FYI I’m zipping over to Tampa tomorrow to drop marketing knowledge at the “Telling It Like It Is” Conference. If you’re around, come find me and say hey! (or text me if you have my # and we can meet up).
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Saw something interesting last week, made me think of you.
Every January, the Fort Worth Stock Show & Rodeo kicks off at Will Rogers Coliseum, just West of downtown Fort Worth. It’s an amazing mix of rodeo, carnival rides, shopping, great food and all the farm creatures my animal-loving children could hope to see.
A Cole family fave is climbing on all the tractors on display in the vendor areas. Companies like John Deere and Kubota will bring all their latest model backhoes, mowers and tractors, and the kids can climb all over them.
While the kids were enjoying the farm equipment playground, I got curious about the pricing around one of these things cost. Upon closer inspection of a mini-excavator, here’s what I saw:
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If that image isn’t loading for you (or if it’s too hard to read), the pricing is as follows “$460/mo at 2.99% for 60 months,” with “10% down with approved credit” in tiny print.
The total cash price wasn’t listed anywhere on the device. (which provided a good opportunity to test the mental math skills of my 11-year-old, having him calculate the total investment. He passed with flying colors.)
They weren’t the only ones doing this. I saw other tractor dealers, hot tub dealers, massage chair salespeople and more, all showcasing their price in “monthly payment” type language.
A few notes on why this is an effective pricing strategy:
1. Most people budget and live in a “monthly expenditures” kind of manner. People get paid weekly / biweekly, and they have monthly bills – mortgage/rent, cell phone bill, car payment, electric, water, gas, etc. So sharing a price in terms of monthly payment is a natural, familiar frame people are used to.
2. If you can create a plausible positive-ROI scenario, any purchase is more of a no-brainer. For example, let’s say I clear land for a living. If I can buy a new stump grinder for $350/mo, and it’ll let me clear an acre 25% faster than what I’m using now, I can take on 1-2 extra jobs per week, at several thousand dollars per job.
So that investment would ROI for me the first couple days I use it, and the rest of the month is gravy. Makes it a no-brainer decision.
Similar example is how we have our coaching programs set up. Once your surgery scheduler uses our coaching to book just 1 extra procedure for you, that’s a 10x (or more) return on their investment in the program right off the bat. Again, no-brainer.
So structuring the pricing in a “this is what you will pay per month” makes it much easier to understand a positive ROI.
For you, not all of your patients are investing in surgery to achieve a positive ROI money-wise (some are, since they can save tens of thousands of dollars on things like glasses and contacts over decades). But this is where you can expand the definition of “investment” – certainly it includes money, but also time, effort, attention.
It’s distracting to do computer work when your contacts are burning your eyes. Hate going to the gym because your glasses always get sweaty? That’s a problem.
What’s the return you’ll receive on having a procedure like vision correction to solve those problems? Well it’s like the old MasterCard commercials. Some activities have dollar values. Others are priceless.
3. Monthly payments make the inaccessible affordable. A lot of folks don’t have an extra $60,000 sitting around for a new truck, $75,000 for a new tractor or $600,000 for a new house. Or $6,000-$15,000 for vision correction. Thankfully, they don’t need it. Because with affordable payment plans, the new purchase is affordable for their budgets.
So when you’re presenting price to patients in the office (or even on the phone if someone is adamant about getting pricing info), you are more helpful to your prospect when you describe the investment in terms that are familiar, helpful and applicable to their budget. And you can do that by talking about your pricing in terms of monthly payment plans.
– Troy “Tractor” Cole
PS – Remember to reply or text me if you’ll be at the TILII meeting in Tampa!