The Importance of Implementation
This will be slightly different to my normal blog.
I usually talk about a pricing tool or tip, but this month I want to talk about another (and crucial) part of pricing – implementation.
When I first started working with clients I had a 5-step process. We would go through the relevant steps, make decisions, and the company would roll them out. That usually amounted to an email to the team telling them what had been decided. And maybe behaviour would change for a few weeks, after which it would drift back to the comfortable old ways of working. Because of that I added a 6th step – implementation. Being clear about what needs to be done to embed any changes.
I recently spent a day working with a wonderful company, and was really impressed with their implementation steps when I caught up with them afterwards.
Let me first introduce them to you: Work.Life. They provide office space, coworking space, meeting rooms and event space primarily in London, but also in Manchester and Reading. Their model is designed for individuals, startups and small to mid‑sized teams who want a fully serviced, hassle‑free office environment that scales with their business. The facilities are attractive, and the people are warm and sociable.
Added to all that, the team I spent the day with are smart, friendly and eager to improve.
You’ll gather that I enjoyed working with them. If you’re after working space where they have offices then they are definitely worth considering.
So, before this starts to sound like a paid advert for them, what have they been doing?
There are quite a few things they told me about, but I’ll just focus on a few to illustrate the steps they are taking and the early results.
First, the proposals they send out to prospective clients. The samples they shared with me before our session were beautifully designed, but focused mostly on what they do and how they do it. Basically, if you are looking for an office, it said ‘we do offices, and do them really well’.
This is true of about 95% of clients I work with or websites I look at. While companies are really good at talking about what they do, they are quite poor at explaining what value they will deliver, or what outcomes for the customer they will generate.
Work.Life are amending their proposals to talk about value before getting into detail, and ‘selling the sizzle’. For example, this is how the proposal now starts:
Picture this...
You walk into your new office, greeted by natural daylight streaming through the windows. Your team feels connected not only to each other, but to the buzzing community around them. Just a short walk from Farringdon station through the historical Clerkenwell Green, your office makes the daily commute easy. It's more than just a place to work - it's a place to grow your business.
Compare that with what a competitor says (this is slightly edited to anonymise it):
Coworking On Demand
Book coworking space or a private office by the day and meeting rooms by the hour with no monthly commitment.
Choose from many locations. Bookable spaces vary by location.
Enjoy high-speed Wi-Fi, unlimited coffee, on-site support, and more.
Which one creates a picture of your fabulous working space? Which one talks about benefits, such as a happy team or an environment that helps to grow the business?
They are working on their website and are making similar changes. All the changes go much deeper than this, but what I have covered is enough to illustrate the effort they are putting into clearly communicating value.
Second, they have been testing changes to their website.
When I worked with Work.Life, one of the pricing concepts we covered is what happens when clients encounter ‘free’. It changes how clients consider an offer. Obviously we wouldn’t apply ‘free’ to our core products or services, but making it clear what’s included for free makes it harder for clients to compare us verses the competition.
Work.Life have included a short bullet point of only 3 words about something the potential client gets for free, and conversion has increased by 0.5%. That might not sound like a lot, but in a market where retention rates are high but (because there is a lot of competition) conversion rates are low, an extra 0.5% makes a big difference.
And this is just the start. They mentioned many more things that they are working on, which is wonderful.
This is why I get excited about pricing, and why I enjoy what I do. As I have explained to many audiences, I want to help companies to earn a good return for the value they deliver, because then they can invest in growth (which creates jobs and career opportunities), invest in training (which upskills the team) and invest in the working environment (which makes it a pleasure to be at work) – that’s what gets me out of bed in the morning.
So the message is, it’s not enough to spend an interesting day or half-day listening to a pricing masterclass, or to go through a pricing process which leads to some pricing decisions, you’ve got to then get your finger out and do something different. And when you do, you can see real results.