Selling the Invisible: a field Guide to Modern Marketing \(Biz Books to Go\) pdfdrive com

Beware of the rock bottom.
Pricing: A Lesson from Picasso
In many services—overnight delivery, dry cleaning, fast foods—the “product”
of the service has become a commodity, and commodity pricing rules prevail:
To the low-priced go the spoils.
But in millions of other services, pricing is a notso-simple matter of “What
Will the Market Bear?”
A lot, it often seems. A friend marvels at his older brother, who earns a
million dollars a year telling companies like Coca-Cola what the future might be.
Lawrence Tribe charges $750 an hour to read, think, and occasionally argue
cases before the Supreme Court. Film directors, great photographers, top
consultants, and many others charge enough to buy Monets.
What is talent and thought worth—and why is some worth so much? What
can you reasonably charge? Good questions. Before you answer them, consider
this story about Pablo Picasso:
A woman was strolling along a street in Paris when she spotted Picasso
sketching at a sidewalk café. Not so thrilled that she could not be slightly
presumptuous, the woman asked Picasso if he might sketch her, and charge
accordingly.
Picasso obliged. In just minutes, there she was: an original Picasso.
“And what do I owe you?” she asked.
“Five thousand francs,” he answered.
“But it only took you three minutes,” she politely reminded him.
“No,” Picasso said. “It took me all my life.”
Don’t charge by the hour. Charge by the years.
The Carpenter Corollary to the Picasso Principle

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A man was suffering a persistent problem with his house. The floor squeaked.
No matter what he tried, nothing worked. Finally, he called a carpenter who
friends said was a true craftsman.
The craftsman walked into the room and heard the squeak. He set down his
toolbox, pulled out a hammer and nail, and pounded the nail into the floor with
three blows.
The squeak was gone forever. The carpenter pulled out an invoice slip, on
which he wrote the total of $45. Above that total were two line items:
Hammering, $2.
Knowing where to hammer, $43.