Many legal support providers and product vendors avoid showing actual prices on their website.
Some fear competitors will do nefarious things with the information. Often, exact pricing is difficult to determine because services are tailored to each client.
Many reason that if a potential client is interested, they’ll call or email to ask for pricing information. This also gives them an opportunity to talk directly with potential buyers to ensure they really understand the value they’re getting.
Many legal vendors would prefer to check the “It’s complicated” box and leave it at that.
If this is you, you’re looking out for your own needs, which makes sense. In the process, however, you’re completely overlooking the needs of your potential clients.
And that can be a costly mistake.
Legal support services providers and product vendors, in particular, should share prices on their websites where they can be easily found by potential clients.
You don’t have to commit to an exact price online. Show a price range for customized services. Create product or service packages with varying options and price ranges. Add clarifying language to your numbers. Say these are your general prices but specific prices may vary.
Do whatever it takes to make you feel comfortable sharing your prices on your website because:
Potential B2B buyers do a ton of online research.
- B2B buyers are typically 57% of the way to a buying decision before actively engaging with sales.
- 67% of the buyer’s journey is now done digitally.
- A study of more than 1,400 B2B customers found that those customers completed, on average, nearly 60% of a typical purchasing decision—researching solutions, ranking options, setting requirements, benchmarking pricing, and so on—before even having a conversation with a supplier.
Obviously, it’s important that your website works hard for you, informing visitors of the benefits you provide and convincing them of your value.
But here’s what happens if you don’t answer visitors’ biggest question – how much your services cost – on your website:
1) You’re not giving visitors what they want.
Gathering prices is an integral part of buying research. Deep into research mode, visitors head to pricing pages almost immediately. It’s a simple way to sift through a large list of vendors. It’s a matter of efficient time management. If you charge $200 for a $35 job, they don’t waste their time learning anything more about you.
They look for prices because, among other things, they want to be assured they can afford your services. But without pricing available, you’re not giving them that peace of mind. Instead, they get a big fat uncomfortable
From there on out, everything else they learn about your services has earned a caveat. That sounds great IF I can afford it. That’s amazing IF she doesn’t charge some crazy price for it.
2) It may arouse suspicion.
People want answers. And in today’s world of lightning-fast, easy access to information, they expect to get them.
Lawyers especially want answers. They are an incredibly risk-averse bunch. Not providing an answer raises an immediate red flag.
Lawyers are also highly skilled in getting answers they want. When someone is not forthcoming with information, it can arouse serious suspicions.
What are you hiding?
3) Potential buyers find it frustrating.
People search your entire website for the one. single. simple. bit of information they Absolutely Have to Have to decide whether to pursue a relationship with you.
But no. They can’t find it.
They get more and more annoyed clicking everywhere, reading everything twice . . .
Just to finally wind up in utter defeat.
This is when you want them to call you, by the way. This is the mood you’ve established for the call.
And again, everything they read on your site after this rings hollow. They can’t assign any weight to your words because without prices, they can’t determine the value of your services.
4) Potential buyers can’t determine your value.
Visitors can learn which services you offer and all the wonderful benefits you provide. But they can’t determine the real value of any of it.
Your benefits become an itemized list of indeterminate worth. Sure, everything sounds great. But we’re back to wondering—are you going to charge $25,000 for a $10,000 service? That’s not valuable.
Without solid pricing information to go on, they’ll try to fill in the blanks themselves. That’s almost never going to be good for you. People will assume they can’t afford you. If you charged a reasonable rate, surely you’d show it, right?
5) People will assume they can’t afford you.
It’s just what they do. Maybe car dealers started everyone thinking this way. Commercials shout that the Ford Focus is available with all the extras for $14,999! Then Mercedes or Lexus comes along with their sexy drivers and sleek images, never deigning to grace us with their pricing because clearly … ahem … if you’re not already in the know, you can’t afford it anyway.
If the price isn’t listed, it must be because it’s shocking.
If they have to guess, they are likely to guess way too high. Which is a situation you’ll solve when they call for pricing, except . . .
6) Many won’t waste their time making a phone call.
Calling is an additional step that subjects them to losing a lot of time now and who knows how much more time in the future fending off more sales calls. The stressed attorney or overworked paralegal doesn’t want to take even more time out of their day to call you. Not when Company X provides the exact same service and shows them a price they believe is a value.
Anyway, neither of you have the same objectives for a call. Callers just want you to give them the dollar price. But you probably want to explain why that price is such a fabulous value (which they would’ve known already if you shared the price online), how much you can help them, and what makes you so perfect for them, and so on. Which is why . . .
7) Many don’t want to call even if they have the time.
Interested buyers highly suspect that if they call, you’re going to launch into an agonizing 45-minute sales pitch that will only end after they’ve agreed to come to your kid’s soccer practice or some other equally terrible thing.
Because so many salespeople have sullied the waters before you, buyers fear to subject themselves to being entangled in a lifetime of sales calls, email pitches, random unscheduled visits, and endless requests for lunch if they call you.
Which all means that in the end:
You’ll lose out to the competition anyway.
Because you eliminated yourself from the price discussion.
Your name gets a big fat inside the pricing box on the chart comparing you with your competitors. And a
turns into a
the moment someone else gives them a price they can live with.
This post is fairly ominous.
Of course, some people will call. Not everyone will assume the worst the way I’ve pictured things here.
But how many? And are you comfortable with the risks?