You Should Never Reveal your Headline Price

Why you should never, ever reveal your headline price

In this post I’d like to share something you must never, ever do: please, please, please don't reveal your headline price. I can assure you it’s an incredibly powerful concept that will get you much, much higher prices with much less price resistance too.

So, what is your headline price?

Very simply, your headline price is the total price. I can probably best explain the concept by telling you about an experiment done some years ago by Ryan Deis, one of the world's leading Internet marketers.

Ryan decided to sell one of his products at $197 and found he sold 340, which generated him just over $66,000. Not a bad result, but it’s what happened next that’s really interesting. He decided to find out what would happen if, rather than $197, he asked for two payments of $97. (It’s not quite the same price but, at $194, I think you’ll agree it's pretty close.)

Let's do the math...

What he found was staggering. His sales increased from 340 to 977, and his total revenue from $66,000 to nearly $190,000. I think you’ll agree that that’s already a staggering result, but then something even more amazing took place. Ryan thought, "That's interesting. What if I offer the same product, but rather than two payments of 97, I make it three?"

As an accounting professional you’ll instantly recognise that's the equivalent of a 50% increase in price, and logic suggests sales would plummet. But – and this is the truly staggering part – they actually went up slightly. Not by much, but overall – between the first situation and the third – sales increased by nearly four-and-a-half times.

The interesting thing we can learn from this is that it shows people focus on the $97, not the math – which would tell them that 3 x $97 is $291. Most people simply don't do the math though. They look at the $97 and make their buying decision based on that.

You can learn more about why you should never reveal your headline price by watching my short video here. 

If you found this valuable and would like to learn more about value pricing, I run a free live online training session every month with a topic chosen by you. Attend live and you can ask me any questions you have. Click here to register and I will send you an invitation to the next session.

Wishing you every success on your pricing journey

Mark Wickersham

Chartered Accountant, Public Speaker and Author of Amazon No.1 Best Seller “Effective Pricing for Accountants”