How do you show pricing for services in your proposal that you offer directly but most of your competitors either don't offer or treat as a pass-through cost?
I would approach this through addressing two sub-questions:
How do you prevent a lazy prospect from viewing your total price as uncompetitive because of this situation?
How do you present your direct offering as a positive differentiator compared to your competitors whose approach is likely inferior in terms of cost, oversight, and/or timing?
Look at your pricing format and consider breaking out those services into their own section, or even their own page or file as a separate quotation.
Let's say you offer 10 main service areas but one of them is a highly specialized service that is usually bid on a standalone basis but sometimes is scoped to a full service proposal. There is no law that says you have to keep all 10 service areas on every, or any, proposal. It's perfectly reasonable and ethical to show your budget like this:
If the specialized service area prices its services across a large number of line items, or for whatever reason you think the approach above keeps the numbers too close together for a lazy outsourcing person to view them as distinct items, move the pricing for the specialized service area onto its own page or as a separate file. There may be even cases where you present that service area as a separate proposal.
The above helps with bullet #1 above, so how do you create the differentiation impact where your direct offering is likely superior to your competitors?
Create standard text for your proposal template and sales team that explains why that service area pricing is set apart for price comparison purposes.
Use that text to highlight the key benefits of your direct offering compared to how your competitors fulfill that need indirectly or not at all.
Make sure your pricing accounts for efficiencies the main service areas benefit from when the specialized services are selected.
Consider offering a small discount on the specialized services when awarded with the larger package (or vice versa).
Remember- there is (hopefully) a good reason why your company offers these services while others don't. Be creative and use every opportunities to highlight what differentiates your from your competitors.
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Contact me or book a meeting to discuss how these principles can be applied to improve the performance of your organization..
