Defining your price
If your job is to lead your clients/customers into seeing new things and seeing things differently, how do you define the pricing of your help? What do you take into account to set a price for your offerings?
The ugly one
“How do i wanna present myself? Do i wanna try to be like everyone else or do I want to try to make myself look as ugly as possible so that I can stand out and be stick out like a sore thumb amongst all these other people?” Oliver Tree That’s how Oliver Tree was created. His interview with Steve-O (yeah, the guy from Jackass) is filled with gems: How he sees everything someone does as art. How taking (calculated) risks can propel you to what you want. How not to take yourself too serious. His…
Changing why into how, what and when. And why.
Asking Why turns things personal AND complex. It requires that the one asked justifies and explains a thing, behavior, event. If it’s too close to them (eg. the owner and their decisions re: their “ugly” website), it becomes a judgment on what THEY decided. They get defensive. Reframing Why. Do think (to start) with why, just reframe it into How, What, When. Why do you work like this? → Explain to me. Justify, TO ME, YOUR decision. Get defensive. Another ways: What made you take this approach…
The right mix
Ron Baker, host of The Soul of Enterprise and author of Implementing Value Pricing and Time’s Up sustains that you (paraphrasing him): “need to look at clients like an investment portfolio. Some might have more risk, and be more profitable; some more conservative, and safer”. In that way you can start finding balance in how you play and how you reach prospects and the ones you want to work with—which just made me think of poker and how, if you always play risky, your odds to lose are…
6 misbeliefs
Here are 6 misbeliefs on approaching your market. The client is always right. Which means you do what they tell you. Branding is strategic, marketing, tactical. Which means —simply nonsense. Your business needs to have a purpose. Even if you fake it. We bring solutions to our customers. Unlike everyone else who brings only problems. .Always use charm prices. Because that’s the best way to sell. Give discounts to close more deals. Because a full price might be too much. Have you fell for any…
Delighting cold calling
Have you ever gotten a cold call and felt fantastic about having that conversation? Weird, isn’t it? Today i just got one like that from Strategic Coach. Even when I knew I was going to say no, there was no pressure on the other side. No shame. No sneaky tactics to pull Noes into Yeses. Even better, no trying to frame me to say yes to get into a buy. It went like this: – Hey Rod. I’m X from Strategic Coach and thought I’d call you to go through some things smoother than over an email. I…
Consequences to failure
Safety (or risk) Regret Creativity Learning Trying feel more like a consequence of failure, than the opposite to failure. As friend-of-the-list Genevieve Hayes says [brackets mine]: “If you succeed at the first thing you do (aka don’t fail), then why ever try anything different?” The only way to know you’re failing is when you set a goal to achieve. How you take the outcome of that process —whether you fail or not— is what builds you up. How you grow. Because all of those words at the start…
Product-Market Fit exercise
“They have an idea for a machine, and they build the machine and then, “Hmmm. Who would want this? We think it’s cool, but who wants this?” So they go do this Product-Market Fit exercise.I don’t like that. That’s how I’ve ended up launching to crickets. And that’s not fun at all.” Jonathan Stark on The Business Of Authority [02:24] Jonathan, in his now reverse-engineering of how to approach the market makes 2 main questions: How to do the thing so it keeps the promise to the person? How do I…
Market-ING
It’s aimed at the market. It’s directed towards your customers in the context of their alternatives (what they consider instead of your services/products). It’s not storytelling. It’s not messaging. It’s not something / the opposite / a complement to selling. It’s not done to a product. It’s definitely not “internal”, as in “internal customers”. It’s how your customers can change (with your help). And when you start “marketing” with your brand/products/services/me-me-me, your customer is the…
Trade-offs
You can choose to do one thing above other things. If you try to do many things at once, odds of not completing all of them rise. You need to choose. To decide. To trade one thing for another. To pick one as a priority. And —usually— a priority is what stands out. However… You can’t live in priorities. Or in a constant state of emergency. Because if you live in a constant state of emergency, it’s not an emergency anymore. It’s chaos. Your way out: Be ruthless with what you say no to. It…
