Do you really believe in the value you offer?

Many salespeople and entrepreneurs are familiar with the saying “Your first sale is always to yourself.”

They also know that this is usually your toughest sale – you have to convince yourself that you have something of value to offer before you can convince anyone else.

I think the same idea applies to organizations, and I have to thank Brian Zambotti, Director of Client Development at Digitell, for helping to crystallize this idea for me.

As we were going through a dry run for our upcoming Webinar on “How to Price Your Education Products” late last week, Brian made the point on one of the slides about value-based pricing that “you have to believe in your content” if you want to be successful.

It’s a simple, but very powerful notion, and I think it is one with which many organizations struggle – often unconsciously.

I see signs of the struggle in the kinds of questions I get asked about pricing: 

• How can we compete when so many educational products are now offered for free?
• How do we charge a fee now when we’ve always offered it for free?
• How do we show the value of our education products?

I’d argue that the answer to these types of questions starts with believing in what you have to offer – the content, the experience, and most importantly, the value.

To check the level of belief in your organizations, ask questions like the following:

• How enthusiastically do people in our organization talk about the learning experiences we offer and the results they create?
• How much do we allow the competition to dictate what we create and how we price it?
• Do we actively and confidently seek and publish testimonials from learners?
• Do we worry every time we send out an e-mail about a learning product that we are “bugging” our members – rather than offering them an opportunity for tremendous value?
• Is the thought of raising prices on our educational offerings practically taboo in our organization?

Depending on your answers to any or all of those questions – and you can probably think of others – I’d argue there is a good chance you don’t really believe in your value.

It may be that your organization has not fully assessed and articulated the true value you offer – very often the case, I find

It may be that the value is actually lacking – usually not the core problem, I find, but often an area where significant improvements can be made.

There may be deeper organizational “self-esteem” issues – yes, I think organizations have a sense of “self-esteem,” and I think nearly every organization suffers from this issue to varying degrees.

Ultimately, you will have to address whatever the underlying issues are, but a good starting point is to ask “Do we believe in the value we offer?”