“Transparency” is a big buzz word in marketing and sales these days.
And it seems like a great idea. Be up front with your pricing. If someone asks for price, give it to them. Transparency for the win, right?
If it were actually that simple, then yes. And maybe it is for certain straightforward purchases, like groceries.
But the elective procedure Patient Journey is long and complex. And in these situations, “price transparency” as we know it can actually do more harm than good.
Let’s go through a quick illustration to demonstrate the point:
Johnny Blur decides he wants to get his vision fixed. So he calls 5 different LASIK places in his town and asks the most common question, the only question he can think of to ask – “How much do you guys charge for LASIK?”
Johnny lives in Transparencyville, USA. So all 5 providers tell him the price they charge to do LASIK.
Later that night, Johnny sits at his kitchen table. As he analyzes the 5 practice names and 5 price points on his legal pad, he tries to decide where to go.
Practice C is the cheapest. Should I go there? I mean, lower prices are good, right? That’s what I’ve learned from TV commercials all these years.
But then Practice E is actually the highest priced. So many that means they’re awesome for some reason? But they can’t be THAT much more awesome though. They seem too expensive, not going there…
Question: now that Johnny knows the prices of all the LASIK places in town, is Johnny any closer to making an educated decision about his health care? No, he is not.
In fact, he’s in a worse position than if he’d simply researched each practice online and picked one based on what he read.
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If someone made a list of procedure prices in your city, would they pick “the right” practice? Sure some of them might choose you. But many others wouldn’t understand your true value, and pass you up for a “cheaper” provider.
I tell you this story of Johnny to illustrate how “Price Transparency” often backfires without adequate context in which to assess actual value.
(This isn’t theory. We see it daily in SMS exchanges and call recordings. A practice will indiscriminately give out a price, and the prospect will reply with “Oh wow, that’s too much for me” or “I can’t afford that. I’ll just stick with glasses.” Everyone loses in this situation.)
Remember, 98% of the prospects calling your practice lack the necessary decision-making framework because they’ve never had to make this type of decision before.
They don’t know how to think about the decision, how to process it, or how to confidently make it. You need to give them their decision-making frameworks. (which isn’t as hard as it may sound. We coach you how to do this in our E3 Conversion System bootcamps…)
So if price transparency is an issue, what do you do? Hide price? Act like you can’t give any kind of pricing estimate? No. That’s ridiculous and frustrating to people.
In fact, being up front with your pricing can work really well, when it’s done in the right context and sequence.
But this message is long enough already. That said, I’m happy to go further down this mind-bending, persuasion-packed rabbit hole if enough folks are interested. If you’d like me to dive deeper into this next week, reply with ‘rabbit hole!’
– Troy “Price Translucent” Cole
PS – What do you think? Is it helpful to give people the price up front when they ask for it, or is it actually a major disservice?