Testing prices is a major source of surprise for many people.
Different prices on the same product often outperform one another by an enormous margin.
It’s not a matter of increasing prices — it’s a matter of testing them.
And testing can be done imperceptibly.
One consultant we know advised a business owner to increase his prices. The owner did not welcome the idea at all. Like most business people, he rejected the idea as ridiculous. “I’ll lose all my customers,” he said. So the consultant devised an interesting test. “Let’s take the slow moving items,” he said. “They represent about 30 percent of your $450,000 revenue. Let’s test increasing the price of those items by just 10 percent. And, of course, let’s measure the results.”
The result? No decrease in sales of slow moving product lines at all and an extra $13,500 on the bottom line. Of course, the client would not have realized that gain had he not been game to test.
Reluctance to test is something you can expect to deal with — particularly when it comes to testing prices. But deal with it by measurement.
Measure the results you get for each incremental change.
And remember, you’re not committing to changing forever. You’re simply committing to testing.