Prospects goals
You should not know your prospects’ goals. But understand them. And know how to get them closer to those goals. Sometimes, the goals that are on the surface are just intuitive responses to symptoms. And most times, this self-diagnose is not the right one.
Product-Market Fit
Stop looking for it. Because if you fit in, you can’t stand out. And when you don’t stand out, all they compare you on… is (the lowest) price.
Times to pause
Enjoy your holidays. Unplug. Be with your fam. Make a pause. Recharge. That’s what you could use this time at the end of the year for. Whatever you do, you got this. Now and next year.
On trend
If you’re focusing most of your efforts on “What’s on trend for the next year”, there might be some higher risk that things don’t work out —in the long run. A trend is temporal. It van get “in fashion” for a certain period… and then be “out of fashion” just as fast. While it’s good to see what’s going on around you and where things might be trending, get a deeper view of where your customers are trying to get. Agnostic of product, solution and tech. ‘Cause they might change in the blink of…
Trends for 2024
Personal brand(ing), authentic content, content repurposing, community, experiences… All of these are flat and chatgpt can give you the same answer. And none of them will make you stand out. Personal brand… bc it doesn’t exist. You’re not a thing. Authentic content… because it’s not you who determines what’s authentic and what not. It’s your audience. Content repurposing… bc it’s been always there. It’s using a different medium for content. Only now under this “pretty(?)” name….
Boredom and creativity
Get bored and make something. If you make it a prompt What would you LLM of choice do? Answer: nothing. Because a machine can’t get bored.
A new luxury
Talking to a person is the new luxury. And that’s the worst business decision made by most companies. While tech is essential to our everyday lives, getting to use it for the sakes of “efficiency” is off focus. Isn’t it abhorrently bad (annoying and frustrating) that when you try to find some answer to a question you have… you end up “talking” to a bot that loops you into a never ending non-sense cycle of same, flat answers? If businesses were really customer-centered, wouldn’t they try to…
Rates and scope
The first reply to “What are your rates?”is NOT “It depends on the scope and time involved”. Neither is “What’s your budget?” Rates A rate is a factor to multiply or measure with another.”My rate is X. I’ll need Y time. The bill should be around X.Y” (Which is always more) It guesses on how much (time) it will need to get done. It transfers the risk onto the client. Which brings us to say”I miscalculated how long it would take. I should have estimated 3X. Well, dear client, now YOU have to…
Tracking time = Focusing on the wrong thing
When most prospects ask you about what’s your hourly rate, the focus is on the wrong thing —either to measure AND to use as a metric. Because time is not a resource. Because a rate is not a price, but a variable. Because it doesn’t focus on value, but on an arbitrary “cost”. Here’s what Tim Williams says about it in “The Unnecessary Cost Of Tracking Time”. Even the most ardent adherents to the time-based billing system will acknowledge that time logged on a timesheet does not equal value…
What’s your hourly rate?
That’s a question that comes up in most of the projects you’ll want to work on. What do you answer to that?
