Good, better, best: packaging a service so buyers pick the middle

Picture a firm in Nashik that looks after bungalow gardens. This is an invented case, built to show how a price card goes wrong. The owner prints three plans and watches nearly every customer take the cheapest. The guess is that customers are price-minded. The card is the problem. A buyer is more likely to take the middle plan when it answers their whole need, costs clearly less than the top plan, and sits above a bottom plan that leaves out one thing they will miss.

The card that sent everyone to the bottom

All the rupee figures here are made up, to show the shape and not to suggest what you should charge. The first card read:

Basic     Lawn care                 ₹2,000 a month
Care      Garden care plus          ₹4,200 a month
Premium   Complete garden care      ₹4,800 a month

Three faults sit in those six lines. Care costs almost as much as Premium, so Premium looks like the real offer and Care looks like a trap. The gap from Basic to Care is more than double, which turns a choice about convenience into a choice about budget. And "garden care plus" and "complete garden care" describe nothing a customer can picture.

Say seven of the first ten customers chose Basic. Two months later three of them rang because the hedge had gone wild and the monsoon had killed plants. The owner got the call, the complaint and an extra visit that went uncharged, about ₹600 of labour and fuel in this invented case.

The card that worked

Basic     Lawn cut and edges, 2 visits a month                      ₹2,000
Standard  Lawn, hedges and weeding, 4 visits a month,
          dead plants removed                                       ₹3,000
Premium   Everything in Standard, fertiliser in season,
          up to 10 pots replaced a year                             ₹4,800

Now the step from Basic to Standard is small and buys four visits instead of two. Standard sits well below Premium. Each line says what happens in the garden. Premium exists for the owner who dislikes surprises, and for the other owner who reads it and decides Standard is plenty.

Nobody was pushed. They could see what each rupee bought. The result was still not clean: in this invented run, five of the next ten took Standard, three stayed on Basic because they only wanted the lawn, and two chose Premium. Those three Basic customers were the right ones for Basic, and that is fine.

Why the top plan exists

The top plan is not there to be sold. It gives the middle plan something to be measured against, and it catches the customer who would have paid more and never had the chance. Even so, you must be willing to deliver it. A Premium plan you hope nobody buys, and would resent doing, will show in the way you describe it.

Give the top plan one item that is expensive for you and rare for the customer. Replacing pots does that. A cheap extra, such as a free leaflet, makes the price gap look like padding, and the buyer returns to the bottom of the card.

Build yours from the job list

Do it on one sheet of paper before you draw any columns.

Write down every task you do for a typical customer across a year. Beside each, note what it costs you in time and materials, and how much the customer notices it. The tasks they value most and that cost you least are your levers. Put them in Standard.

Leave one task the typical customer will miss out of Basic. It must be real, such as the hedge, or the buyer will smell a trick. Add one item to Premium that few customers want and that costs you something. It justifies the higher price and gives the cautious buyer a reason to relax.

Keep a visible step between each price. If you cannot explain in one line why Standard is dearer than Basic, you have not built the plan yet.

Say the middle first

When you present the plans, start with the one you recommend. "For a garden this size I would start with Standard. If you only want the lawn done, there is a Basic one." That puts the recommendation first, so the other two are measured against it.

Send the card as an image or a short message with three lines. Six paragraphs are hard to read on a phone. Put the price at the end of each line so the buyer reads what happens before what it costs.

Do not write that most customers choose a plan until you have counted. Look at which plan your past customers actually bought. If it is not Standard yet, leave the label off and change the card.

Test it on ten enquiries

Send the new card to the next ten enquiries and tally which plan each picks. If eight or nine take Basic, look at the price of the middle. If people cannot say in their own words how the plans differ, look at the wording. Change one thing at a time. The same thinking applies to a car studio's price board, covered in pricing detailing and care packages, and to productising hourly work.

When three plans are the wrong tool

Skip them if every job is different, such as custom fabrication, where a quote must be written each time. Skip them when you have too few customers to know what they value. Start with one package and learn. Do not add a fourth plan or a long menu of extras. In this kind of sale, extra choices tend to push the buyer back to the lowest number.

A card also cannot rescue a service that is poor value. If the middle plan is something customers would not pay for at any price, the card only makes that visible. For the wider choices about how you sell, see sales strategy.

Two things to do before you print

Count what your customers bought last season, then write the Standard plan first and fit the other two around it. If you want a second pair of eyes on your tiers, our pricing and packaging strategy work starts there, and tell us what you need is the way in.