Supermarket giant Tesco rarely wows me with its marketing, but it got me going ‘Oooh, that’s clever’ this week.

When I was doing an online shop, Tesco informed me that it would cost £7 for my desired delivery slot. Blimey, I thought, that seems a bit steep.

But then, as I grudgingly went to the checkout, Tesco did something very clever. They didn’t call it a delivery charge. They called it ‘Pick, Pack and Deliver.’

And this totally changed how I felt about it.

I suddenly had an image of some poor Tesco employee trudging round a warehouse the size of an aircraft hangar, desperately trying to find my Whispering Angel rose, mythical ‘perfectly ripe’ avocados and the 13 obscure Middle Eastern spices I need for a new recipe that an overpaid TV chef tells me will be ‘so worth it’.

And £7 suddenly wasn’t feeling so bad….

Then I thought of this same poor soul packing everything into crates and loading them on to a lorry in the rain. And then I imagined the harassed lorry driver desperately circling our house trying to find a parking space, with angry Londoners stuck behind him or her, making obscene gestures out of their car windows.

£7 now felt like a total bargain.

I was a convert! I checked out happily, thinking I’d got a great deal.

And this got me thinking about you and your business.

Are you being smart like Tesco?

What do you do when your clients tell YOU you’re too expensive?

Do you help them understand what’s involved in delivering your product or service?

Or do you assume that they already know?

Ah.

Because sometimes, to our clients, what we do might appear easy. (It’s like when we go to a modern art gallery and insist that we could paint as well as Mondrian if we ‘just had a ruler and some red paint.’ Yeah, right.)

Our clients don’t always know what we actually do. What time, processes, skills or experience are needed for us to deliver to our high standards.

And why should they? It’s our duty to help them understand WHY we charge what we do so that they can understand the VALUE that they will receive.

So, the next time you have a client or prospect meeting, try letting them into your world a bit. Without boring them for hours, quickly show them the steps that you go through to deliver.

It might just stop the ‘too expensive’ conversation before it even starts – clients will know your value, not just your price.

So remember folks, every little helps!