Packaging: The “laser” in the pricing fight

ATN Pricing Success Formula: Packaging + Targeting = Higher Pricing

We’ve written on the subject of packaging before but we wanted to bring the issue of pricing and packaging to the forefront for companies.  The tendency to think of packaging as a way of offering discounts without cutting your prices reflects the narrow thinking we find in many companies.

Packaging has power far beyond discounting.

One of the things that pricing experts will tell you is that the first goal of pricing and packaging is to shift the customers perception from a cost mindset to a value mindset.

So what’s the trick?

We’ve successfully used a combination of segment targeting and packaging to create a higher pricing opportunity.

The game here is to get as close as possible to the centre of a prospects value “nexus” … the needs or pain areas which they are most focused on and are willing to spend the most money to fix.

In a training context, often a single course or program will only represent a partial solution to an overall challenge faced by a prospect.

The right approach: multi course packages targeted to specific market segments and their specific “pain” areas.

The question is how should you segment and how should you package.  We’ll touch on the packaging part here and get into segmenting in another future article soon.   Here are few steps that will help in your packaging process:

1. Start with your segments (industries, job roles, other)
2. Identify their critical pain areas
3. Create packages of courses which will more completely address those pain areas
4. Price with value to customer in mind rather than cost + or a discounting mindset

The central power of this approach to packaging is that it shifts your packaging mindset towards solving prospects problems rather than giving them unnecessary or excessive discounts.  I always notice clients are surprised to be told of this approach to packaging and they quickly find that it empowers them to overcome the initial defensive position on price that prospects try to put you in.