I think the economics of pricing your labour are different from the economics of pricing something you manufacture. I mean, yeah, in this case, he's manufacturing something, but his whole value proposition is that something constitutes an enormous amount of labour.
Yeah, he can hire underlings, but managing people is a completely different skillset. (I mean, to manage skilled people, you need to have a pretty good knowledge of that skill... but you also need to know how to manage people.)
Under those conditions? eh, I think that raising prices when you are turning away business makes a lot of sense. I mean, right now, I'm doing the same thing with consulting type work. I apologize and usually hand out referrals when I quote a price, but eh, I don't need the work. If I scare off the customer, good.
I think people are also more understanding about you changing the price of your labour than about you changing the price of a mass-manufactured good. Most people understand that you have busy times and not so busy times.
also note, in most expensive things? customers pay different amounts based on their negotiation skill and perceived ability to pay. I mean, I'm trying to sell co-location, and, well, mostly failing using the 'here is the price on the website; everyone pays this price' model. I even lowered existing customer's prices when I lowered the price for new customers. Nope. Nobody cares. In co-location, if you want to sell, you give 10%- for the life of the customer, including upgrades to the salesguy. (mind you, for the small fish, my customers, this guy just throws you an email and you take it from there. He does no work ongoing) Obviously, as my margin on the larger co-lo packages isn't all that much more than 10% (which is completely reasonable; it's not that much work for me... most of it goes to the data centre owner. I mostly just handle the network.)
Anyhow, I guess my point is that most customers, when buying expensive things, are absolutely used to the situation where you spend two weeks fucking around on the price, where everyone pays a different price and nobody knows what the renewal price will be. Sometimes, in fact, it seems to me like they prefer that model.
Yeah, he can hire underlings, but managing people is a completely different skillset. (I mean, to manage skilled people, you need to have a pretty good knowledge of that skill... but you also need to know how to manage people.)
Under those conditions? eh, I think that raising prices when you are turning away business makes a lot of sense. I mean, right now, I'm doing the same thing with consulting type work. I apologize and usually hand out referrals when I quote a price, but eh, I don't need the work. If I scare off the customer, good.
I think people are also more understanding about you changing the price of your labour than about you changing the price of a mass-manufactured good. Most people understand that you have busy times and not so busy times.
also note, in most expensive things? customers pay different amounts based on their negotiation skill and perceived ability to pay. I mean, I'm trying to sell co-location, and, well, mostly failing using the 'here is the price on the website; everyone pays this price' model. I even lowered existing customer's prices when I lowered the price for new customers. Nope. Nobody cares. In co-location, if you want to sell, you give 10%- for the life of the customer, including upgrades to the salesguy. (mind you, for the small fish, my customers, this guy just throws you an email and you take it from there. He does no work ongoing) Obviously, as my margin on the larger co-lo packages isn't all that much more than 10% (which is completely reasonable; it's not that much work for me... most of it goes to the data centre owner. I mostly just handle the network.)
Anyhow, I guess my point is that most customers, when buying expensive things, are absolutely used to the situation where you spend two weeks fucking around on the price, where everyone pays a different price and nobody knows what the renewal price will be. Sometimes, in fact, it seems to me like they prefer that model.