Monthly Spotlight: Why The Lower Prices?
One of Straightline International's customers asks:
Why The Lower Prices? What Am I Giving Up?
By Steven Brownstein
I was asked, "Why the lower prices? What gives? Am I giving up quality for a cheaper price?"
And I have to answer, "No."
At first look, I was wondering what or how my competition would react. It's easy to bash low prices by saying something, like the quality will suffer, that we'd have to cut something to lower our prices.
But here's the bottom line.
I've been doing criminal record searches for the longest time. I travel the world.
I've always been the go-getter.... I will do what's best for our industry.
But what about you, the user of our products. What's in it for you?
First, one thing about what I sell - the quality of our product is by far better, and at worst, equal, to anyone's or anything that is offered by any other vendor.
As it's said, "the data remains the same." and if there's a record on a subject, and it can be read, I certainly can transcribe it.
And not only transcribe it, but understand it, and become helpful to you in a thousand different ways too numerous to mention.
This is a strange business world we live in. In our industry, even more so. I started when a Cook County felony search was $25 each. That's not a typo, the price was $25.
I became a part of the world where it eventually dropped to less than ten dollars and then as low as three.
After all, I was told, criminal records are a commodity. I heard this in countless meetings and seminars.
I'll buy that analogy - that criminal records are a commodity - all it takes is some kind of transfer into our "digital world - we don't need someone to manually do the work.
Now it's years forward and we're not at that perfect spot, yet, It's still not all that simplified. It's still not all digital.
But yes, it is still a commodity. Really no more different than a dozen eggs sitting on a grocery shelf.
So why the high prices? Why are you, the user, paying more?
That's my point, exactly. And it's not rocket science, either.
So, I'm working on lowering prices. Again. Many of you might not have been working in this business when I started the international side of criminal record checks, But, let me say, the prices outside there were enormous.. hundreds of dollars for a single criminal search.
I got the prices down. I found the sources, I learned the systems. And we've all profited.
Everything seemed fine, and here we've gotten sidetracked by other issues in our business. Business is going status quo.
It's been a while, too, since I looked at what the state of our record cost pricing is. But now I have and it is amazing at how the pricing has remained the same or near the same. Nothing has been changed. Status quo. Until now.
I promise 100% to shake up this stagnation, to bring prices down, to help bring volume up, to increase the quantity and bring back dollars with new profits to our industry, benefitting everyone from the Mom and Pop to the Fortune 100.
That is my goal. We cannot sit by idly and be dazzled by bells and whistles, yet pay for a product, so near to a perfect commodity, and do nothing.
Prices are coming down. It is a new era. It is a new time. I will be the first to push this agenda through. And I'm putting my money where my mouth is. We're getting this done.
Steven Brownstein
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