Forums: Discussions for entrepreneurs and small business.

SDLewis,

You are absolutely right that you need to know the competitions prices - I am always amazed how much is disclosed on the web. So if you haven`t look there (and I am sure you have), then look there. One trick I did with my last business was to look at internationally based businesses that would be considered competitors, particularly in England and Australia. That helped a lot.

One mistake I made though, was to base my pricing on their`s to be competitive. In retrospect, I should have first determined all my costs, determine where I want to position myself (low cost provider, high end service, etc.) and then determined what price I want to see my stuff for. After that was done, is when I should have done a comparative analysis to figure out who my competition was.

I hope that make sense.

 

-------------------------

--
Mike Michalowicz
Author of The Toilet Paper Entrepreneur

I understand that you may be apprehensive about calling other businesses, but in my experience I have found that talking to other people in like businesses to be very valuable.  You will find that people will be open to sharing more information than you expect, if you give them a chance to talk about themselves. 

-------------------------

J. Balza
www.sellkinkade.com
"Representing the Fine Art of Thomas Kinkade"

Some very good points mentioned previously.  A couple of new suggestions:
1) interview the customers of your competitors as an alternative.  Sometimes they are happy to give up some very useful information (price, likes/dislikes, volume, etc.).  From a business planning perspective, you can leverage this visit to validate your unique marketing differentiators and even lock-in a commitment to try your service when launched.  Investors love to see actual market validation.

2) Some other value-adds you might bundle into your offering:
  a) reporting - give them an accurate inventory of the equipment they are disposing (the odds are they won`t really know the specifics and it will be useful in recording the asset/financial transactions)

  b)  scan in the original operator/user manual into pdf  format  and  provide this as a value-add for the resale of the equipment  (there are companies in India that can do this for you).  Most manuals are hard to come by after a year or two.


-------------------------

Market-driven Business Coach, Start-up Funding Specialist, Business Planner, and Sales Lead Generation Strategist