Research shows that our brains like choices. Read on to learn how pricing can help you sell more.

Before Pricing

One of the most important things to build trust is people feeling empowered. People like to feel in control of their decisions.

Without choices, we would be puppets. Even in faith, there is the concept of “Free Will,” which means you get to choose and have options.

Once a person loses these options, they feel imprisoned.

A binary decision is a choice between two alternatives, for instance, taking a specific action or not taking it.

Three choices enable us to avoid the ones that are too hot and too cold, too big and too small and select the one that is just right. 

I am sure you remember the story of Goldilocks and the Three Bears. There is one choice that is “Just Right.”

Binary gives choices, but once you go to three options, people’s brains believe they have all the choices. Just like Goldilocks, they feel like choosing between the three leads them to the perfect choice. They think this is all the variables, even when it is not.

Pricing

Now that you know the brain is wired to feel like three choices are all the choices try your very best when working on proposals and pricing that you create three options.

Now my uncle, Knolan Benfield, is the first person to talk to me about pricing. He was talking about his pricing list for his photography studio “The Benfield Touch” in Hickory, North Carolina.

He had been to many Professional Photographers of America workshops. One of them taught him about the “Whoop-De-Do” option. It is offering the 4th choice.

This is the over-the-top option. When he returned from the workshop, he tried this, and it worked.

How often did you have the bride’s father who would occasionally say I only want the best for my daughter? Not that often, but when he does, he will be the one who picks the 4th “Whoop-De-Do” option.

The workshop leader said once this happens, you should drop your lowest price, making your 2nd option the 1st lowest priced option. Then you add a new “Whoop-De-Do” option. This is how you can increase your prices over time.

Just look on Amazon or, for me, B&H or Roberts Camera; almost every product gives you options. Usually three choices or more. Look at how they are pricing the newest M1 Chip Macbook Pro.

For those of you who have always priced estimates with one price and wondered why you didn’t get some jobs, this might be one of the reasons. Give them three options from now on.

My personal experience is when given three options; they pick the middle one most of the time.