Read time: 4 mins
Morning — here's this week:
— What a grandstand full of yellow taught me about price
— Why you keep losing jobs to someone more expensive
— One thing worth doing before Friday
What I've been up to
I was at Carfest at Silverstone recently.
Walked past a grandstand at Stowe Corner painted head to toe in fluorescent yellow and black. Thousands of seats. It's called the Landostand — Lando Norris has partnered with Silverstone to turn that whole section of the circuit into his own fan stand.
Someone told me he sponsors it so his fans can get in cheaper.
I looked it up afterwards. That bit's not true, and the truth is more interesting.
A Landostand seat for the three-day weekend is £539.
A grandstand seat at Farm Curve, same three days, same race, is £459.
So it's eighty quid more. Not less.
And it sold out in minutes. So fast that Silverstone has had to build a bigger one.
Nobody's paying a premium for a better view. They're paying it to sit with the right people, in the right colours, with the T-shirt on.
The problem: "We're always the expensive one"
I hear this a lot, usually said with a bit of frustration.
"We're not the cheapest. We never will be. But they always go with the cheaper quote."
The assumption underneath it is that price is the deciding factor. That if you could just get nearer the other bloke's number, you'd win more.
Sometimes that's true. Usually it isn't.
What's actually happening is that you've given them nothing else to decide on.
If two quotes land and both say roughly the same thing — we're established, we're reliable, we do good work, here's the number — then the only difference between them is the number.
Of course they pick the cheaper one. You've made it the only variable.
Nobody compares the Landostand to Farm Curve on price, because it isn't the same product. It's eighty quid more and it goes first.
Most businesses that lose on price haven't been beaten on price.
They've been made comparable.
The lesson
Being different isn't enough. You have to be different in a way the customer can see before they get the quote.
That's the bit that gets missed.
Nearly every business I sit down with is genuinely different from their competitors in some way that matters. Better people. Faster response. Tidier work. Actually turning up when they said they would.
And almost none of it is anywhere the customer can find it.
It's in the owner's head. It comes out on the phone, if the conversation goes well. It might get mentioned on site. By which point the customer has already put you in a mental pile with two other quotes and is looking at the numbers.
If the difference only shows up after they've asked for a price, you're already being compared on price.
One thing worth doing
Ten minutes. Do it before Friday.
Open your website and your last three quotes. Then answer one question, honestly:
If a customer read all of this, and then read the same from your two closest competitors — what would tell them apart, other than the number?
Write down whatever comes to mind.
Then check whether any of it actually appears anywhere the customer would see it before they ask for a price.
If nothing does, that's your answer. And it's a fixable one — it's a content problem, not a pricing problem.
P.S. Whenever it's useful, three ways I can help:
— Score your website in 2 minutes. We built it for trades, but it works for any service business that relies on enquiries. https://bamsh.co.uk/website-score
— Watch: what AI search means for your business. 12 minutes on where your next enquiries are actually going to come from. https://youtu.be/QXCk1NYG-Kc
— Stuck with your marketing? Book a 15-minute call, and we'll diagnose the problem and the opportunities. https://bamsh.co.uk/15-min
Prompt of the Week
This week's prompt: find out what a customer actually sees when they compare you against your two nearest competitors — and what's missing.
