Let’s say somebody could clone your expertise into a similar person that does the job exactly like you but charges a much lower price. A real nightmare scenario. How could you ever compete with that?
Turns out, as you are an expert, you might not even lose any clients at all. How? Well, the clients can rarely compare expert work in detail, so even in that nightmarish case, your clone’s service would not be seen exactly like yours at all.
Let me illustrate:
Let’s say I know you have to relocate soon so I offer you the contact of some really affordable moving services. Would that contact be welcome? Probably, yes.
In this case, it’s an interchangeable service. It almost doesn’t really matter who helps you move as long as they are professional the lower price is just a bonus.
But let’s now say that, God forbid, I know you need the services of a brain surgeon so I offer you the contact of a really affordable brain surgeon. Would that contact be equally welcome? Probably not.
Expert work is not interchangeable and it matters very much who exactly does the work. On the other hand, the contact information of the most expensive but world-renowned brain surgeon would probably be much more welcome in this case.
There are things we know about how pricing works in the case of commodities that simply don’t work in the world of pricing expert services.