Everyone who sets up a business believes they have something unique to offer. And if you’re good enough at it, finding and keeping customers shouldn’t be a problem… right?

In practice, often something else happens. As more and more competitors come along, many of them competing on price, it’s easy to feel that you have to cut your quotes too. Sooner or later, you’ve lost sight of what makes you good in the first place. Many businesses end up taking on more and more work just to pay the same bills.

What can you do when everybody around you is cutting throats and cutting prices to stay in business?

Not every business is like the EPC and HIP business, but if there’s one thing our industry has taught us, it’s how to provide value without getting sucked into a price war.

Let me share six suggestions on how to thrive when you’re being under-priced.  They’re drawn from our own industry, but we hope they’ll apply to yours as well.

1. Build partnerships.

Direct to the end user might not be the only, or even the best, way to market your products.  What if another business could be selling your service the ultimate point of sale for your product or service?

In many cases, buying your service as part of someone else’s package may be the customer’s favourite way to buy. Not everybody wants to shop around. Think luxury city breaks: the holidaymaker wants a quality getaway, short and sweet, without hours of price comparisons and planning.

Is there an agency that could be selling on your service as part of theirs? Many HIPs and domestic EPCs are provided through partnerships with estate agents. Householders can buy direct, but they’re often most willing to sort it out there and then when arranging the sale of their home. We make the most of our relationships with agents—which leads us on to the next point…

2. Extend your partners’ brand for them.

When you’re working in partnership, you’re helping another company provide added value to the end user. Everything you do is an extension of their service.

So if your partner has a strong brand that end users are willing to pay more for, it means you can pour your energies into an excellent service to enhance what they do.  This is better than stripping down your service levels to the bare minimum cost.

For example: what’s one of the vital things an estate agent wants from an EPC provider?  Somebody reliable and reputable. This applies particularly because we’re going into somebody’s property. The agent can reassure Mr & Mrs Homeseller that the person they are sending to the property is reputable, and we know that doing a good job reflects well on them.

It’s hard to say who’s giving who the piggyback in this situation—you benefit from your partners’ brand strengths, and they benefit from building theirs on your service.

3. Get recommended!

Recommendations are as good as gold because they give your customers confidence to buy on something other than price.  They don’t just mean more business—they mean better business.

From the end user’s point of view, choosing from a list of companies you’ve never heard of puts the focus solely on price, as there’s no reputation to go on.  A recommendation changes that: it’s a another voice to reassure them what they’re paying for.

If you position your marketing mainly on price, it puts the focus on “least worst outlay”.  By contrast, if the end user is happy to pay for a recommended supplier, that puts the focus on “best result”!  Which again leads us on nicely to the next point…

4. Be tireless in building a great service.

Pricing is a bit like a limbo dance: if the bar gets too low, something will topple.  In our business this translates to hurried or faked assessments and non-compliant EPCs.

It doesn’t have to be that way.  An excellent service gives you a pass out of the limbo dance.  When the support is there, and the customer service is there, your pricing is secure. Whenever it goes missing, you’re vulnerable to price competition.

5. Never market yourself as “bargain basement”!

A recent visit to a property provided a great example of how bargain basement marketing comes across.  A provider had obviously spotted the agent’s board outside, and on the doormat was an A4 printed flyer asking “Do you need an EPC?”

This provider decided to market directly to the individual on undercutting basis. Unfortunately, it really showed.  The paper was flimsy, the approach impersonal and the only proposition was price.  They will probably pick up some business, but the cheapness of the approach won’t win them much respect.

It can be a thankless task being stuck at the bottom of the market.  Unless you want to make bargain basement your long-term selling point, or fancy your chances of a brand revival on the scale of Škoda, avoid the temptation to resort to cheap marketing.

6. Don’t be frightened to tell people.

Brand what you do—everything you do—and be proud of what you do!

Putting your name, and your visual identity, on every business activity is the glue that holds together all your strong points in your partners’ and customers’ eyes.

And if you’re doing all the above and doing them well, what’s there to be shy about?

Conclusion?

It might seem inevitable in a pressured market to stoop to price competition, but there are plenty of ways to avoid it and still provide excellent value—in many cases, arguably far better value than your next lowest priced competitor.

What do you think?  It’d be interesting to hear your comments…