Kathy and I had a lady round from our local glazing company to quote us for new double-glazing for our kitchen recently.

The meeting was pretty uneventful. She was nice, talkative, knew what she was doing.

We had a comedy moment when she plucked up the courage to suggest that we didn't bother with making the top windows openable as neither Kathy nor I were tall enough to reach the handles :O

But apart from that, pretty uneventful. 

Later on that day she left us a message with a quote. Kathy and I briefly looked at each other. Contemplated shopping around for a cheaper quote. But quickly said “nah” and phoned back to put things in motion.

I'm sure we could have haggled to get the price down, or price-shopped elsewhere.

But frankly, the quote we got was reasonable, and it just didn't seem worth the effort to shave a few hundred pounds from the price.

Later on, I realised there was an important lesson in the experience for anyone thinking about their marketing and wanting to get premium prices for their products and services.

The lesson: charging a premium price is less about your sales ability than it is about focusing on the right customers.

While our sales lady was perfectly pleasant, the reason we didn't shop around wasn't because of anything she did. It was that it didn't seem like a great use of our time. We were the reason she didn't have to discount or negotiate.

One thing I've noticed in business is that most people don't pay enough attention to who they sell to. It's almost like they just take whoever happens to be right in front of them and then invest all their time and effort into convincing them to buy, whether they're a great prospect or not.

They'd be much better off investing that same time and effort into getting themselves in front of people who are much more likely to buy, who need less convincing, and are much less likely to try to haggle and push the price down.

Of course, I don't mean they're literally selling to anyone who happens to be right in front of them. But more often than not they haven't really investigated who would be the best market for them. Who really gets the most value from what they do and would, therefore, be willing to pay more for it.

And when a potential client shows an interest, it's rare that they thoroughly qualify whether they'd be a great client. They see the “bird in the hand” and decide it's best to stick with them rather than aiming higher. 

Now in truth, it's difficult to confidently turn away a potential client unless you have a high degree of confidence that a better one is just around the corner. And that comes from having an effective lead generation system in place.

The two go hand in hand: generate lots of great leads and qualify hard so you're focusing your precious time on your best possible clients. People like me and Kathy who aren't going to waste your time or push you hard on price because we recognise the value of what you're doing and we have better things to do with our time than saving a little bit of money in comparison with that value.