Pricing can include the cost of time

Pricing messages focus on the money you pay and don’t mention time. Perhaps this comes from our simplistic view of transactions, where we pay for a ready-made product or service in the time it takes to pull out our purse. In this simple world, price is virtually equal to the total cost. Perhaps it also comes from not wanting to scare away potential buyers by presenting the true cost of what’s for sale. Which can be considerable. Take a professional conference, for example. You elect to pay the conference fee, plus the premium add-ons, then the conference website tells you: “Total price: $999“. But isn’t this “total” price misleading? Attending a conference might cost you time spent: researching speakers and attendees, accommodations travelling in cars, taxis, planes, and by foot finding restaurants and cafes, gyms looking at weather chatting with a chatbot on the conference website scheduling making online payments and more Excluding any time at the actual conference itself, you might need 12 hours of time to make it work. Let’s say your hourly rate is $xxx/hr – now what’s the “price you pay“? When you hire a professional service, it’s a similar story: there’s research, communication, planning, preparation, vetting, payment-making, meetings, meetings, meetings. The hidden price of time is even true of software. Notion.so, for example – I don’t care what your use case is (except perhaps note-taking), if you don’t spend at least 4 hours in research, practice, and study, Notion won’t work. Like when you pay for a conference online but then spend 0 time doing 0 other things. As sellers, there’s an opportunity to (a) gain trust and (b) filter out bad-fit customers by being clearer on pricing.