Impressions - March 2014 - 52

Businesses that are positioned as complete
solutions get the work most often.
offer all kinds of styles and decoration
methods." Let's expand on this position
with a very important concept.
A friend of mine once told me that it's
almost never a pricing problem we face;
it's an offer problem.
He meant that customers pay much
higher prices and can be coverted to sales
much more frequently if we have the right
offer for them. To get the right offer, we
have to understand them more deeply
than they understand themselves. This is
the "User Experience" (UX). The more
complete, fun and satisfying we can make
it, the more money we can charge and
the happier our customers will be. Think
about how masterfully Disney and Cirque
du Soleil have done this.
The starting point is the present. This is
the one-dimensional perspective. We wait
for a prospect to call us or come in. We listen
to what they want and then we present our
offers to them (colors, styles, choices, etc.).
We haggle over the price and (hopefully)

get the job. The multi-dimensional perspective is a much more efficient and profitable
way of approaching this.
Instead of a single opportunity, I have
created a six-dimensional (6-D) model. This
gives five different perspectives on the same
transaction. This is the basic approach and it
expands from there.
The first three perspectives are based
on time - before sale, present sale and
after sale. You simply expand your offering, or UX, to address all the things your
customers will need before they purchase
and after they purchase.
A school example might be to have organizational materials available for the volunteers to use to get the right quantities by
class. It also may include posters, banners
and signs to promote the event. This greatly
reduces your customer service overhead and
makes it easier for them to get the job done
fast and have a great event on their end.
After-the-sale offerings might be to
keep the screens and extend a discounted

re-run service to fill in quantities and sizes
your customer ran out of at the event. Or
perhaps a binder in which the customer
can keep everything related to the event
(with branding, of course) for the next
year's organizers with notes on what they
should be doing differently.

PRICING BRACKETS
The next two dimensions involve pricing. The easiest way to approach this is
to have a much more expensive solution
and a very inexpensive solution - almost
two different extremes. About 10%-15%
of your customers will choose the more
expensive price and about 10%-15% will
choose the very low end. The majority
will pick the mid-grade, which you'll price
slightly above where you normally price.
This is called bracketing, and it provides
comparison and positions your target goods
as a great value. You may offer pullover
fleece hoodies in a light, 7.8-ounce 50/50
blend; a heavyweight, 10-ounce 100% cotton; and a super premium, 12-ounce reverse weave, and price them at $18 for the
7.8-ounce; $30 for the 10-ounce; and $45
for the 12-ounce reverse weave.
Lead generation is all about your offer to
the market and how you position yourself.
Always think about the customers' benefits
and how you are going to make the experience faster, better, easier and more fun for
them. Price is way down on the list after
the other experiential elements. The more
you can involve them and be a solution for
them, the more likely they are to buy from
you and refer you to others because they
had such a great experience.
Mark A. Coudray is a respected and
well-known industry innovator and strategist. His works have been published in more
than 400 papers, columns, features and articles in every major publication in the United
States and abroad. Coudray has been an active member of the Academy of Screen Printing and Digital Technology since 1989, and
has written for Impressions since 1978. For
more information or to contact Mark, email
him at coudray@coudray.com.
Hear Mark speak on digital marketing
at a workshop at ISS Atlantic City. The
all-day workshops are just $99 if you preregister at issshows.com.

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Impressions - March 2014

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