Your main job
Your main job is to make decisions. And this is like a vacuum, if you don’t make it, someone else is making it for you. Deciding to wait is a decision too.
Paying for results
“I have been in the writing game for over 20 years. I am not just a writer. I am a marketing strategist and conversion rate specialist. I know what it takes to get real results. I have countless money-in-the-bank case studies to prove it. You are paying for results, not just words on a page. ” 👆 Seen on social media Paying for results… Yet nothing is about the customer, or the results they get as a customer. It’s all about me-me-me. Who you are. What you do. What you think you do (great)….
Not how it works
Your way. “This is NOT how it works.” You have to comply with the rules and policies. You can’t find workarounds. Your buyers have no power over the policies, and you have to forfeit your power to their policies too. Else you won’t be chosen. Spoiler: even when complying fully, you might still not be chosen. So, how do you change the outcome? Ideally, you change the rules. When rules can’t change, you can derail them. And when you can’t derail them, find the inside track. Walking away is also…
Greedy
Asking for the budget and insisting to know it. It feels not right. It feels greedy. I feels like if your customer has X, you’ll charge X. It feels like a rip off. It feels you’ll take advantage. It feels unfair. Fairness. A fair price. “It’s fair to have your costs covered, and add some margin.” You cannot charge more. The customers will feel ripped off. Unless… your customers are happy, delighted and want to give you MORE of their money for what you offer them. Fairness has to do with…
From costs to value
One way to protect margins is by being more efficient (though always taking your costs as the base for it). What if you forget about your costs for a moment? What would make what you’re offering worth their money to your customers? A way to define that is by what it’s worth to them. Not you. Not your costs. Not your margins. Not your offering (be it a product or a service). You can start by figuring out what it is that they’re after. What’s the outcome they seek. And work your way down from…
Protect your margins
Protect your margins overall. Find ways to improve your efficiencies. Cut costs. Add extras to what they pay. Transfer costs out (to your customers). Control scope better. Adjust your rates to inflation. Sure. Makes sense when thin margins is all you have. And when you know only that cost reduction is what keeps you alive. What if you shift from costs to value?
The price you give (pt. 2)
Being transparent about how you set the price you give. It has nothing to do with your customer. It’s all internal. It’s about how you can capture the most of the value your customer gets from you, and that’s it’s clear to you and the people who are involved in it, at their own levels. aka. from marketing to brand to accounting to finance to sales, etc. “But what about being transparent with them? It feels like we’d be lying.” Understandable. And your customer doesn’t actually care. If they…
The price you give
Being transparent about the price you give. It’s giving the right and complete information to your customer about what they will pay for, beforehand. It has to do with them having the best information to make their decision. And no surprises. That there won’t be fine print. That they can trust you when you give them a price. That you won’t sneak on them. This is price transparency.
Transparency
About the prices your business has. Are you supposed to be transparent about: the price you give, or how you set the price you give?
Your customer sure does hope so.
“We’re dedicated to our customers.” Shit. I’d sure hope so. Would you choose to pay a significant amount of money to someone who’s not dedicated and does an incompetent job? How do you define who’s more dedicated, when everyone also claims the same? Maybe dedication (as effort, or passion, or how long it took you to know how to) is not your differentiator. Maybe it’s the bare minimum expected from you. What makes you different in your market?
