The Value Factor: How Strategic Pricing Fuels Your Success with Lorraine Ball

Welcome to Live With The Pricing Lady.

I'm Janene, your hostess.

This show is all about helping you build a sustainably profitable

business while making an unbelievable impact on your world.

Learn from my 20 years of experience and from my guests as we discuss their pricing

challenges, failures, and successes.

Pricing is a way of being or behaving in your business.

My mission is to help you confidently charge for the value you deliver.

Pricing is either hurting or helping your business.

Let's make sure it's helping you reach your dreams.

Welcome and welcome to today's guest Lorraine Ball.

Hi Lorraine.

Hey, good morning.

How are ya?

I'm great.

I'm super happy to be here with you today.

Me too.

I've been looking forward to this.

So why don't

we start with

where you're calling in from this morning?

Well, and you'll notice I'm saying this morning I'm in Indianapolis.

And for those of you that are not familiar with the U. S. I'm about

three hours south of Chicago.

South of Chicago.

I haven't been to Indianapolis.

I almost moved to South Bend, Indiana once.

Oh, wow.

Okay.

So isn't far?

About a two hour drive north.

South Bend is, is up near the lake kind of almost in Michigan.

Indianapolis is literally dead center.

Most of the world, your city capitals and your state capitals are built because

there was a river and people came and settled or there were mountains and

they didn't want to cross the mountains.

Indianapolis.

exists for none of those reasons.

the territory became a state and they're like, okay, we have

to have a state capital and we don't want to piss off anybody.

So we are going to build a city dead center.

We are dead center, north, south.

We are dead center, east, west, but there's nothing here.

Except for Indianapolis.

So they, they laid out the city.

They, it's, it's a very organized, plated city.

Right.

But, you know, You're like, Oh, well, we could go to the mountain.

There's no mountains.

There's a little river.

There's, there's none of the natural things that make a

city naturally interesting.

So it's, it's kind of strange.

Well, actually that's interesting in and of itself.

I need to say, I did not grow up here.

So I asked that question a lot.

Why the heck is this city even

here?

Interesting.

So Lorraine, what would you describe as your superpower?

I think I have two that have served me really well in my career.

And the first is, my original training was as an elementary education instructor.

And so I have the ability to break down very technical,

Concepts into Manageable Bytes.

That has served me well when I have done marketing for Engineering firms and it

of serves me well when I am trying to break down big topics for clients so

we can manage them one step at a time.

So I think that's definitely one and and the other is strategy just my ability

to Look at a situation, step back, see a big picture and say, okay, we are here.

There's all this here and this is where we want to be.

How do we get there?

How

do we get there?

Excellent.

I love both of those.

What's one interesting thing that you'd like to share with us that

most people don't know about you?

Think that I am, I'm a marketer, I'm a little bit of an artist, and I think

it surprises people when they found out I was going to be a math major.

That I really am a numbers geek.

Now the people that know me best know the truth.

The rest of the world just assumes that numbers would not be my thing.

Interesting.

Interesting.

It's funny how we can make an assessment of someone without really knowing them,

you know, in that context as well.

Right?

Absolutely.

Absolutely.

So Lorraine, why don't you tell us a bit about how you started in your business

and what that was like when you, when you got there, when you started it?

So I came out of corporate and I had a good run in corporate and I

had two assignments in corporate that actually served me very

well when I went out on my own.

The first was I was running our dealer development programs.

And so my job was to develop training and services for the small business

owners who were selling our product.

And so I had an opportunity over an eight year period to work hand in

hand with Small business owners and put together classes and see how the

theory applied in the real world.

The second was I worked I ran a creative services team.

And so I was running an agency inside a large corporation.

And again, the systems and processes that we used to run that agency, when

I started my business, it was just me.

I mean, it was, it was just me and I still decided to implement

the project management system that we had used in my corporate days,

which at the time was ridiculous.

It was way overkill, but we grew into it.

So as I started as a consultant, And I had two products that

I really was interested in.

One was the really what I wanted to do was team building and creative

thinking and working with managers.

But I had always been a marketer.

And so people kept saying, Lorraine, I know you used to do marketing.

Can you help me with this?

And one day I woke up and I went, you know what?

I have a marketing company.

And I as much as I really enjoyed the creativity and the other

thing, I wasn't pricing it right.

I wasn't selling it right.

I, but the marketing services.

They will line it up.

Okay.

Yeah.

I think I know what my business is.

I love how sometimes what you, you go in one direction and then

all of a sudden you're like, wait, no, that's not what I intended.

I'm happy to go over here, but that's not where I thought I was headed.

, . Yeah, I think, I think it is.

Well, and I think actually the businesses that succeed often, if you talk about,

and this is not just small companies, look at the origin story of YouTube.

You know what YouTube was?

It was a dating platform.

What's that was the original concept was you were going to shoot these

videos and put them up there and different people would see them way

before a lot of the other dating and yeah Oh, there was something else.

I don't remember.

I used to have a whole bunch of these.

It just rapid fire because I would teach classes on on

innovation on business management.

And the reality is that very often business owners start businesses because.

It's something they want to do.

Right.

Without figuring out if there's a market

for it.

Ding, ding, ding.

All right.

Why don't we come back to that?

Cause I'm sure we will in this conversation.

My next question is the first time that you had to sit down in your own business

and set a price for what you were offering, what was that like for you?

You know, it's kind of interesting because in the beginning, coming out of corporate.

I knew what we were paying our consultants.

And so when I was quoting the creative thinking presentations and the trade,

the big stuff, that was actually easy.

Cause I used the model that I had been paying when I was on the other side.

, and I did that with confidence because I knew that's what they were paying.

But when I was pricing for marketing services that I had not bought,

I kind of would put a price out there and cross my fingers.

And I will tell you most of the time it was too low.

But I did, I didn't know at the time.

How did it feel to you when you recognize that it was too low?

So I had a couple of different moments in my career where I

realized I was, I was too low.

And it was funny because in my corporate days, I used to to teach

pricing theory to other people.

But when you have enough business, when you have enough leads, it's

more comfortable when you haven't.

So a couple of things.

One, I had a mastermind group.

And we were talking about different things and comparing pricing and

we were in different industries.

And I had three members of the group that are like, your price is too low.

You need to raise it.

I'm like, yeah,

I don't think so.

And the next month I come back and I'm going, yeah, I really would

like to hire this person, but God, she wants this much money.

And I really can't pay that.

You could pay that if you would raise your price.

And about the third month, they sat me down.

They said, we're not talking about anything else.

You need to, okay, I'm going to raise my price.

Did you have that connection between, between your price and

what you were paying for these other people to come on board?

Or was that just something you didn't really pay attention to?

In the beginning

well, in the very beginning, it was just me.

So I didn't, I really didn't have that connection.

As I started to hire people I had in my head what the company hourly rate was.

Okay.

So I knew what it cost us, or I knew what we were selling at But I still

really wasn't thinking it was more than I was paying in salary, but then

there's, there's all the other expenses and we were making, you know, I was

making payroll, I was making the bills, but I wasn't taking enough out for me.

And that's really where a lot of business owners get trapped is they're

paying their people, the organization's running, the customers are happy.

But they're not happy at the end of the week when they're going home.

And that's kind of where I was.

Yeah.

I think the second epiphany for me was really, I bid a project

that we were ideally suited for.

It was a web design, I knew that this was right in our wheelhouse.

It was the right size project.

And I put a good price around it.

I even put in a little extra and I felt like this, this was gonna

be that, that right project.

We didn't get it.

And I had, I called the guy and I said, look, I, you know, I appreciate.

that you know, you made another choice and I respect that.

Would you tell me why?

And he says, well, honestly, I was concerned you couldn't do the work.

And I was like, what do you mean?

I have, I have these great designers.

He's like, yeah, you know, and he told me what he paid.

And what I realized in that moment was that my price was sending a signal

about the value, the quality of my work.

Yeah.

And.

I thought that ain't going to happen again.

So what did you do about it?

We raised our prices.

And the rule always was we were comfortable kicking off

because we were a small agency.

So if we were kicking off four websites a month, and it took

several months to finish, so we always had this rolling thing.

If we were kicking off four websites a month, we were good.

If we were kicking off five websites a month, we were working hard.

And if we were kicking off six websites a month, it was all hands on deck.

And it was, it was too much.

So if I sold my four websites for a given month, my price went up.

And so the next person I talked to, the price was higher.

And if they were still interested, I was okay because I knew I could

pay one of my part timers a few extra dollars to help fill the gap.

Right,

right.

But the funny thing was that every time I raised my price and I'd start

the next month, I never went back.

So for me, capacity cause we talked about at one point hiring

extra people and very wise.

I still, I still laugh because Alison was 25, two years out of

college, one year out of college.

And I'm like, well, I, you know, we're busy.

I think we should hire another person.

And she's like, why?

And I'm like, cause we're busy.

And she's like, yeah, but we're only busy to hear.

And if you bring her in, we're going to have to sell to here.

Why don't you just raise our prices?

We won't have as many customers, but we can do the, and I went, Oh,

ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding.

I actually, the building we were in, I actually renovated it.

We were looking at new space and I renovated it and

capped with that investment.

I knew we were never going to move to a bigger building.

Right.

We were never going to move to a bigger building.

I know this sounds strange now, four years past COVID, but back then

everybody came into the office every day.

You know, and we had space for everybody and, and it was a different environment.

And so I knew I wasn't going to hire any more people.

And I was like, okay, if these are all the people I'm ever going

to have, I mean, I may replace somebody we can only do so much work.

And if we can only do so much work, we need to be paid a premium for it.

Right.

Right.

Right.

So what challenges do you see businesses facing when it comes

to their own pricing strategies?

I think one of the things that we are not taught is how to talk about pricing.

How to ask the questions.

Like when I went through sales training, we did hours of practice on things like,

tell me, do you have a budget for this?

The answer is always no, no, no.

We, we really don't know how much, how much is it going to be.

And when they come back with that.

My sales coach would always say, they're lying.

He says, customers lie.

He says, people don't lie, but customers lie.

Okay.

They have a number in their head.

And what you need to do is you need to figure out what is that number.

One of the ways that I learned to have that conversation, was to

put out there a really big target.

You know, we can build, and of course these numbers may not be as

relevant today because I haven't built a website in five years.

You know, we could build a website for 3, 000 or 15, 000.

And it really depends on What you're looking for.

So within that range and

you know where you are.

Oh, I knew what I liked to do.

I, what I love to do is just give them an outrageous number.

Can I imagine your budget is 20, 000 and they'll be like, oh no, no, no, no.

And Yeah, information, right?

So you can actually steer the conversation in a sense or get more

useful information using such tactics.

I love

it.

Well, the other one is that very simple question of, do you have a budget?

I was quoting a project.

I was talking to someone about a project and in the conversation,

you know, I'm making mental notes.

Okay.

They want the logo.

They want this.

They want that.

And I have a number in my head.

And the number in my head is, 6, 000, let's say.

My brother, the salesman, always told me he who talks first, loses.

Do you have a budget in mind and the customer?

And I remember the number in my head is 6, 000.

The customer says, Well, We were kind of hoping to stay under 10.

Oh, I can stay under 10 . What I knew, right, based on that is if I had said

six, I would've lost the sale for the very same reason I lost that other sale.

Yeah.

He would've thought we couldn't do the work.

We could do the work.

If I said 10.

That would be really pushing it and he wouldn't feel good about it.

I think I ultimately said, I think we can be between 75 and eight.

Do you think that's going to be comfortable?

And we have to work through some of the details.

And he was like, Oh yeah.

And we got the

money lady.

He, I mean, yeah, he felt like he was getting a good bargain, but if I hadn't

asked and I had put that number out there.

One of my other tricks, because when somebody asks you about your hourly rate.

And you know, it's 150 an hour.

I have learned to say it's a buck 50, which is 1.

50. For those of you that are not listening in the U. S., which is way less

than 150, but they know when I say it's a buck 50 an hour, they know I'm saying 150.

There's no question in their mind what I'm saying, but I'm not saying it.

Right, right, right.

And it's a

mental game.

It's really just, and it's more

comfortable for you to say it, right?

You know that there's a little bit of an implied joke in there.

And so it kind of takes the edge off of having to say, to say the number.

Yeah, it makes it more comfortable for you.

Yeah, and more digestible for them.

Yes.

And, um, It is.

There's, there's that little bit of joke.

There's that little bit of attitude.

It takes it.

And that's my style to be a little less stuffy business.

You know, I can't imagine a an expensive attorney.

Saying it's a buck 50 an hour.

You, you know, they will probably say, well, they might mean

1,500 an hour

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

There, there is, there is that.

But, but yeah, it is it, it makes it comfortable and it's very

consistent with my personality.

Mm-Hmm.

. Mm-Hmm.

. So I think that's again, learning how to have conversations about pricing.

And the sooner you have the, do you have a budget conversation?

Because if somebody says to me, yeah, yeah, we have 2, 000 into my head,

I'm thinking this is a 6, 000 project.

The sooner I can say, you know, We normally start around six.

I respect that you're working with two, right?

I don't think we're the right fit, but I can recommend some people

who you might want to talk to.

And so they walk away feeling good and very often, you know, if you're in

business for the long haul three or four years later they're back and they're

like, hey, I did build that first website for 2, 000 and I'm ready to grow up now.

I just tell people the way I'm serving the client without them being a client.

Yeah.

So it's, it's a win win for, for both in that context.

Oh, and, and you know, a lot of that I think when you're in a consulting

business of any type, knowing where your competitors are price wise, knowing

what they deliver for that, allows you to do that up and down recommendations.

So it's funny in our conversation, we hit very briefly, and I want to come

back to it before we wrap things up.

We hit briefly on, you know, understanding your market and your customer.

We hit on understanding your costs.

We hit on the communication side of things, right?

So we're kind of hitting a lot of the highlights here.

At the very beginning, you said that, you know, a lot of businesses go into

business without really understanding what they're trying to achieve, or even

who they're, they're trying to achieve it for in terms of a customer base.

How do you see pricing in relationship to understanding the customer themselves?

I think when you really understand who your customers are.

And what problem you solve for them.

You can begin to have conversations around, what does it cost

you not to fix the problem?

What is the value if you do, and how much will buying my product or

service help you save, help you grow.

The more you can have those conversations and the more you can dig in and

understand what the cost and the penalty is of not working with you.

And the benefit if they do, now you know what the value of your product is.

And value has absolutely nothing to do with what it costs to make.

The hard thing for a business owner to get their head around

is both sides of that spectrum.

When the value is so big, you almost feel embarrassed charging 10, 000

for a presentation, let's say.

But if the audience gets the value, it's worth it.

That's difficult, but you can overcome that.

The one you can't overcome is when it costs you 500.

to deliver a service, and the customer only values it at three.

Right.

Now what you have is No business.

You do not, because no amount of marketing and no amount of pushing is going to

change that dynamic and create value in the mind of the customer that isn't really

there.

Right.

When you don't understand your company, Customer, you put yourself in the position

of having to use hope as a strategy.

I hope that they're going to be willing to pay this.

I hope that, well, if they ask, I hope I'll be willing to accept a lower price.

You know, it's like you, you kind of go into it, hoping all these things are

going to fall into place, but the better you understand them, the better you can

communicate around price with more ease and ask the questions, the more You step

out of that strategy of hope and you have clear boundaries with yourself and

the ability to communicate and do what needs to be done with more confidence.

Absolutely.

Oh, I, I, that is, I think that should be a bumper sticker.

When you don't have information, all you have is hope.

I had a boss years ago who used to always tell people, hope is not a

strategy, but it's one many people use.

Oh, it is.

It is.

You know, and You know, it's like, Oh, I've had those days.

Yeah.

Yeah.

But the more that you know about your customers, the more that you know about

your market and the better you understand

what you're competing with.

And the reality is you're not always competing with a company

that does exactly what you do.

Yes.

You know

Indirect competitor is usually more the competition than the

direct ones, funnily enough.

Yeah.

Yep.

And.

until you know that you can't put together a good sales proposal because

you're selling against the wrong thing.

Interesting.

All right.

Let's start wrapping this up.

If there's one thing you would like people to remember from our

conversation today, what would it be?

Raise your price.

There you go.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I, I, I really think that if you go into your next sales conversation

and you raise your price 5%.

You may get it, you may not, but if you do, you know what your new price is.

And you'll be ready

to do it again next time.

Yeah, I like that.

Thank you.

What is a book or a tool that you'd like to share with people?

It doesn't have to be pricing related.

Something that's exciting you these days.

I love my, my

favorite, favorite book is Made to Stick, And now I'm drawing a blank on

the authors, but you'll, if you search Made to Stick on Amazon, orange cover

looks like duct tape across the center.

It is a great book on Using the power of storytelling to sell your ideas.

And I don't want to take anything away from it.

And I would actually advocate the audio version of that.

There's some books I love to read.

This is a great listen.

Yeah, I have, I have it on audio for years.

I would reach behind me and I'd be like, Oh wait, it's on my phone.

Cause I would forget.

But I, yeah, I have it on, on audio book as well.

And it is a really good lesson.

Yes, I concur.

Yeah, exactly.

So Lorraine, if people would like to find out more about how to work with you,

maybe they want to listen to your podcast.

What's one place they can reach out to find out more?

More than a few words.

com.

Okay.

We'll put that in the show notes along with the link to the

book so that you can find it.

Lorraine, thank you so much for joining me today.

It's been a real pleasure.

Thank you.

This is a lot of fun.

All right, everyone.

That's our show for today.

Thank you for listening to this episode of Live with The Pricing Lady, the podcast.

If you enjoyed the episode, rate, review, and subscribe to it, then share

it with your friends and colleagues.

I love hearing back from you listeners.

If you've got comments, questions, or topic ideas, go on over to thepricinglady.

com and contact me there.

Not sure where to start when it comes to improving pricing and profits?

At ThePricingLady.

com you can download a copy of my Self Assessment Pricing Scorecard.

Find out where it's going well and where you can begin improving.

Or just simply book a discovery call with me.

There we can discuss what's up with pricing in your business and

how I might be able to help you.

Thanks once again for joining.

Remember, pricing can hurt or help your business.

Let's make sure it's helping you reach your dreams.

See you next time and as always, enjoy pricing.