What Happens if Your Prospect or Client undervalues Your Services?

This post is inspired by a recent Facebook post I read. The poster said that they're "so tired" of people who see a lesser value in cleaning than other personal services. I'm guessing a couple of things with their comment in that she/he offers residential cleaning and they recently experienced a client who had a different perceived value of a cleaning service other than their own.

Hey, I get it. They're bent out of shape. They're working hard to keep a client's location clean. They give it their all. Clean, for some, is a sense of pride. Cleaning takes a physical toll, and sometimes a mental one too, all the while they often use it as a primary source of income to keep food on the table and to help keep a roof over their head. A cleaner's perceived value is strong and more often than not their pricing exceeds the expectations of their client's or prospect's perceived value. It makes sense, right? It's their baby. Nobody will see it at the same value as they do.

But what if I said that the client or prospect is right if they see a lesser value. As mentioned, nobody, client included, will see the same value as the cleaner. 

If you were to ask the cleaner to scrawl on a sheet of paper a circle that best represents their perceived value on the services they perform, and if you were to ask any given prospect or client to do the same, whereas the size of the circle is in some measurable value, it may look a little something like this:

The Cleaner's perspective is in green to the right and the client's or prospective client's perceived value would be in magenta to the left. Two different sizes, right? The perceived value by the client or prospect is always lesser. Why? They don't need to clean. They feel there might be other cleaning companies in town. They feel that it's easy work. They place a value on the services from their past experiences, and they figure that cleaning is on par with landscaping or having an Uber Eats driver deliver food for the family this week. Easy peasy, right?

There's a Dollar Tree store located near us. I'm not a fan of the place but it was my understanding, as their name denotes, that everything was sold for $1.00. Well, that was until they increased the price to $1.25 (kinda reminds me of Two Buck Chuck).

One Dollar Tree turned Dollar Twenty-Five Tree without the rebranding, people here in our local area were upset. And this surprised me being in the DC Metro area where it costs more money in time to bend down and pick up $1.00 than it is to leave it be. People were mad. But why? Why be upset over a quarter? 

They were upset because the perceived value on the items there remained the same while the price increased. 

When you're introducing a service to someone you run into this risk. The prospect's perceived value is lower than your price on what you're offering. Once you introduce the price, you're sunk. Your perceived value is high and theirs is low. You'll lose them as a potential client every time unless you do ONE THING (more about that in a second).

Another reason they get upset is because in the circle diagram above, you're in left field and you're in right field. You're not even connecting. So you're coming at them with a higher perceived price point and you're not even connecting with their needs. If your perceived value touches theirs, then at least there's a connection and both of you can reconcile and win.

You don't have to get your prospect or client to see it your way 100%. It only takes a little bit to see those connections and that's the beginning to any relationship.

As cleaners, we need to do a better job in helping with client or prospect expectations. Here are some tips you can start doing right now to improve client perception.

1) Increase your overall perceived value. You can do this through your brand, sales copy, sales process, value proposition, USPs, and more. 

2) Improve your social value. Get more active on social media. For example, do a post series on the Day in the Life of a Cleaner, or if you have employees, feature some of them and put the spotlight on them of how hard they work.

3) Increase Social Proof. You can do this through more testimonials, more reviews, video testimonials on your website, or even flashing logos of places you serve on your site.

4) Up your educational awareness. Show you're in a constant state of improvement. Flash on your website and social media examples of new certifications you attained or maybe you put your cleaners through a local cleaning class sponsored by a supplier.

5) Join Associations. One proposal filler we started including a decade or so ago was our certs with organizations at that time with ISSA, BSCAI, IFMA, our local Chamber, and more. 

6) We got on stage. Whenever we had the opportunity to speak publicly we did. It helped. We repurposed some of that content as well.

7) Consider doing a short-form video series. Share cost expectations. Follow the They Ask, You Answer model and cater to those only willing to pay your price points. 

8 ) Have a FAQ on your website. Ask common questions and provide those answers. 

9) We avoided the masses and did the opposite. We refuse to say we are "licensed, bonded, and insured". Everyone says that. We stopped before and after pictures. Why? Everyone does that. We did different things to increase that perceived value and we won.

How did we win? We took over our first cleaning business and did increase prices roughly 20% across the board. We were strategic on when and how we implemented this but over time everyone paid more. We did have some drop and move elsewhere, but that's ok. We ended up with less labor costs, more revenue, and a lot more profit.