"You can sell anything to Americans and Englishmen."

Check this out.

According to Kathryn Lindskoog, in her 1993 book, “Fakes, Frauds & Other Malarkey,” in 1935, no less than FIVE different American investors bought copies of da Vinci’s famous “Mona Lisa.” Each of them thought they’d somehow managed to get their dirty little hands on this masterpiece, which in reality, hangs in the Louvre.

This same year, the grandson of Jean-Francois Millet (a famous French painter, and one of the founders of the Barbizon school of art) was convicted of art forgery and said, “You can sell anything to Americans and Englishmen. They know nothing about art — even their experts know nothing. All you have to do is ask a fabulous price.

Over the last few days we’ve been talking about pricing strategies and their impact on your prospects, from a mechanical standpoint. Meaning, what the impact of a price increase is, on your bottom line.

But another consideration you need to look at is pricing strategy and it’s impact on your prospects from a psychological standpoint. Is there a greed and envy factor you create when you increase your prices, that actually drives UP the demand for your goods and services?

And by doing this, will you be appealing more to some people, who simply aren’t interested in you now?

You know, the BMW/Mercedes effect.

Again, a lot of this depends on what you’re trying to do in your business and who you’re trying to reach. Who do you want to work with?

I’ve got the patience of a gnat, so I prefer working with a few people who want great quality marketing, incredibly compelling copy, and… who are willing to invest a lot of resources into it.

My offline newsletter is the same way. It costs, but… it delivers. (See it at http://www.kingofcopy.com/ssnl )

See, that’s the thing with charging a lot of money. For the most part, you still have to have a value proposition that makes sense to your customers.

And the scary thing is, it has to be perceived value, not “real” value.

Know why?

Because perception IS reality. One man’s whiskey is another man’s wine.

I know this is a little confusing, but read through it again. It’s just not as simple as let’s say, 2 plus 2 might be, but there again… if it was simple, everyone would be charging a small fortune, right?

Let me give you one more comment that was inside this book, because it’s very relevant to what we just went over. Journalist D. R. Segal once said, “Chutzpah (look it up if you don’t know what it means) is the oil and fuel of great shams and larcenies of life. Done with an air of unassailable confidence, almost any bold, dumb, or dangerous act, can be carried off with impunity.”

I’ll take this one step further. Chutzpah alone, will get you someplace — but only once. It’s only when you fulfill all your promises, all the time, you get to that same place, everyday.

We’ll wrap up our discussion on this last aspect of pricing, which is “value” on Friday. Tomorrow I have a client coming in for a ridiculously expensive consulting day (http://www.kingofcopy.com/consultingday ) — but rest assured, they’ll get every nickel’s worth, and much much more.

Later.

Now go sell something, Craig Garber

P.S. Nothing gets a man’s attention like “sex,” right? Well, discover the right way… and the wrong way, to use “sex” in an ad, to get an affluent man’s attention. All this and more inside this month’s Seductive Selling Newsletter. Test-drive it for free at http://www.kingofcopy.com/ssnl – Free 30-day trial plus 15 bonus gifts, all yours.

Check out all the King’s products at http://www.kingofcopy.com/products

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