If you want to get into the head of your buyers, the guide How Customers Evaluate a Price in the PricingBrew Journal is a great read. It goes into detail about the 8 factors that influence how customers’ perceive prices and how you can take them into account in your own pricing efforts.
One of the factors discussed is how companies willingly (or unwittingly) train their customers on what they need to do to get a lower price.
As consumers, many of us have figured out ways to get a better deal. We know that airline tickets will tend to be cheaper if we book in advance. We’ve learned to wait for one of those regular coupons from some retailers before making a purchase. We know that car dealers often need to sell this year’s models to make room for the new ones.
Whether intentional or not, these companies and industries have trained us to know how to get a lower price. Even when we might be willing to pay more, we’ve learned what to do to pay less.
Of course, it’s one thing to train consumers on the tricks to getting a lower price. But could B2B buyers have figured out the signals too? What if your company sent these signals:
- Your sales team works on quota and are much more likely to give a discount at the end of the month or quarter.
- Whenever you launch a new version of a product you need to burn off inventory of the older version.
- After you announce a more cost-effective manufacturing process, you’re more willing to offer deeper discounts.
You can bet that savvy B2B buyers will have figured those tricks out if you’re sending the signals.
It’s one thing if those buyers will only buy from you if they get those lower prices. But what if they’re actually willing to pay you more? Pretty scary to think that the signals your company is sending not only showed them how to get a better deal—but also taught them an easy way to transfer more margin right off of your balance sheet and onto theirs.
How Customers Evaluate a Price
Customers aren't as logical in understanding value and assessing a price as you might think. In this guide, Mark Dresdner exposes eight factors that play an important role when a potential customer evaluates your prices.
Pricing Psychology in B2B
While businesses do indeed have systems and policies to ensure greater rationality and consideration in purchasing, certain psychological factors can still have tremendous influence over price perceptions.
