Pricing in the wild
Look at this picture. What do you think is the price for the bag?
“A bad decision beats no decision”
Whatever decision you make, you can always steer to make it good. Or at least to make the best of the situation. Here’s an article from Dan Sullivan from Strategic Coach where the goes deep on it.
A gut feeling
Sometimes you get a gut feeling about someone or about a business —and it’s not a good one. And when you go against it and still give it a try, you confirm that what you expected is what it is. IT’s bad. On the other side, some of your customers might have gotten the same from you (the “bad” gut feeling). And that’s ok. Your job is to break that first bad impression. Because they are giving you a second chance on what you can deliver. Shift that gut feeling. It’s in your hands.
Knowing what you sell
Whether it’s a product or a service, you and your team have to know back and forth what you sell. Not only in the positioning, narrative, and perspective. Also in the technical, behind-the-scenes things that you do. When that’s not clear, it shows. And having no clue on things diminishes your authority and expertise.
Benchmarking
If you’re thinking that benchmarking is about how to be compared to your industry, you’re right. But let me push you a bit further. What if you take what’s the standard in your industry and think of ways to make it ridiculously small? For example, let’s taka warranties. Think of what warranties your competitors give, and then make a warranty that makes theirs ridiculously tiny. They give one year? What would you need to make it 10? Benchmarking is about pushing the market (and your customers)…
A bulletproof way to mark you as spam
I received this email as a “follow up”. Here’s the whole of it (translated, the original is in German) which is a 100% sure way of how to get marked as spam. Hello Rod, I hope you are doing well. With this message, I would like to kindly remind you of my recently sent email regarding our group of companies. We are very interested to know whether there is any general interest in further exchange or a potential collaboration. Please understand that, in the absence of a response, our system may…
A gap
What’s the gap you’re helping your customers close? Because when you know what’s that gap, you can put a number on it. And give them the warranty that you’ll help them close it. By little. By much. Or completely. That gap between were they wanna be and where they are. And closing it.
A matter of when, not if
When —not IF— you have a shit customer, employee, colleague, vendor, you know you have to let them go. As hard as it would hit your revenue or your profit. You have to let them go. If you’re radical and make that happen overnight, it’ll hit. Hard. If you’re less radical and make it over a period, it’ll still hit. Hard. They will kill your business chunk by chunk. Your morale. Your self-esteem. Your culture. Your value. You can do that. Or see your business fade away without noticing. Till it…
Fungible
Fungible. Exchangeable. That’s money. And that’s why you don’t have to give away your power. Sure, customers have money. And without money you can’t make your business thrive. Yet, one thing you can do for sure is find money from better fits. People that fit to you. To your standards. After all, money is fungible.
Average
Design for average. Produce for average. Make for average. If you want to stay blend in. To stand out you have to keep doing what you did at the beginning: breaking from what you saw was the same. What was average.
