Ryan Shank of PhoneWagon explains why competing on price loses. Instead, build value through better support, founder access, and expertise. He shows real conversations where he steers prospects to cheaper options when it fits, then they come back because his service actually solves their problem.
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What up, Phone Wagoners? This is Ryan with Phone Wagon. We are at day 10 of our morning updates. Today we do have our Blue Bottle Coffee again. Thank God we went back to that. I know everyone was freaking out. We went to Starbucks for a couple days. We're back at Blue Bottle, so have no fear. We're staying consistent though. Every day we're doing a morning update, we're having a coffee, and we're letting you guys know where we're at. We're just keeping the dialogue open. Some interesting things, so last week we had a bunch of new paying customers come onto the system, so that's awesome. And one thing I want to talk about today that is, actually came from conversations last week, is about pricing, okay, and pricing yourself and your product, not only delivering the value of whatever product or service you're offering versus the price that you're offering it, but also in comparison to your customer, I mean to your competitors, okay. For instance, last week I actually had a couple questions that were, you know, what is the difference between you and, you know, your competitors? And one, you should never badmouth the competitors because it's actually a good thing when, at least in our industry, that people are using call tracking because one, it means that they're out there tracking their campaigns, they're seeing what's working, they're testing things. I mean, that's a win for the entire industry. It's awesome that they're just doing those things in general. It doesn't matter what tool they're using, so it's just awesome that they're doing that. And then two, You know, you want them to actually look at all the different companies. You want them to have a fair comparison of, hey, there's this product, this product, this product. I mean, there's a bunch of different products out there, and I actually tell them every single time, hey, totally, there's a bunch of different products out there. At the end of the day, realistically, functionality-wise, we're all gonna do pretty much the same thing. Yes, some of them have certain features that others don't have, totally, but a lot of the customers that are coming that I'm talking to don't need too many bells and whistles, so at the end of the day, Realistically, functionality-wise, we're all going to do the same thing. Now, the difference is going to be a couple of things. One, it's going to be support, the type of support, the hours of support that you're going to get. And some people might not need support. So that's totally cool. And then also, so not only hours of support and type of support, but also the quality of the support rep. So a lot of times there's, you know, companies that are going to have just like what I would call a customer service rep, right? They just kind of hire them just to answer questions. They're not necessarily experts, right? So one of the things when I'm talking to customers and usually it'll be later at night, which is realistically when business owners can start to evaluate different tools and stuff. During the day, I mean, they're so busy, they're running their business, they're doing jobs, they're just like doing stuff where they can't really sit down and do a fair evaluation. So usually it's 8, 9, 10 PM at night, sometimes on a Sunday, I'll be talking to them on live chat or something like that and they'll say, what's the difference? And I was like, well, at the end of the day, right now you're talking to the founder of the company at 9 PM on a Sunday. And a lot of them like that and that is one thing that, you know, and That's one thing that will justify a higher price point, okay. Maybe not too high of a price point, but, and I talked to someone last night and I said, look, we're not, they were like, tell me about your pricing, and I told them our prices and they said, oh, well one of your competitors is cheaper, and I was like, totally, like absolutely, like if you want a cheap solution, go with them, there's definitely cheap solutions out there and I'll actually point you in the right direction to find a cheap solution, and they kind of appreciated that. I said, we're not going to be the cheapest solution, but I can tell you this, you're going to have access to me, have access to our team, we're going partner in your business because we know lead gen, we know what we're talking about. You're going to be able to talk to an actual lead gen expert that can say, hey, you should test out these different ad copies. You should put a conversion for this type of phone call right here and track that back to that keyword. And we're going to be able to really help you think through these things because a lot of times, you know, when agencies sign up, they sort of, they know what they're doing. But sometimes when the business owners sign up, they're just now getting their feet wet because they're not used to going in these intricate campaigns and doing A/B testing of different ad copy and different audiences and custom audiences and lookalike audiences and things like that. So that's one thing that you can get and that's one thing that will justify your price point. And again, I say this and I say it to you guys, it's like, you know, and I actually have an interesting story and I wrote an article about it, but you don't want to just go in and just start fighting over price, right, because it's just going to be a race to the bottom and you're not going to deliver, you know, if you don't build enough value on it, it's just going to be this commodity where it's like, well, who's the cheapest? Who has the cheapest solution? So build value around, one, your company, why they want to do business with your company, okay, and then two, build value around the quality of your product, right? The quality of the design, of the beautiful experience, of the communications, of the customer service, all of that, building, building, building value, that's why you're going to be able to justify your price points, okay? Don't just say, you know, oh, you know, this is this feature, feature, feature, price, price, price, And then it's only a pricing discussion where there's not a lot of value built and you're not wanting, you're not creating enough reason for them to want to pay a higher price. And after the conversation last night when I told her, I was like, we're not gonna be the cheapest solution, she totally appreciated that. Like, look, I totally appreciate that, I actually really like that, like your honesty, like that you said that. And now, you know, she's still, who knows if she's gonna come on board as a paying customer, I don't know, it'd be awesome if she did, but we're definitely now in the top 3 and we'll see after you know, some demos and evaluation, what happens. But I think you guys, you know, as PhoneWagon customers, prospective customers, whoever's watching, should do that and really build value around your company, yourself, your product before you get into this kind of pricing conversation. So anyway, have an awesome Monday. You guys are awesome. Love you. And we will see you tomorrow.
