If you have great clients who appreciate you and your work, count your blessings. But if you find yourself regularly bidding against competitors who have the luxury or short-sightedness to compete on price alone, you may have to adjust not only your bids but your operations and customer communications as well.

You can, of course, slash your bids and compete on price, but that's no way to make a living, particularly when competing with designers -- or would-be designers -- who don't have the overhead that you may have. You're a professional, and you've invested in the training and resources to produce professional work. And even if you manage to compete on price alone, you may not have much of a business left after a few such wins.

There are ways to compete in a price-sensitive industry without resorting to Blue Light specials, but it may take significant changes in your operations and new ways of communicating with clients.

Establish Your Value Cue
Clients select lower-priced creative vendors because they believe the vendor is providing the best value. It's crazy to think that companies would risk their customer-facing materials on a designer who has little else to offer but K-Mart pricing, but it happens every day.

These prospects are mistaking value with price. So it's your job to help the prospects understand that value doesn't mean price; rather, value equals the best price for the best product.

Explain that a prospect who receives the best price on a bid may likely receive sub-par work on Web sites, brochures, collateral material, and corporate identities. Explain the importance of customer-facing materials and how much they say about the company. Talk about the way customers respond to quality presentations and how they eschew companies that look cheap or unprofessional. Ask your prospect if they can afford sloppy, lazy, or boring customer-facing materials. What will their boss think of the outcome? Even more important, what will their customers think?

Next, convince the prospect that you have the talent and wherewithal to provide the necessary quality. Clients will pay more if they're convinced your work is superior. This superiority can be "rational" (like great samples from your portfolio) or "emotional" (like your reputation for being hip) or, better yet, a combination of both.

Of course, this presupposes that your work is truly better. To stand apart from the crowd, you've got to deliver results that are a cut above anything your low-cost competitors can throw together.

The first step, then, is to differentiate yourself by gently redefining the word "value" for your prospect and by providing a clear and stunning value proposition that accounts for both quality and cost.

Be a Consultant
Are you creating a brochure or helping a client solve a customer relations problem? Are you designing a Web site or helping a client define its corporate identity? Are you whipping together a package design or helping a client regain market share? Clients will pay more for the latter than the former, and rightly so. Wouldn't you pay more to solve a nagging customer relations problem than for a simple brochure design?

When and if you can, position yourself as a design and marketing consultant who can help solve bigger problems. This will let you charge more and position yourself as a trusted agent within the company. Both perceptions will sustain the relationship over the long haul.

If you get the chance, turn early client meetings into discussions of the company's broader needs, goals, challenges, and opportunities. Some prospects will push back, and that's fine; you can always talk about the particular project at hand. But other clients will appreciate your experience and knowledge. And that appreciation will translate into a higher value cue for you.

How Can I Serve You?
It's not just price and product; it's also about the customer experience. Many clients will pay extra if they believe you'll provide professional service all along the way from design to completion. Create a powerful and pleasing customer experience from the first time a prospect contacts you, and never stop.

Make it known that you'll take responsibility for ensuring that your work generates the results the client seeks. Transform yourself from a creative professional to a marketing concierge willing to meet any and all of your clients' needs. If you can't fulfill all these needs, identify people who can. Make your clients' goals your goals, their problems your problems. Work to create a total customer experience and your clients will find it as hard to let you go as a first-class seat on an airplane.

Find the Right Clients
There will always be a subset of prospects who care about price and price alone. Forget them -- or at least make it your goal to build a business that can ignore them.

Instead, focus your marketing efforts on reaching out to prospects who are most likely to believe in your value proposition. Go to conferences, working groups, and industry-association meetings where you can meet decision-makers and develop consulting opportunities. Identify venues where quality is valued over price. In short, go out and find the people you want to do business with.

Like a B horror movie, there will always be a fresh crop of price-slashing competitors attacking from over the horizon. Battling them head on is an exercise in futility. Instead, create a value niche you can fill nicely and find the clients with the smarts to understand your value.