Issue 1 No. 1 July 2000 *Balloon Sculpting Corner *Secrets of (Pricing) *Classy Wrap Corner *Interview of Month (The Road To Becoming A CBA)	Secrets of Pricing Balloon Decorations - page 2 - Creating a demanding is what true business and sales is all about. At this level, a person comes prepared to pay a fixed amount or to get only a particular design and then through the new concepts and excitement that you offer them, they change their minds and decide on something different and better! Thus a new desire or demand has been created. You have added value to the world and have literally created new money! Remember, once a demand has been discovered or created and a budget on the part of the client has been determined, you can begin to price your designs.. Understand the Complexity of Your Design - a client who is requesting from you a bunny rabbit and an Easter basket sculpted into balloons is asking for a scupture that may involve thousands of five inch balloons.This design could easily begin at $400 or $500. How Much Will It Cost You In Time To Construct - Since time is money, you must be able to accurately gauge the hours to complete any unusual design - at at least $150 per hour. Brand new concepts always will take twice as long. A DESIGN IS WORTH whatever people are willing to pay for it. Discovering a demand is the first step in understanding about pricing anything. How much a person wants it will usually determine how much money that person is willing to pay assuming that they are able to pay. At this point you must understand the difference between window shoppers and real ready-to-buy customers. I'm going to say something that is disarmingly simple but so overlooked, If the person ain't got no money, honey, it don't matter, how much they want it! Pricing is totally irrelevant if the prospect has no budget. If the person has a minimally sized budget of $200 to $700 dollars, you can thus consider this customer a real prospect.Which leads us to the question of , How do we know if we have a real customer with a realbudget? Easy! You have to smoke`em out. Before you make an appointment if you happen to be talking by phone, simply ask what their budget is. In most cases they will tell you the popular lie, Oh, I don't have a budget. It doesn't matter. The cat-and-mouse game has begun. Well, you say, that's fine because all of our decorations are very reasonably priced. All decorations start at about $200 and up, sometimes it could be $300, $350 or more just depends on what you select. But you can be assured that we will always stay within your budget and give you exactly what you want. Can you see what we've done here? We have subtly set the parameters for what is the minimum acceptable amount for a decoration job to be considered. If they only have $125 or so to spend, they will complain here. You will have thus ìsmoked them out!î (Back to top.) to pay. When a client asks the How much?, you give them your price, and watch, and listen - to their reactions. If they ask How much?, you say, $500. They say, That's not bad! You know that you have to charge more to the next customer. Keep trying to carefully raise your price until you get some obvious resistance. At that point, you can safely guess that you've hit the ceiling of what the market is willing to pay for any given design. This is called price testing, and should be done whenever you really want to know the true value of anything. Best wishes. CHARGE AS MUCH as the market is willing to pay. The 3 to 5 Times Formula - If we are going to only talk about costs of materials such as in the creation of centerpieces onto which you attach the balloons for the guest tables and how to charge for them, we would use the 3 to 5 Times Formula. Simply put, whatever it costs you in material costs, you simply charge 3 to 5 times that amount to the customer. What Will Your Market Bear (Testing) - If you remember in the beginning of this report we stated that a thing is worth what willing to pay. This is done by guess-timating what a design is worth and the market is willing to pay for it. Nothing has value in and of itself. People give value to everything that has value. The economics of pricing can also be stated as such, Charge as much as the market is willing to pay until acted upon by an outside force such as competitive pricing by another readily available source of equal or similar quality. Again the question becomes, What is the market willing to pay for what you have to offer? You have two options: You can call up Dionne Warwick and her Psychic Friends Network, or you can go to your source and directly ask your market what they want (Back to top.) | Balloon Sculpting | | Secrets of Pricing| | Classy Wrap Corner | | Interview of the Month | | Click Here to Go to Home Page | Copyright © 2000 Charles Prosper All Rights Reserved cprosper@prosperballoons.com