The Price Behind the Form

Dear friend,

The riddle first, as the postmark demands. Your century again, and tonight we are looking over the shoulder of a woman with nine tabs open at ten o'clock.

Two firms who sell the self-same trade,
Both want to know what will be paid.
One prints "from nine hundred" plain,
One asks you fill a form again.
One inbox hums, one's stuffed with air.
Who chose the buyer? Answer fair.

Hold your answer. Story time.

The Story

Two firms in the same trade, and the work, in the old chorus, was equally good. Same sort of clients, same sort of results, both with a website that had cost somebody a great deal of thought.

A woman sat up at ten at night with nine tabs open, doing what every buyer in your century does before they speak to a single human being: finding out, quietly, whether any of this is for people like her.

The first firm's site was handsome and told her nothing. Bespoke solutions, tailored to your needs, every project is different, get in touch for a personalised quote. She did not get in touch. She was not going to hand her telephone number to four strangers and spend a fortnight dodging their calls in order to discover which of them was in her range, and she knew perfectly well what "contact us for pricing" has always meant in every trade since the invention of the counter: it means enough. So she closed the tab, and the firm never knew she had been there, and their view of the market remained pleasantly untroubled by her existence.

They did get enquiries, mind. Plenty. And that was the second half of their trouble, because the enquiries came from anyone at all, and their days filled up with calls to people whose entire budget was less than the deposit. They mistook that inbox for demand and their diary for a business, exactly as the man with crowd that never bought a thing mistook a crowd for custom.

The second firm had a page with a number on it. Not a rigid price list, because their work genuinely does vary, but this: most projects run between two and six thousand; here is what a two-thousand-pound job includes and what it does not; here are the three things that move the number, and one of them is how much of the tidying you do yourselves.

The woman read that page twice, worked out roughly where she'd land, put the tab in the morning's list, and rang them the next day already knowing what it cost and already halfway sold. There was no haggling, because there was nothing to haggle about; she had priced herself in before the call. The firm heard from fewer people that month and did more work than they had ever done, and their calls stopped being a lottery.

What they had actually done, though nobody in the office put it this way, is let the price do the sorting overnight, seven nights a week, without a soul being paid to sit up doing it.

The Lesson, Since You've Earned It

A hidden price does not stop the buyer deciding. It only makes them decide without you. That is the part the argument always misses. The seller imagines the choice is between telling and not telling; it is nothing of the sort. The buyer will arrive at a figure either way. Withhold yours and they will invent one out of your photographs, your typeface and their own anxiety, and then act on it, at ten at night, in silence, and you will never learn that it happened.

Two objections, and both deserve a straight answer. Every job is different. Quite so, and entirely beside the point: nobody asked for a fixed price, they asked for a range, an example and the reasons the number moves. Give them the smallest real thing you do and what it costs, and the buyer can place themselves. Competitors will see it. They see it already, friend. They ring you as customers twice a year, and they have your quotes from every client you both pitched. The only party your secrecy successfully keeps in the dark is the person holding the money.

And there is the awkward truth underneath, which is worth saying since nobody else will. The price is usually hidden not because the work is complex, but because the seller wants a chance to talk the buyer round before the number lands. That is a business designed around a conversation you are increasingly not going to be granted. Your century decides in the tabs, before the call, and a price on the page is simply the clockmender's sieve moved to where the deciding now happens.

Three questions, and open your own site while you answer them:

1. What is the smallest real thing you do, and what does it cost? Not the average job, the entry point: the version a cautious buyer could start with. Publish that as a "from", with what it includes. If you cannot name it, you have no entry point, and that is a product problem wearing a pricing costume.
2. What three things move the number? Scale, speed, how much the client does themselves, whatever it truly is. Write them in plain words on the same page. A buyer who understands why the price varies will not accuse you of vagueness; they will start working out which version of themselves they want to be.
3. How many of your last twenty enquiries could actually afford you? Count them honestly. Every one that could not is an hour you spent, a hope you raised, and a small unkindness done to somebody who was never told the price in time to save themselves the trouble.

The Answer to the Riddle

Who chose the buyer?

In the second firm, the price did, quietly, at ten at night, while everyone slept. In the first, the buyer chose herself out, just as quietly, and the firm went on believing their market was full of people who wanted cheap work, because the only people left in the inbox were the ones who had nothing to lose by asking. A form does not qualify anybody. It merely postpones the question until it can be asked expensively, by a human being, on the telephone.

The verse:

The price you'd rather not display
Is guessed at, badly, then away.
So print the range, and print it plain,
And meet the ones who'll come again.

Until next time. Go and put one number on your site this week, a "from" with what it includes, and count the enquiries before and after.

P.S. Expect fewer enquiries and brace for the fright of it. That is the number falling to what it always truly was, with the wasted half removed. Judge the change on work won and hours spent, never on the size of the inbox, which has been flattering trades into poverty since long before your century thought of it.

Also in the archive: Set Aside at Nine in the Evening, The Demonstration and What Your Price Says Before You Do.