THIS BLOG from Seth Godin got me thinking. Here’s where that thinking went….
The cost of a good or service is usually explicit, tangible and immediate.
The benefit is usually none of those things. Or at best a bit of each of them.
Take financial planning as an example.
At TCFP we quote fixed £ fees for working with clients – completely explicit.
The benefit of working with us is less so. How can you be sure that what we do is worth £X?
Our service will have different value to different people – some will value shifting the admin burden more than others, some will value the investment element higher, others the tax efficiency, yet others the time saved or worry eased.
Those different areas of value take time to accrue. And they accrue at different rates and over different periods.
You can’t ever get to an explicit figure for value for a something like a financial planning service.
Then again where does that ever happen? What is the true value of a tin of beans? Is it more or less than the price? But it’s not just the price that matters. If you haven’t eaten for three days the value of the tin of beans is probably through the roof.
But that value doesn’t need exploring and understanding in the way it does for a commitment to something like a financial planning service.
To me getting to a feeling for value requires faith and intuition.
How to garner faith and intuition?
Faith comes down to good listening and conversation.
Intuition can be aided by outside agencies – reviews, referrals, large sample analysis of outcomes.
So, rather than trying to prove value, which seems elusive to me, why not focus on what you can?
Have better conversations, do better listening, ask for reviews and make it easy to be referred.
Four things easy to do and control.