Keith Goodrum

Ryan Healy answered a pricing question on his blog today. A regular reader asked his experience with pricing.

Here is his response…

Should Prices End in 7?

“…There are all kinds of opinions.

I’m not big on ending in the number 7.

Just test it and see what works best…”

Wait a minute… Are you saying that we should test pricing points?!?

That’s CRAZY talk!!!

Aren’t we suppose to follow the herd, and not question the mighty “7″?

All kidding aside… I’ve tested pricing with my off line business. There were some interesting results.

But first a little background…

My offline business was residential window cleaning. So, I would go in and give an estimate. They would book on the spot, call me for an appointment or not have us clean their windows.

When I first started out only 1 in 3 would book a window cleaning appointment. That was a lot of estimates to give out, and a lot of time spent running around town.

Finally A Customer Came to The Rescue…

This went on for 2 months, and it was tough earning a living. I couldn’t figure it out. I was establishing good rapport with the customers. I looked professional with a nice clean truck, clean clothes with an embroidered polo shirt… I looked the part.

Finally a customer took me aside and told me what the problem was. My prices were too low! She said that my pricing lack credibility. It seemed to good to be true. I was shocked to hear this… I thought I was giving a good value for my services.

I went out on the next estimate and raised my pricing by 25%. Over the next few months my closing ratio jumped to 84%. My calender stayed booked out for 6 weeks… it was great.

Another Valuable Piece of Advice

This time Dan Kennedy said in his newsletter if you are up to your eyeballs with customers then it’s time to raise your prices. I was afraid to follow this advice. I thought all my customers would jump ship.

I finally decided to give it a try…

It took almost a year of thinking about this to give it a try. I timidity inched my prices up by 10%. No one said a word?!? So, I kicked it up another 10%… no one noticed.

Now I got bold.

I decided to see how far I could go with this… I kept raising my prices 20% at a time. Now, my closing ratio started falling. But I kept raising my prices.

I kept going until my closing ratio fell to 47%. And I was thrilled. Why? Because I was making more money while cutting back on my hours. It was nice not working sunup to sundown.

Well, Ryan that’s one of my experiences with price testing. Maybe I write about another one next week.

James Brausch was nice enough to send the first copy of his Testing Newsletter. I got home yesterday, and there it was sitting in my inbox. I downloaded it, and printed it out to read. I noticed that several people who have reviewed this also printed out their copy.

This edition is 15 pages chock full of testing results with James giving a summary of each test. The best part is that all the testing results come from one sales page. I like this because you get to see each test conducted, not just the ones James liked.

There is a lot of information to digest, and I have already read it over several times. Each time through the letter adding more notes in the margins. Good stuff…

The one thing that surprised me was that his intern program has a lifetime customer value. But, his explanation makes perfect sense.

I’m a big fan of testing, and this newsletter really delivered. He breaks each test down by variable and includes the results. And it gave me some great ideas on how to apply it in my testing.

I found his last page to be very thought provoking with the questions he asks.

The big question is can you afford not to test? Reading his newsletter further cements my answer to this question, which is no.

If you want to see behind the scenes of James Brausch’s testing, then this is the letter for you. You will learn a great deal about testing, and grab ideas to apply in your business.

James Brausch is giving away a free copy of the first issue of his testing newsletter.  It will be cool to see what James has come up with.

There are 3 conditions he asks for each person to do to get a free issue.

1. Make a blog post about the free newsletter offer.

2. Give an email address in the post, if your whois information is not correct.  My email address is keithgoodrum@gmail.com

3. Promise to give a review of the newsletter as a blog post… good or a bad.  I promise to post a review here.

Thank you James for making such a generous offer.  I’m looking forward to reading the newsletter.

If you would like to get a free issue of the news letter, then do what I just did.  Check out the post by James here:

http://www.jamesbrausch.org/anyone-want-a-free-copy-of-testing/

James is giving everyone until noon Tuesday to take advantage of this offer.  Make a blog post, and take some action.   It’s not hard to sit down, and write a quick response. I’m curious to see how many people take him up on this offer.  Want to bet it’s around… Oh, I don’t know…. Let me take a guess… 2%! 

Rewards come to those who take action.