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Title

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Persuade Your Customers to Pay More

Author

Ian Brooks

Publisher

Nahanni Business

Release date

2002

ISBN

095835068X

Reviews

May 21, 2006 5

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Manuel Lemos
manuellemos.netOnce in while, I hear PHP and ASP developers complaining that they do not make as much money as, for instance, Java Web site developers.

The fact is PHP and ASP are very popular platforms for Web development. At the same time, they are very easy to learn and develop applications using these platforms, even for people that do not have a background in software development.

This fact brought to the market many people that do not have many qualifications but are effectively competing for Web development jobs along with much more qualified Web developers.

This circumstance tends to bring down the average salaries and consulting prices that PHP and ASP developers charge. Some well qualified developers consider moving to the Java market or other better paid job markets, but usually those require much higher skills or having a degree and developer certifications that take much more time and money to obtain.

So, how can one qualified PHP or ASP developer overcome the competition of a crowd of under-qualified developers, and get better paid jobs or consulting contracts? What can you do when a customer wants to pay less than you are asking because there are other developers offering the same work for less money?

Persuading your customers to pay more is precisely the topic of this book. It was written by Dr. Ian Brooks, a reputed business consultant, with 30 years of experience helping many companies to grow and survive in competitive markets.

The basic advice that this book provides is that you should avoid competing in your market on the basis of lowering your prices. Instead, you should focus on providing a better service to your customers, so they prefer you instead of your competitors that are selling off cheaper.

The book makes it clear that competing in the price is usually a bad strategy by which you will hardly win. The book also explains why certain businesses, like for instance Walmart, can compete in price and still can make up to stay above the competition. The author presents that case to reinforce how hard is to survive competing in price, as Walmart does what very few businesses can afford.

So, how can you provide a better service to your customers that makes them prefer to pay more to you? That is the big question that this book answers.

The book highlights the fact that customers make buying decisions often for emotional reasons, rather than picking the competitor with the lowest prices.

Knowing your customers better is one of the steps than you must take to learn how you can please their needs better and be ready to influence their buying decisions in your favor.

One of the conclusions of this book that impressed me most is that when customers complain about your prices, in reality the problem is not exactly the price. Usually they mean they are not convinced that you can serve them well enough to justify paying more to you than to your competitors.

This is the same thing as saying that they would pay you more if you could show that you can serve them better. So, next time a customer complains about your prices that are higher then what others proposed, take that as clear hint that you should focus on convincing your customer that you can provide more services that the customer values.

One thing that this book covers with great depth, is about the sorts of things that usually are valued by business managers that make the buying decisions.

For instance, if a customer wants you to build a Web site to support his business, obviously they value features of the site that can improve their profit. If it is an e-commerce site, the more customers the site gets, the more sales it can make.

If you focus your efforts in optimizing your customer site to be optimized for greater visibility in the search engines sites like Google and Yahoo, it can attract much more free audience and can benefit your customer business dramatically, as it can boost the customer company sales.

This is an example that is not on the book. I just used the advice that I got from the book and applied them to one specific situation that Web developers consultants can use to satisfy business customer needs. This can be one of many ideas for Web developers to persuade them to gladly pay more for using your knowledge on technology issues and focusing in the success of their business.

I was influenced to buy this book after I read a short review in a reputed magazine for small business. If it was not for that, I would probably not buy this book. My first impression is that it was yet another book on how to get rich fast. The book is nothing like that.

I have an engineering degree, and so I did not have a background in business sales and marketing. So, I am pleased with this book because it helped me to guide my efforts in providing technical solutions that provide value to my customers. That motivates them to keep paying me more.

Although, the book is helpful to anybody running a business, it is particularly recommend to PHP and ASP developers that keep complaining that the market is crowded of people that sell their services too cheaply.

The book is interesting to those that would like to know how they can motivate their customers to pay more for their services or products, instead of keep loosing business to competitors that are selling off cheaper.

The book provides many pieces of advice on how to find out what each customer values, so you can focus your efforts on what matters most to your customers. This way, you can maximize your profit from the services or products that you sell to your customers.

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