BEST Price for Web Design In Cold Calling

I believe it depends on your strategies. If you are just starting, you would need to use a low price; that is price penetration strategy. Anything around 500$ i believe is far but also depending on the quality of services you are offering.

Now if you are established as a website designer and has a proper portfolio for credibility; you can use put your own price; as you are offering not only your web designing service but also your expertise and knowledge..

But well in the end, it is up to you.. If you are sure they can afford it and you are confident that you can close the sale; then use the test and push approach..

It first depends on your abilities, your offerings, what you can do and how well you carry things out. Your pricing may be too low compared to someone else that can't offer what you do. Or it may be too high if you aren't as talented.

In calls we make we've found that our clients who offer a variety of prices catered to the customer's needs have the highest sales conversion rates and are the most successful. Those that have one rate, or a flat rate, pass up lots of business that could get them in the door.

My suggestion is to make the calls, see what your customers are able to afford, and have in the budget. It doesn't matter what you charge if they can't pay it and don't want to.

That's not for everyone, and all the time, but when you are trying to set your rates, you should do some market research on your own customers.

ej I would suggest having a "starting at" price for a basic website based on what your time is worth to do a basic website. Many use $299 to $999 as that starting at price. But other than that you should not have a "price".

If someone asks you for a price before you get a chance to discover what they need you simply say, "Our prices start at $*** but most of our clients choose a custom solution and I would never think to price out something like that without learning more about your business and its needs."

The people who ask for a price normally don't want to buy they just want to get you pitch and hang up. Show them you are not just some random cold caller trying to sell crap and they will listen and more importantly they will speak. Once you get them to open up and talk then you can start selling a true solution.

From that point you need to create mockups and proposals for pricing. I'm a big believer that unless you have a working relationship with a company that you charge a fair but low price for mock ups. What that fair and low price is will vary by who you are selling and how much time the mock up will take to do. The reason you want to charge people, who are not already clients, for mockups is to eliminate the tire kickers. Someone who is serious will have no problem paying you $99, $299, or etc for a mockup. And you can add in that if they go ahead with using you for the project that you will roll that mockup fee over to cover part of the project fees.

Do mockups as pdf files or something similar. If they want a functional website that is more than a mockup. Let them know that and charge accordingly.

The company that handle most of our website development (that I do not do in house) I work with over the phone and email. I've never personally met our rep as I work in IA and her company is in Florida. So don't worry about needing to meet in person if you can't. People can be closed over the phone.

^^^^^^^ I second that.

There is no "best" price range.

The price is dictated by you, your desires, your skill and the market niche you want to serve.

Set your price at the bottom and you serve bottomfeeders.

Set your price high and you serve larger, more valuable clients who value YOU.

Your price comes from the VALUE you create for your client. The best price comes from their numbers, not yours. This is why you ask questions.

Worried that you don't have a track record?

Who cares? Unless you don't have the skill. And if you don't have the skill to implement, you shouldn't be in that business.

Otherwise...you'll run into two kinds of people:

Those who care that you don't have a track record

and

Those who do not give a damn that you don't have a track record...all they care about is what you can do for them.

Find the second group and talk to them.

Wow guys these are AWESOME advice!! Really appreciate it. It definitely seems that a more flexible price range would be a good idea, but just wondering how to guage who can afford how much because people normally don't tell you "their budget" because they don't want to be ripped off and would want a cheaper price that they can get.

Like the "starting at" price idea and then custom made solutions for them, for sure will try the multi flexible price range, thanks David and Aaron!

And thanks Jason for the "I'd be a bad doctor if I didn't find out more about you before a solution approach..." Still going through your WSO will contact you with the 30 second commercial soon.

Btw, this is the first time I heard someone would charge for a "mockup". I heard others do "mock ups for free" and said got higher conversions. Thanks Aaron for the idea to remove tire kickers!

Anyone else can share some of their conversion statistics?

Back when I use to do my own cold calling sales, which was only a couple of years ago... $500 was the magic number to get in the door easily.

Some of my Warrior peers , such as Voasi and a few others have since convinced me to charge alot more though.

If you are just starting out, need volume, and need to get the ball rolling quick and build up your confidence, I would quote $500, that always worked for me in a pinch without much price resistance.

Some people give objections about price when thats not really the issue, but then others give objections about about other things, because they dont want to admit to you that price IS an issue.

Sure, all businesses should be able to spend money on advertising at certain times, but putting down payments on things at the drop of a hat, for many small businesses, isnt just about how much they profit at the end of the year, its about daily cash flow, and believe it or not many of them cant just bust out a thousand dollar check on any given day of the week without alot of forethought.

I have been in plenty of attorneys offices that were struggling just to keep the doors open.

A business can run for a couple of years on "cash flow" without profiting at all, they may even be in the red at times. A good phrase to learn how to wield and think in terms of is "Cash Flow", its not the same as "profit".

When you talk about daily cash flow, you are hitting a nerve with most small businesses. Again, many of them are getting by from day to day and barely keeping the doors open. So dont ignore the potential in smaller deals.

-JD

Ps. If you can see they have alot of money though, quote higher or they wont believe you can really do anything for them. $500 is for small indy type businesses.

Usually its a case by case situation. You can't give the same type of pitch or amount for a plumber as you do a commerce site.

My ballpark price often when cold calling rages from 500-900$

That really depends on the value your services brings. If you can build high converting sites then I don't see why you can't put a bigger price on your service when you do cold calling.

Of course, you're going to need to make sure that you have evidence to back up your claims and justify your pricing scheme.

Ken I love that.

I charged $550 on my first few website sales, however now after learning the offline consulting business better I am closing website sales at $1500 ...with no push back

My personal opinion is that, especially in this economy, I'd rather lower my prices, to get clients, as I believe the real value to my business is having a large number of clients. Sure, they might not all have loads of money to spend with me, but word of mouth is a powerful thing.

I've actually seen it happen already that an extremely low paying client (which some people on here would say was a waste of my time) ended up referring my services to her friend, who is a 4 figure upfront client, who also wants recurring SEO services and the works, so potentially an extra $500 or more per month on top of the initial sale.

That's why I believe in getting more clients as opposed to limiting myself to only high paying clients, which are much harder to win via cold calling