I got an email this morning that asked the following question:

I read your article on Value Proposition and ROI. Your examples deal with physical products. I coach people in so-called ’soft skills’ – presentations, speaking and listening, enhancing imagination. I can detail many positive outcomes but do not know how to quantify the results of such training. Therefore I don’t know how to use the methods you suggest. Can you help me?

Since this is such an important question, I thought I’d post my response here:

Just saw that Internet Marketing education pioneer Ken McCarthy is doing something I think is unreasonable. Ken pretty much invented the internet marketing how-to seminar. Now, since Ken’s first The System seminar, prices on these confabs has gone from $500 a day to $5,000, but without any significant increase in value. Following Dan Kennedy’s lead, these events have been stuffed with “air” – worthless stuff that make the package seem bigger, but no real increase in the impact of what’s being delivered. McCarthy has kept the value strong. But talk about bucking the trend – not only has Ken kept the value strong, he’s actually lowering the price. See http://www.systemintensive.com/

Anyone who has read Be Unreasonable knows how I feel about price cutting and the best response to it, so I was happy (and surprised) to read McDonald’s founder Ray Kroc felt the same way.  In 1960, one of his Knoxville franchisee was being hammered by a competitor offering five hamburgers for thirty cents. Can you imagine, thirty cents! Even so, the customers still came over to McDonald’s for the fries and shakes. So the competitor hit harder – with a hamburger, milkshake and fries for ten cents.  The reasonable response would have been to cut prices and at least match the other guy’s offer  – following him down the road to pricing ruin.