The Price Whisperer Per Sjofors On How To Catapult Profits And Success (#234)

[00:00:00] Jeffrey Feldberg: Welcome to the Deep Wealth Podcast where you learn how to extract your business and personal Deep Wealth. 

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Per Sjofors AKA The Price Whisperer is the founder of Sjofors And Partners. Pricing has always been an interest area for Per as a serial entrepreneur, running companies in Europe and the US he did pricing experiences. Some of those work spectacularly some did not work at all. And as a result, Per founded his company out of his frustration that what [00:02:00] business schools teach about pricing is too abstract and too academic for a business executive to act on. 

Likewise with books about pricing. Consequently, he sent out to make pricing practical and actionable. And this stems from a deep understanding of how the 4 P's of marketing interact and how changes in one of the P's affects price. Since then Per has been at the forefront as a pricing thought leader, taking a very different view on everything pricing. Per is the author of the price whisperer a holistic approach to pricing power and is a sought after speaker for a variety of conferences and business circuits. Per is a member of the Forbes Magazine Business Council, a member of the C-suite Network, appears regularly on podcasts and business radio shows and gets quoted regularly in the financial press, including Inc magazine, The Street, Fortune Magazine, Industry Week, Business Insider [00:03:00] and the Financial Times. 

 Prior to founding his own company, Per has more than 25 years of CEO experience. Driving companies to rapid, profitable growth, where he gained an appreciation for the importance of optimal pricing. 

Welcome to the Deep Wealth Podcast and for all you business owners out there, I bet dollars to donuts you've been up at nights asking one really important question. How am I gonna charge for my service or product? Am I charging enough? Am I charging too little? What does that look like? Maybe I have imposter syndrome.

Well, I'll tell you what, we have the authority on pricing and how to take your company to the next level. We have a fellow business owner, a thought leader, an author, you name it, he's done it. It'll be an episode that's gonna have you coming out of it. A whole lot more educated with terrific strategies and insights on when you came in.

I'm delighted to have you join us for this episode and Par, welcome to the Deep Wealth podcast. Always a pleasure to have you with us. And you know what Par, there's [00:04:00] always a story behind the story I'd love to know what's your story, what got you to where you are today?

[00:04:05] Per Sjofors: First of all, Jeffrey, thank you much for having me on the show. And I'm looking forward to this and I'm looking forward to maybe teach the audience a little bit and entertain them as well. That's my objectives. 

[00:04:16] Jeffrey Feldberg: Terrific. Terrific. 

[00:04:17] Per Sjofors: The story is, you know, I have this wacky name , because I'm Swedish, right?

And it makes perfect sense in my native Sweden not much here which is why I adopted the moniker, the Price Whisper. But the story here is that, I ran a couple of companies in Europe one out of Zurich in Switzerland and one out of London, UK. And then I came here in the mid nineties to the Los Angeles area initially to Run and develop a business a business unit for a fairly large public company.

And after that I had another four CEO positions in smaller companies. And in all of these instances, we did experiments with pricing. And some of those experiments were very successful, [00:05:00] meaning next quarter revenues are up 25, 30%. Others were complete duds. And what I had learned about pricing in business school and can read about pricing was theoretical and academic, that it didn't help us in any way to understand why some of those experiments worked and others did not. 15 years ago, I decided I was too old and too opinionated to be a hired gun I set up my own shop and I developed a process that makes every pricing experiment a success.

[00:05:35] Jeffrey Feldberg: Wow.

[00:05:36] Per Sjofors: Yeah. And that is the backstory. And, obviously, to be honest, we're a lot better now than we were when we started but even even pricing is such a, it's an area that is ignored by so, many cus companies that it any little helps, you know.

But I have clients [00:06:00] who tells us they have 10 x their companies, five x their companies, just by focus on pricing.

[00:06:07] Jeffrey Feldberg: I love that. And that's really a Deep Wealth what we're all about with our nine step roadmap of, hey, how do you grow your company? And then once you're done growing it, it's time for the Exit. You're much better off.

Would've been before that. And Per as you're talking, I'm going back to my first startup Embanet and we actually talk about this in the 90 day Deep experience because pricing or the business model, that's one of our X-Factors.

And when I first got into business, I just didn't know what to do and I looked around and I did what everyone else was doing. Hindsight being 2020, that was terrible. It was the worst business model ever. And thankfully we ended up changing that and that really made a difference for our liquidity event.

And I know a lot of what we're gonna be talking about today is also in your book. And I love your nickname, the Price Whisperer and your book, the Price Whisperer, A Holistic Approach to Pricing Power. And we'll talk a lot about that. But let me ask you this. When it [00:07:00] comes to pricing or a business model, you've seen it all. After all, you're the price whisperer. As business owners, where are we getting it wrong? If you spoke to 10 businesses, probably good old pre's law, 80% of their issues are coming from, give or take, the same 20% of the problems or the root cause of that. What would the top issues be That as business owners, we may not even realize that we're doing it all wrong.

But we are, So, what would that typically be? What are you seeing out there?

[00:07:29] Per Sjofors: When we come to pricing mistakes, there are three big mistakes that people do when it comes to pricing. And one is to try to price to the same price as a competitor.

[00:07:41] Jeffrey Feldberg: Okay.

[00:07:42] Per Sjofors: Now, that means that you have to find the price of your competitor or competitors. And yeah, if you're selling stuff on Amazon, yeah, you can do that

[00:07:52] Jeffrey Feldberg: Sure.

[00:07:53] Per Sjofors: But if you are in a business where you may have competitors that have their prices on the, on online, although [00:08:00] fewer and fewer customers have fewer and fewer customer companies have. And. But if, even if you can find your competitors price placed online,

You don't know what deals they're making, you don't know what bundles they're making. You don't know what specials they have. You don't know if they change the price on the website eight times a day whenever you get there, you get different prices. You don't know if they geotag the prices on the website different people in different areas see different prices.

You don't know if the prices change, if you come back to the website after being there within a certain period of time looking at a competitive pricing when it's available online is indicative at best, right? But the problem is that you start by pricing as your competitor. Then suddenly you start to marketing as your competitor, and you have the same feature functions that your competitor and now you have entered the [00:09:00] commoditization death spiral.

And because pricing power, which is the ability to charge higher prices and see higher sales volume comes from differentiation and de commoditization. 

Since we are on this, topic, if you can't find your competitor's price list on the website, where are you gonna find them? 

[00:09:23] Jeffrey Feldberg: Sure, you spend a whole lot of time, effort, and energy, and it's interesting that you're talking about the context because I know in the book, You talk a lot about that, and I'm taking a partial quote from the book, pricing cannot be considered out of context, and then you go and talk about the sales channel and the messages and everything else that, that goes along with that.

But let me ask you this Per, because I know there's some listeners that are saying, okay, you know what, if I was maybe a service based company or I was a high tech company, I could differentiate my services, but I'm a manufacturing company and my widget is the same as the next guy's widget, as the [00:10:00] next one and the next one.

There really is no differentiation. Who am I to charge more than what everyone else is doing? I'm gonna lose all that business yeah. I'm just gonna charge what everyone else is charging that. That's the going rate, that's the industry rate. How would you speak to someone like that?

[00:10:14] Per Sjofors: First off the, almost any companies have some products that are commodity.

And they have some products that are unique, and then they have some product that are in between there, and another mistake that companies often do is to use the same pricing strategy and let's say another mistake, which is also very common.

You mentioned manufacturing here. Manufacturers often price, cost plus. They calculate the cost, which is not so easy because how you allocate overhead is a science by itself. And then they have the cost and then they slap on a a margin. And often that margin is rule of thumb that are different in [00:11:00] different industries, old school manufacturing, typically 35% to 50%.

Retailers, a hundred percent. Some high tech five times cost, 10 times cost, but there's some examples of industries where we're talking about 25 times cost. All of these have cost based pricing has issues that we can talk about. But specific to your question,

If you have a company that has some commodity product, some unique products and some in between product, they almost always price as they all are commodities.

[00:11:35] Jeffrey Feldberg: Exactly.

[00:11:37] Per Sjofors: And one exercise that if you are that manufacturer, what I suggest you do is that go through your product assortment, or at least on a product family level, and find out what are the true commodity products and price them at commodity prices because in a commodity, the lowest price went.[00:12:00]

[00:12:00] Jeffrey Feldberg: And Per is that so in the book? And I'm gonna jump around here a little bit because it's a terrific book and for our listeners in the show notes, we'll have a link. It'll be point and click and you can get Per's book and you will thank yourself. It's an investment in yourself and in your business. But I know in chapter seven you talk about, in chapter seven, the title is Your Price Selects Your Customer, and it's really, you're alluding that and then I don't think it's a coincidence, right after chapter seven, chapter eight, you talk about commoditization, talk to us about that in terms of probably unconsciously as business owners, what we're doing with our pricing. We may not even realize it. We're pigeonholing ourself for a certain type of customer in a certain kind of pricing. What? What's going on with that?

[00:12:44] Per Sjofors: Let me illustrate this with a story. And a company who, it's a SaaS company, we were helped them when they were very small and they have a phone system in the cloud, right? And we found that they were so underpriced that our [00:13:00] recommendation was to quadruple prices.

[00:13:02] Jeffrey Feldberg: Wow.

[00:13:03] Per Sjofors: Now they didn't do the overnight. It took them nine months roughly to, to increase prices. And then as I followed up with the CEO, he said two things happened. He said, first our sales volume went up with 25%. This is at four times the price. Secondly, he said, and we got a completely different set of customer.

More professional. And because of that our customer support costs have gone down with 80%.

[00:13:34] Jeffrey Feldberg: Wow. So, let's take a step back, Per on that. They've increased pricing. Sales went up. So, presumably their profits went up as well. They're a technology company, a SaaS company. The cost base is relatively the same, but they effectively fired their old customers, which it sounds like we're giving them all kinds of problems, and they got better customers who are paying more money.

I mean, Isn't that what we all want? Fewer customers paying more higher profits.

[00:13:59] Per Sjofors: Yeah well, [00:14:00] those price sensitive customers are price sensitive customers buy from you for only because of your low price. Not because they particularly appreciate the product or the brand or whatever, and in many, many cases, those price sensitive customers doesn't even bother to learn the product they bought, which is why they call customer support all the time.

Because they didn't have an incentive to learn the product. Because they don't care because it was only the low price. So, you work and educate these price sensitive customers over some period of time with a great investment in your resource and so forth. And then as soon as there is a cheaper alternative, they're gone.

[00:14:46] Jeffrey Feldberg: So, you're, only as good as what you're doing for them today. Someone tomorrow comes out for maybe pennies less and you're gonna lose them. So, Per you lost over this, but it's really important for our listeners, and I'd love to do [00:15:00] a little bit of a deep dive on this you talked about how with this one SaaS based company, they brought you on board and you're now working with them.

I suppose you learned the business and you saw what was going on, and then you came up with a strategy. And for our listeners out there who are listening to you saying, you know what? Wow. I would love to see if I can change our business model. I wanna get better customers. I wanna have higher revenues.

I wanna reduce my costs on the back end Per walk us through your system. What does that look like in terms of someone today says, bear, come on board. Let's do this, and now you're there tomorrow. How does that look like? 

[00:15:34] Per Sjofors: Well, yeah, I mentioned that when I started my company that I developed a process to make every pricing experiment a success. And it was really based on my own experience of the companies I've been running, right? And the process starts with going out in the marketplace and measure willingness to pay, And this could be done with great accuracy if it's done correctly. [00:16:00] And from that willingness to pay, it is possible to predict sales volume and revenue at different prices,

[00:16:09] Jeffrey Feldberg: Okay.

[00:16:10] Per Sjofors: That's the first thing. But then what we do is that we take that and we segment it, right? We can identify which customer segments. Are the most desirable, meaning those customer segments or sometimes customer profiles, customer avatars, customer personas, they're all the same, right? That will have a higher willingness to buy and at a higher price, meaning that they are be, they are the most desirable customers to your company because they will generate the highest revenue and the highest profits.

And then we do the same with products we can tell our clients these features and functions will support higher prices, whereas these [00:17:00] other features and functions will not.

So, use the first one in your promotion and if you haven't developed them, those are the ones they should go to the top of the list.

The same with marketing. We say, these marketing channels and these marketing messages supports higher prices than other marketing channels and and messages. And the same with sales. These sales methodologies and channels support higher prices than other sales methodologies and channels.

[00:17:31] Jeffrey Feldberg: And what it sounds like Per as you go through your system, as you begin to learn about that company, best guess here. You can tell me if I'm on base or off base. It sounds like for a lot of companies that when it comes to pricing itself, it's just MIA. It's missing on the overall business strategy. It's missing on the marketing strategy.

They're doing everything but that. Would I be on base with that?

[00:17:55] Per Sjofors: Yeah, in my prior life, I've been through this many many times [00:18:00] where I'm absolutely sure that the audience is gonna recognize this and this is something that I call the stormy pricing meeting.

Suddenly there is a product and we're gonna go to this trade show and sales people need their lead prices they can sell it, right?

Or we launching our ad campaign and we need to have a price on it.

Or we negotiating a huge OEM deal here for this particular widget, and we need to have a price. And because nobody thought about it.

And I have this pricing meeting where you have typically you have product management, you have sales people or sales management.

You have representative from marketing and from finance. And sometimes you even have one of the executives in the room as well. 

[00:18:52] Jeffrey Feldberg: Sure.

[00:18:53] Per Sjofors: And everybody got a lot of opinions. Sales want lower prices [00:19:00] because they think that it makes their life easier. Marketing say, oh, we need to value price, right? And then you ask them what that means and they don't know.

Finance want higher prices because they look at margin. Product management say well, you know, I, I kind of wanted to sell a lot, but prices need to be low, but I also wanted to be very profitable, right?

[00:19:26] Jeffrey Feldberg: Sure.

[00:19:27] Per Sjofors: And everybody's full of opinions and nobody has any data. And it's, you know, the stormy meeting goes back and forth, for maybe an hour until whoever happened to have the highest seniority just slams his or her fist on the conference room table and say, this will be the price.

[00:19:49] Jeffrey Feldberg: And I suppose one of the advantages, Per of having someone like yourself at that table, As the outsider, you can be the bad cop to speak. You can be the one that's, saying all these things [00:20:00] is not personal in the company. You're the one that's really finding their blind spots, finding their skeletons, as we like to say here at Deep Wealth and what's not happening that should be happening, and really guide them towards a better business model.

[00:20:14] Per Sjofors: You always have to put the customer first. Always, and it's about understanding how customers want to buy this widget. How they, where they wanna buy it, where they wanna learn about it, I mean, on terms of the business model and how they want pay for it.

All of this needs to come from from this willingness to pay research, because then it's not opinions anymore. It is hard data.

[00:20:44] Jeffrey Feldberg: Speaking of the hard data Per now I know every business is different, every industry's gonna be different. When you're doing the research, what does that look like on your end? What are we looking for when we're doing the research to find. Potentially that higher price segment, a different [00:21:00] segment altogether to take the business to the next level.

[00:21:02] Per Sjofors: It's all about doing the research which you do online from where you through a series of questions can understand how a market and a market here includes. Maybe some customers, maybe some prospects lots of people who could possibly be prospects and customers if they happen to know that the company exists.

But they all have opinions on what they want and how they want their needs to be satisfied and how, if you can understand how all their issues, all the benefits they are looking for, how all of these are related to their willingness to pay. Then you get that profile of customers profile of, you get that holistic view, a detailed, practical understanding of a marketplace that you can not only [00:22:00] market correctly, sell correctly, but also price correctly. 

 How you specifically do it is, In these online polls you have a long series of questions where you ask respondents to this poll to equate the the monetary value with benefits and the lack of benefits.

[00:22:22] Jeffrey Feldberg: So, without going into confidential information by any means for the SAAS company that you referenced. A little earlier. I'm just curious the types of questions that you asked on the survey, if you can share some of that, because I'm sure some of the listeners are saying Per this sounds really interesting and yes, there's a terrific upside, but I don't wanna lose my customers.

I don't wanna lose my customer base. I don't want to damage the business. Good intentions that lead to a negative outcome. Talk to us a little bit about the survey that you're doing, the kinds of questions that we're asking so hopefully get us to a better place on the pricing side.

[00:22:57] Per Sjofors: Well, Like I said it's, a lot of it is [00:23:00] equating value with price. First of all, we have to understand that there's something called expectation bias. 

And what expectation bias means it, it means two things. First off if you are presented with a price for that widget. You've seen similar widgets.

You been presented to the marketing and advertising of other widget manufacturers. You have a hunch of what the price range should be.

This is called heuristics and it's part of something called behavioral economics, which is an academic field.

Where we are leaning on three noble price winners expectation bias tells us that if the price we are being presented with is too low, you say you won't buy because you don't think that whatever the widget is not gonna be good enough. You don't think or you'd rather think that the company's gonna overpromise and under deliver.

 And [00:24:00] if you're a very small company, right? Or you're just starting up, this is something that you can do as an executive or an owner of the company. You go out and you find at least 25 potential buyers of this widget. And you explain what the widget does and the benefits of the widget.

And then you ask, and phraseology here is a very important, you ask now, Mr. Or Mrs. Prospect, What is a price for this that is just so low. You don't think that you're gonna buy it because you think it's not gonna be good enough. And it's important those 25 are not customers.

They're not current prospects. They're absolutely not friends and family, But really strangers that could possibly be customers. Then once you ask that question, you then say, and now let's look at the flip side. What is a price that is [00:25:00] for this widget, that is so high or just about so high?

That it doesn't matter how good it is, it doesn't matter how we will over promise. And you still feel that the price is just a little too high. Then you take the average of these two questions you know. And suddenly you have a range of where the price should be. Not lower than that. And not higher than that.

[00:25:29] Jeffrey Feldberg: And Per, what's interesting, I mean, as simple as that sounds, it's not really being done out there. And know in the book you shared a staggering statistic because you said 82% of CEOs in the us, 82% of CEOs thought that the best. To increase the profits was, oh, we just gotta increase sales. And it reminded me of that old joke while we're losing money on each individual sale, but we'll make it up in volume.

And you know, [00:26:00] obviously all joking aside you're, you're never gonna get there. So, that lack of understanding, that lack insight, where is that coming from? And because these are smart, successful people in companies that we all know and they're missing the boat on that. 

[00:26:16] Per Sjofors: If you look at business school, you know, pricing is something they talk about one afternoon. You spend three or four years in business school and pricing is one afternoon. I'm gonna start a tiktok channel, right?

I have a list of 200 pricing advice that's gonna be on that TikTok and so I looked at, is there other people talking about pricing on TikTok? And there was one guy who said, there are three ways of pricing. There's only three pricing strategies, And he said, one is cost plus that we've discussed. The other is to set the same price as a competitor that we also discussed. And then he said, and then it's value pricing, [00:27:00] but he doesn't say how you, how do you get to the value? How do you understand the value of a product or a service?

And what I just mentioned, for a small company starting up just doing that. These little 25 interviews right, will tell you the range of the value that your clients have for your product.

[00:27:23] Jeffrey Feldberg: Interesting. And for our listeners, you'll be fascinated. And again, please click on the link in the show notes. Get Per's book. Per, I was floored when you took public company data. No secrets here. It's out there for public consumption. And you asked a terrific question, what would happen if prices went up 1%?

And to put that in perspective, 1% if you're charging, I'm making this up. If you're charging a hundred dollars, it now becomes $101 1% is nothing. It's a rounding error, but what's not a rounding error, depending on the company. You gave a few different examples. A 1% price [00:28:00] increase depending on the company, as low as a 5% increase in profits to as high as a 21% increase in profits, which again is staggering of such a small increase in price and such a profound impact on the profits.

[00:28:15] Per Sjofors: I'll tell you this. Imagine that Amazon increase prices 1%.

[00:28:22] Jeffrey Feldberg: Oh my goodness. Sure.

[00:28:24] Per Sjofors: Their margin will go up with 49%,

[00:28:27] Jeffrey Feldberg: Wow.

[00:28:28] Per Sjofors: What do you think will happen with the shareholder value?

[00:28:31] Jeffrey Feldberg: I'll be through the roof, through the roof, yeah.

[00:28:36] Per Sjofors: And we talk about increasing prices with 1%, but it's the same to decrease discounting with 1%.

[00:28:43] Jeffrey Feldberg: And so yeah let's talk about discounting because as discounting, I know a Deep Wealth, we have mixed feelings about discounting and many businesses. It's a crutch for them. Okay. You know, We'll discount it. We'll have a sale. We'll give it away. We will slash prices. What's your take on [00:29:00] discounting?

[00:29:00] Per Sjofors: Discounting you should, you will see you will not see more. Sales discounting is important first off. Because when you present that widget with its price, and I'm talking about expectation bias here again the price sets an expectation of the quality and benefit. Right now you have that in mind.

And then you see a discount that makes it a bargain. So, you have all the benefits. Let's say you have your product there at a hundred bucks. If you have a product at a hundred bucks, your value perceptions are anchored to a hundred bucks, and then you give a 20% discount it's actually gonna be 80, bucks. 

 A that means that you get the value for a hundred bucks. For a lower price becomes a bargain.

Whereas had you priced it at 80 bucks from start, [00:30:00] the value perceptions would've been lower.

[00:30:04] Jeffrey Feldberg: Okay.

[00:30:05] Per Sjofors: A low price, 80 bucks, versus a discounted price that goes down to 80 bucks is not the same thing.

[00:30:14] Jeffrey Feldberg: Interesting

[00:30:14] Per Sjofors: One more thing though, but the other thing to consider is that discounting more than 20% does not lead to higher sales volume.

Okay so, you, if you're discounting 35%, you're gonna have the same discount as if you did 20%.

And discounting more than 50% will mean to the buyer that this company is desperate. They can't sell whatever the widget is they, and nobody wanna buy it. So, they discount as crazy so I'm not gonna buy it either.

[00:30:52] Jeffrey Feldberg: And Per, let me ask you, and I see this a lot, particularly in, I'll call it luxury fashion. I'm not gonna name any brands here, [00:31:00] but I've often wondered, you'll often see a luxury item and it's quote unquote on sale. And they'll say, this was normally, and I'm making up some of the numbers here, but they're not really that far off.

This is normally a $10,000 item, but now it's on sale for $2,000. And I've often wondered, maybe they put it up in one store somewhere in the world for $10,000 for a day to say that, hey, it was actually on for $10,000. But they then put it to what probably fair market value is for the 2000. And when you go 10,000 and 2000, wow that's, that's quite a bargain.

And it's a terrific name. And I'm gonna be this around. Is there something to that of this, you know.

[00:31:40] Per Sjofors: Well, in the specific case that you mentioned, if a company does that, they are shooting themselves in the foot.

[00:31:46] Jeffrey Feldberg: Okay.

[00:31:47] Per Sjofors: But let me tell you there's something called price anchoring and or price imaging. Let's call it price anchoring. And what it means is that we, as humans, as we read [00:32:00] prices of different products or product versions,

[00:32:03] Jeffrey Feldberg: Yes.

[00:32:04] Per Sjofors: What we read first becomes the anchor, what that means is, All of you guys who have prices on your website, good, better, best widgets 

[00:32:14] Jeffrey Feldberg: Yes. 

[00:32:14] Per Sjofors: Should be the other way around to start with the most expensive, right? Because that sets an anchor point, which means that the consequent lower prices appears to be more affordable.

Now what I'm is about to tell you is when Apple came out with the apple watch. It was $349, but they also had a version, exactly the same electronics in a gold case.

And it was $17,000. And of course, every journalist who wrote about this product introduction talked about the audacity of Apple to sell a $17,000 watch with the same electronics as a [00:33:00] $349.

[00:33:02] Jeffrey Feldberg: Right?

[00:33:03] Per Sjofors: It wasn't there to be sold. It was there every time somebody saw $17,000, $349. That 349 became more and more affordable.

[00:33:17] Jeffrey Feldberg: Per, was it the old saying that goes, any publicity is good publicity. So, did that work for Apple? In your opinion? They had this outrageous $17,000 and maybe a few people bought it, but it got them talked about and on the front pages and in the media.

[00:33:32] Per Sjofors: Absolutely. But the point here is that it was a different product version. It wasn't the same product version 10,000 that's been discounted down to 2000. That is the point because that is shooting yourself in the foot. But if you had another product version, that could be very, very similar in this case with Apple.

And by the way, the Apple Watch is by far the best selling [00:34:00] smart watch. You know, they have whatever, 60, 70% of the market,

And as opposed to phones, right? Where they have 15, 18% of the market. So, part of the success of the Apple was, or the introduction of the Apple Watch was just this, that they had that price anchor, which made the product.

They really wanna sell more affordable to appear more affordable.

[00:34:28] Jeffrey Feldberg: And it worked all the way around they had differentiation. Hey, this is diff it's same product, but it's a different product. It's not the same one. We're not discounting it. And yes, for your however many hundreds of dollars you can own this, which is coming from the same family as a $17,000 version that you can have.

It sounds like they were firing on all cylinders. It worked with the media, with the customers, with the public, and boom, there goes a market disruption. There goes market share, all in a good [00:35:00] way. 

[00:35:00] Per Sjofors: All in a good way. Furthermore like you said, it all promotion is good promotion, you do want people to talk about the product or service and Apple. There's something else when we look at this, and we have, as we all know, pricing on the nine, Now if what you're selling is a luxury good or something that's unique, you don't price on the nine, which is why it was $17,000 versus $349. And in fact, you talked about my book, I also have a masterclass in pricing, that I'm doing.

And one of the examples I'm using there is not mentioning any names here, but a a very large electronics provider who advertised their new set of tv's. Big TVs, 80 inch flat screens or whatever it was. They did one thing, right.

They started with the most expensive tv, right? Followed by three TVs where next one had a lower price, and it was, I can't remember [00:36:00] the exact number, but it was reading from the right. It was like 1500 bucks, 1800 bucks.

Actually it was 1,999 and 99, right then it was 1,499 and 99, and then it was 1,999 and 99. Then the most expensive one. 13,999 and 99, right? That was wrong. That was a mistake. It should have been 14,000 instead. 

[00:36:37] Jeffrey Feldberg: And you see that so much. It's an interesting point. And talk to us a little bit about that. And then we'll have to segue into the wrap up here. You see a lot of well, I'll keep it at the 99.99 and not go to that threshold. And the thinking as I see it is, there's a psychology.

When I go to a certain threshold, it may throw some people off. So, why was that a mistake? In the TV [00:37:00] manufacturer?

[00:37:00] Per Sjofors: Well, In for the TV manufacturer because when you put something on the nine,

[00:37:05] Jeffrey Feldberg: Yes.

[00:37:06] Per Sjofors: It sends the message of that this is a commodity,

[00:37:09] Jeffrey Feldberg: Okay.

[00:37:10] Per Sjofors: Alright? And it has certain values, but it's still a commodity, right? But had they put it at whatever it was, 13,000, it would've been a message of, this is completely unique, alright, and therefore you can support this higher price.

Again, just the same family, but it's the same as, and why does 99 work? And by the way, if you should do it 97 works better than 99.

And it generates about 3% higher sales volume than 99.

And again, you don't want to do it on unique products where you wanna message value, message uniqueness, but why it works is because the, the difference between 999 and 10 is 10 bucks.

[00:37:56] Jeffrey Feldberg: Yeah.

Which in, yeah. In the scheme of things it's a rounding [00:38:00] error relative to everything else.

[00:38:01] Per Sjofors: That's right.

[00:38:02] Jeffrey Feldberg: That's interesting. Per, we could just go on and on and from your book to your masterclass, to the strategies that you're sharing today, there's so much there and. Again for our listeners in the show notes there is a link.

It'll be point and click, but Per as we begin to wrap things up, I'd like to do a quick thought experiment with you, and I'd like you to think about the movie Back to the Future. And in that movie you have that magical DeLorean car that can take you to any point in time. Imagine now it's tomorrow morning Per and you look outside your window and there it is.

The DeLorean car is not only sitting there, but the door is open. It's waiting for you to hop on in and you can now go to any point in your life. Per, as a young child as a teenager, whatever point in time that you would go to, what would you tell your younger self in terms of life wisdom or life lessons or Per?

Do this but don't do that. What would that sound like?

[00:38:59] Per Sjofors: Oh, [00:39:00] it's a very deep question.

[00:39:01] Jeffrey Feldberg: Indeed?

[00:39:02] Per Sjofors: And Back to the Future is the trilogy is one of my absolute favorite movies. I don't do very many movies, but those I've seen many times. What would I, where would I have gone back? You know, I probably would've gone back to my um, mid-teens, 

[00:39:20] Jeffrey Feldberg: Okay. 

[00:39:20] Per Sjofors: And. I would've told myself that I need more education.

[00:39:26] Jeffrey Feldberg: Interesting. Okay.

[00:39:27] Per Sjofors: I should have set up myself for maybe having that PhD or maybe a JD or something like that you know that I didn't. I went through business school and that was it, but I'm saying going back to my mid-teens because I think a lot of what I did going through my late teens and early twenties would've been very different had I had that mental target so, to speak.

[00:39:54] Jeffrey Feldberg: So, a little bit more education, learn a few more things and then apply that for later on. [00:40:00] It's a terrific message out there, particularly as things are becoming so, much more specialized today, and it's really a global economy in every sense of the word that the right kind of education can really make a difference.

[00:40:13] Per Sjofors: Yep, that's for sure.

[00:40:15] Jeffrey Feldberg: Well, Per as I've been mentioning, we're gonna put everything in the show notes for the listeners out there who would like to reach out to you. Perhaps even work with you or learn a little bit more about what you're doing and how it can help their businesses. Where is the best place online that they can reach you?

[00:40:29] Per Sjofors: The best place is Google. Cause you Google the Price Whisper and you find me, you find my company, you find my new book, you find other stuff I've written and the price whisper is really, it's the easiest way cuz I got a wacky name. You are also going to find a discounted service by a company called Redfin who had something where you could price your house before you wanted to sell it, And they called that the [00:41:00] price first Per as well.

But otherwise it's all me, thousands of hits. I have a YouTube channel and you know, so.

[00:41:07] Jeffrey Feldberg: And again, for our listeners, we will have that in the show notes, a link to the book, and you can't go wrong with that and Per this is an official wrap and I really want to thank you for taking part of your day and spending with us here on the Deep Wealth Podcast. And as always, please stay healthy and safe. 

[00:41:23] Per Sjofors: Thank you so much, Jeffrey, it's been a real pleasure being on the show. 

[00:41:27] Sharon S.: The Deep Wealth Experience was definitely a game-changer for me. 

[00:41:30] Lyn M.: This course is one of the best investments you will ever make because you will get an ROI of a hundred times that. Anybody who doesn't go through it will lose millions. 

[00:41:40] Kam H.: If you don't have time for this program, you'll never have time for a successful liquidity 

[00:41:45] Sharon S.: It was the best value of any business course I've ever taken. The money was very well spent.

[00:41:51] Lyn M.: Compared to when we first began, today I feel better prepared, but in some respects, may be less prepared, not [00:42:00] because of the course, but because the course brought to light so many things that I thought we were on top of that we need to fix. 

[00:42:07] Kam H.: I 100% believe there's never a great time for a business owner to allocate extra hours into his or her week or day. So it's an investment that will yield results today. I thought I will reap the benefit of this program in three to five years down the road. But as soon as I stepped forward into the program, my mind changed immediately. 

[00:42:29] Sharon S.: There was so much value in the experience that the time I invested paid back so much for the energy that was expended. 

[00:42:40] Lyn M.: The Deep Wealth Experience compared to other programs is the top. What we learned is very practical. Sometimes you learn stuff that it's great to learn, but you never use it. The stuff we learned from Deep Wealth Experience, I believe it's going to benefit us a boatload.

[00:42:53] Kam H.: I've done an executive MBA. I've worked for billion-dollar companies before. I've worked for smaller companies before I started my [00:43:00] business. I've been running my business successfully now for getting close to a decade. We're on a growth trajectory. Reflecting back on the Deep Wealth, I knew less than 10% what I know now, maybe close to 1% even. 

[00:43:11] Sharon S.: Hands down the best program in which I've ever participated. And we've done a lot of different things over the years. We've been in other mastermind groups, gone to many seminars, workshops, conferences, retreats, read books. This was so different. I haven't had an experience that's anything close to this in all the years that we've been at this.

It's five-star, A-plus.

[00:43:38] Kam H.: I would highly recommend it to any super busy business owner out there.

Deep Wealth is an accurate name for it. This program leads to deeper wealth and happier wealth, not just deeper wealth. I don't think there's a dollar value that could be associated with such an experience and knowledge that could be applied today and forever. 

[00:43:57] Jeffrey Feldberg: Are you leaving millions on the table? 

Please [00:44:00] visit www.deepwealth.com/success to learn more.

 If you're not on my email list, you'll want to be. Sign up at www.deepwealth.com/podcast. And if you enjoyed this episode, if it added value, if you walked away with some new insights and strategies, please leave a review on your favorite podcast channel. Reviews help us reach new listeners, grow the show. And continue to create content that you'll enjoy and as we wrap up this episode as always please stay healthy and safe.