If we want to charge a “high” price we need to anchor it against the return the client is going to get back.

And, for this, we can use a quirk of how our brains work called “The Primacy Effect”. I used it on my post yesterday.

Whatever our brain sees first becomes the most important thing within that context. In Profit First this is why we talk about Sales - Profit = Expenses, not the traditional Sales - Expenses = Profit. Putting Profit before Expenses makes our brain concentrate on it.

But it also works in proposals.

If you say “the cost is £1000/month” they think “that’s a big number”. But saying “implementing this SEO strategy will increase your sales by £12000/month” you prime their brain with £12000. Then you say “and your investment is £1000/month” they do an instant comparison and see £1000 is low compared to £12000.

There’s no deceit, no manipulation, we’re just making sure the client doesn’t feel unnecessary “sticker shock”. And, when I send a proposal to a client, I get a success rate of 86%.

Check out my post about pricing the other day and see how I used the same principle.