Dear small business owner, This month I’m going to talk about pricing. Textbooks have been written on the subject. I will save you the pain of readin

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Dear small business owner,

This month I’m going to talk about pricing. Textbooks have been written on the subject. I will save you the pain of reading them, and focus on how pricing properly can help your business.

Here we go.

Is bad pricing costing you money?

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This month's column is on pricing and how your pricing model can propel or be a drag on your business.

Do prospects and clients ask for deals or discounts even though you have a good product or service? Is order volume low because your pricing is confusing? Look at your pricing model.

KISS – We all know this acronym — Keep it Simple, Stupid. It applies to pricing. Don’t make your customers work or confuse them with your pricing. Make your pricing easy to understand and that means without a lot of add-ons. We've all been annoyed by with cell phone bills and their unexpected charges for call display, voice mailbox and the like.

Conversion of a prospect is never easy. Make your pricing conform to the way your customers do business and their business model. When your customer sells socks by the dozen, ensure that the sock widgets you sell are by the dozen.

Stock Your Toolbox - Have the financial tools to enable customers to buy your product or service easily and quickly. This could mean offering in-house sales financing or monthly payment options. Do some research with your bank. They have excellent small business financial tools to help your customers buy.

When we priced NewPath Consulting services, we looked at how much small businesses pay for software and services each month. We found that most of our target market, B2B service companies, spend about 10% of their revenue on IT and marketing services. We built our managed service plans around that estimate. Our gold plan is about 40% of the IT and marketing budget for a company with $500,000 per year in revenue. That leaves room for them to buy advertising and pay for people. We recognized that SMBs don’t usually have the cash flow to invest in major projects and priced our recurring monthly service fees at a level that are affordable and easy to understand.

Ensuring that your pricing is compatible with your customer’s business model will make it easier for your them to buy and ensures a swift order process.

If you want to do more reading on pricing, check out Christoph Janz’ blog post on how to build a $100 million business.

Next month: Is doing business with you easy and painless?

New Research for SMBs

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Click to download Research Report

The Toronto Cloud Business Coalition – a group of more than 80 Canadian experts drawn from the IT management, cloud services provider, channel, academic, VC/corporate finance and consulting communities – has published a new document designed to help Canada’s SMBs to define how cloud resources and services can be used within their operations.

Planning for the Cloud/Cloud Strategy – SMB: A TCBC Best Practices Document was co-created by a working group representing many different perspectives: IT firms with expertise in delivering cloud solutions to SMBs (GoDaddy, Cloud A, Symantec), specialists in deploying cloud within SMBs (NewPath Consulting), consultants working with mid-sized enterprises on cloud strategy (PwC), and IT managers from SMB firms in the education and manufacturing sectors.

The group worked through a framework addressing four key areas:

Definition: what are the key issues in SMB cloud planning and strategy?
Business objectives: what do SMBs stand to gain, in terms of both technology and business capabilities, from use of cloud?
Best practices: what should SMBs focus on as they build their cloud approaches?
Metrics and milestones: what time frames and outcomes should SMBs look to as they calibrate their cloud strategy development?

UPCOMING EVENTS

For latest list of NewPath Consulting events visit the events page on the website.

Small Business Technology Forum

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NewPath Consulting will be presenting "Building a Digital Workplace with WordPress".

Presented by the City of Toronto this event is aimed at traditional businesses looking to embrace technology and make money online - whether it be ecommerce and digital marketing, or building a digital workplace, this event has everything a business needs to start embracing digital thinking.

Wednesday, April 27, 2016
Time 9am - 3pm

100 Queen St. West
3rd Floor, Council Chamber

WordPress Toronto New Monthly Meetup

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WordPress users get together informally to share and learn from each other.

Whether you're a novice or a seasoned pro, you'll get valuable tips, tricks and techniques that will make your WordPress experience a more profitable one.

Monday, April 18, 2016 - 4:00 PM to 6:00 PM

Eyelash Canada
16 Orfus Rd. unit 205,
North York, ON

Wishing you continued business success,

bio Alex Sirota 04a 320x180 c

Alex Sirota
Director, NewPath Consulting
(888) 781-2539

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