not if it was a hidden agenda. That’s just plain rude, not to mention taking advantage.
Dave –
Another thing I’ve run across just this week when asked to visit a small book club that will read one of my books — “How can they get your books?” “Uh, buy them on Amazon.” “Oh, they never buy the books.” “There are two in the library.” I occasionally give away my books to certain people but not to groups. The woman who asked me about this has bought my book; she’s an artist who underprices her paintings.
It’s taken me this long to fathom your comment, Rhonda. Are you saying they asked how they can get your books for free??
If so, it sounds similar to the economy of conference producers who will gladly assemble whatever they can get for free, if others will buy it. I suppose if everyone’s happy that’s fine with me, but it strikes me as a sort of irresponsible “garage sale” economy – “We furnished our apartment with whatever we could find at the end of people’s driveways on trash day.”
Whatever everyone wants to do is fine with me, but I think would-be speakers need too be conscious of what they’re being asked you do, and make choices. You can do freebies when you’re getting started, but if you want to make a living you have to find a place where there’s genuine value beyond created and delivered.
Thank you, Mighty Casey. Thanks Dave.
Trying to get to bed as it’s almost 2am but the information is too good. :)