Don't Sell Yourself Short

How Using A Price Guide Can Increase Your Profit by 25 - 30%

One of the most interesting conversations I’ve had recently came the other day when I was talking to a customer about Pricing Guides.   The customer was raving about how the 2012 Sign Contractor’s Pricing Guide was an invaluable selling tool.   My own experience with estimating tools and/or price guides was that they were a nice tool ballpark a quote, but at the end of the day you have to price your products to be competitive in the market and some of the guides and tools I’ve looked at get pretty expensive pretty fast.

                The interesting part of the conversation came when my customer explained how she used the Pricing Guide as a selling tool with her customers.  She explained that when quoting a job, she actually sits down with the customer, pricing guide in hand and costs out the job to her customers’ specifications directly from the book.  She walks them through each item, adding up the costs and discounts to arrive at a final price for the job.  According to her, 90% of the time her customers accept the quote without even asking for a discount.  As we talked I realized that it was the transparency of the process (sharing all of the information with the customer) that helped build trust between the sign maker and sign buyer and the use of a third party tool like the Sign Contractor’s Pricing Guide reinforces that trust.

There are a lot of choices when it comes to pricing guides and/or job estimators.  There are software estimators that are available at a very reasonable price such as EstiMate and Sign Estimating Calculator.  And there are free software versions from Roland and SAi that come free with VersaWorks and FlexiSignPro.  There are also several hard copy versions like the Sign Contractor’s Pricing Guide that are available for around $20.   The point here is that you don't have to try and reinvent the wheel.  The nice thing about most of these tools is that they capture and itemize all of the costs of a job taking into account shop overhead, labor, design costs and many other costs of running a business that people often forget about.  The end result is usually a price that is 25 – 30% higher than what you would have quoted the customer without a pricing guide.  That translates to 25 – 30% more profit per job!  Simply because you were honest and upfront with your customer about what the job really costs.

So give it a try the next time you’re quoting a job.  Crack open that dusty pricing guide or turn your computer screen around and show your customer the job estimator you’ll use to quote their project.  And whatever you do, don’t sell yourself short!

To Blog or Not To Blog?  That is the question.

Welcome to the first addition of the Beacon Blog.  I’ve struggled with the idea of starting a blog for the last couple of years and finally decided to pull the trigger after a bunch of hemming and hawing. 

When I came to Beacon Graphics 5 years ago, www.BeaconGraphics.com was one of the most popular websites for sign and graphic supplies on the internet and it became my personal mission to make us #1!  So I started reading everything I could about how to drive traffic to your website.  I tried to make sure we were following all the rules to make our site “search engine friendly”.  By doing so, it would make www.BeaconGraphics.com easier for customers to find and as a result we would rocket to the top of the search rankings making us the most popular site on the internet – rivaling Google, Yahoo and Amazon.com.  Sounds easy right?

Well as it turns out, Google is pretty protective of the “formula” that they use to rank pages.  There is no magic bullet.  You can’t just run out and buy “SEO for Dummies” and in a couple of days have your site humming.  You have to give your customers a reason to visit your website and hope that your site is helpful enough that they will want to come back to it again.  The more interesting and informative your website is, the more likely they are to keep coming back to it.  That means you have to provide them with a constantly changing buffet of products, tools and articles that will capture and hold their attention in the long-run.

This brings us to the topic of my first blog.  Everything I read said “you need to be on-line blogging”.  If you’re like me, that sentence immediately conjures images of Julie/Julia in your mind.  The mere thought of sitting in front of a glowing computer screen, late at night with flour in my hair, complaining about how my soufflé burned in the oven is embarrassing and seemed like a complete waste of my time and yours.  Do my customers really care that my son’s team won the championship game or that my daughter is in the school play?  Those of you who know me, know that I’m a no-nonsense kind of guy.  And blogging seemed like just that to me, a lot of nonsense.

So I ignored the so-called experts for a couple of years.  Until I had the good sense to attend a seminar on “Social Networking” and my eyes were opened (a little).  One of the key moments in the seminar came early on when the instructor was talking about Twitter (I know not blogging but I’ll get there). 

The instructor posed a question - “Do you I really care if the line at Starbucks is really long and it’s taking a while for you to get your coffee?  --  If you’re the manager at that Starbucks you sure do!”

It sounds silly, but that’s when the light bulb went off for me.  Social Media (Facebook, Twitter and yes Blogs) are about saving time, not wasting time.  They give small businesses like yours and mine the ability to connect on a more personal level with a large number of customers through the magic of the internet.  The trick is to make sure the content you’re posting is relevant and important to your customers.   In order for it not to be a waste of time for both of us, what I post in my blog needs to be important to you.

So, what can you expect to see in the Beacon Blog in the coming weeks, months and years?

• Tips and Tricks to save you time (and money)
• Business ideas that can help you make you more money with your existing customer base
• Marketing strategies we’re using, that we think can be applied to your business as well
• New product reviews
• And I hope you won’t kill me if occasionally I throw in a blurb our two bragging about my kids or the success of the Beacon Bombers softball team. 

No matter what, my #1 goal is to ensure that the Beacon Blog will not be a waste of your time or mine. 

Comments on the blog are appreciated.  Remember, my goal is to write about what’s important to you.  So if there’s something you’re interested in please let me know and I’ll do my best to answer your questions.

Thanks and Happy blogging!

Kevin Hartnett

Managing Director
Beacon Graphics
www.BeaconGraphics.com