Are Your Prices Too High?

Ask any top salesman or sales manager and they will tell you that the weaker the salesman is, the more reliant they are on price to make sales. As a sales manager, it is your job to make sure that the weaker salesman is not giving away the house to make is his living. In the case of selling your own work, you are your own sales manager. You need to know how to do that job.

The less you know about selling, advertising, and marketing, the more competitive you have to be in your pricing structure and the harder it is going to be to keep yourself from giving away the house.

We see it here all the time where people are encouraged to raise their prices, raise their prices. I just don't think that that is going to work for everyone. The less the seller knows about marketing, selling, and advertising, the more the art itself has to sell itself. Competitive pricing is going to make it easier for that to happen.

Take two images, both the exact same quality and hold the same appeal to the buyer. The guy that has image A has a great sales pitch, a great story and has caught the imagination of the buyer. He is asking $500 for his image. Seller B has basically the same image with the same level of enthusiasm from the buyer and the same $500 price but his sales pitch, his story is a boring "please by my print". The advantage is going to go to the seller with the better pitch.

Now take the exact same situation but seller B has a $400 price tag compared to seller A's $500. That is going to level the playing field quite a bit.

The more marketing, advertising and selling experience and knowledge you have, the easier it is to support higher prices.

But... the answer is not as easy as just lowering your prices. That may be only part of the answer. The full answer is to go to school and learn as much as you can about marketing, selling, and advertising. Even if you hate it and know you are never going to be good at it. You will learn enough to at least up your game to a higher level and become less dependent on lower prices.