Last week I was having a conversation in the business mentoring group that I attend, and I was asked how much I was willing to pay for future events. I won’t tell you the actual figure, it’s irrelevant. What is important is the conversation that followed with my wife, and a few friends about the amount I said I was happy to pay. All thought I was mad – it was way too much. After all, their logic was that with 5 or 6 people attending and all paying that same amount, if it was projected forward for a whole day, it would come to over £2000 pounds.

Which bring me onto the difference between the cost and the value of things. I could see their point from one side – would I pay somebody £2000 a day for business advice – most likely not. Is anybody really worth £2000 a day? But, my logic was that for the couple of hours each month, I get to sit down, talk about my business and how I can move it forward, and get feedback. And its not £2000 a day because we are only there for 2 hours, and we are not paying for the whole day – just the 2 hour portion (its only £2000 if you project it forward to 8 hours and therefore multiply it up). Plus, and this is the big factor for me, I can pinpoint some advice that I received in previous mentoring sessions which directly lead to sales worth tens of thousands of pounds.

So let me ask you dear reader, if I was to say to you that for a fee I could get you tens of thousands of pounds of revenue – what would that be worth to you? If you are honest – what would you pay?!? And that is my argument.

This is the difference between the cost, and the value. Things may look very expensive, but when you work out what they save, what they generate, or how much use you get from them, are they really that expensive?!? And there may be cheaper options out there, but would I get the same value, the same results?!?

Which is why some salesman do really well – they are the ones that when presenting a proposal which is in the enterprise/luxury side of the price scale, they can sell the value, compared to the cost.

It’s also why we don’t all fly Ryanair or Easyjet.