customer-service(Changing professions to protect identities, but it makes no difference to the point).
Currently we run a YouTube channel and website making videos about “psychology”. This generates add revenue, and leads from people wanting to be our client in a private session. These are done with clients over Skype from everywhere in the world.
The site and channel are now so popular that we’re essentially turning people away, and our prices are already so high that we’re starting to feel uncomfortable with how much we’re charging. Any higher, and they’d set un-meetable expectations.
We’d like to try and steer some of these leads towards psychologists that we’ve at least vetted and trust.
My question is how to structure the relationship between us and the third party psychologists. A situation where they pay us a fee for everyone they convert is an option, but then that a leaves a very real possibility that they just lie, and say they didn’t convert anyone. It also means that we only get a one off fee.
We could build a VOIP/teleconferencing platform, and host all interactions between psychologist and client, so that we can monitor them, checking that they don’t take their business off site. That’s a pretty involved solution, not to mention that people might not like to have their private session monitored.
We keep the client as our client, and have us collect the money, and then just pay the psychologists, but this is pretty legally involved meaning that we’re an employer of sorts, and have to worry about taking payments from the general public etc, not to mention that it doesn’t solve the problem of people making their own arrangements to avoid our fees.
Are there ways this is normally done?
Unless your situation has lost something vital in translation to an analogous market, your answer is simple.
First, increase your prices substantially. You say that this is unsustainable. Your market says different. Go with the market.
Second, create a new service delivering somewhat more than your basic offering, and far less than your premium service, that you will initially pitch significantly below today’s price for the premium service.
The first point is just that where demand far outstrips supply, prices can be increased, delivering greater total profit at volume that’s held or reduced.
The second point is how you grow total volume profitably as you push up-market. I’m suggesting a pragmatic move - guessing that you have entry product customers willing to pay more than they pay now for some of the value of your premium service, and guessing that you have premium customers and prospects who’ll be willing to pay less than they’re asked for today in exchange for some reduction in its utility.
People sometimes sweat over how to construct an intermediate value proposition. But in rich, interactional services, you can always create a less premium service fast by degrading what you already have, just enough. Just a little less responsive, or less personal, or less flexible, or less dressy, or…
Are there ways this is normally done?
You’ve listed the key ones, complete with pros/cons, for all practical purposes:
Another related to #1 and #2 that you haven’t necessarily considered is to continue building your brand and then sell certifications to psychologists before sending them leads (in exchange for a one-off commission of course). You can later re-certify them, as well as keep selling them books and seminars to boot.
You can (well… could…) see a good example of how this plays out on John Jantsch’s Duct Tape Marketing. He recently pivoted but until he did he was basically selling pricey “Duct Tape Marketer” certifications and funneling leads their way.
I thought of a few options here, but the one that I think is the simplest to implement is as follows.
Gather data on your existing conversion rate in a month. Say this is 40%.
Now lets say that your private sessions cost $1000 each.
Finally work out your surplus demand. Lets say there are 100 enquiries a month that you are turning away.
That is £1000 x 100 x 40% = $40,000.
Now lets say that you have 4 Psychologists that can deliver these private sessions. You can sell them each 25 enquiries for $5,000. That way you would get 50% commission on the referral. They would get $10,000 sales ($5,000 gross margin) based upon your conversion rates.
When you sell this offer to the Psychologies you guarantee the number of referrals that they will get and setup a standing order/ direct debit accordingly. You will probably want to put a sales pack together detailing your offer.
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