Doing business with people who believe what you believe.
Today’s daily is this one by Blair Enns: Ideological Resonance. TL;DR: it’s about your perspective and how your insights make you stand out from your competitors. That’s originality, authenticity, and finding your tribe. What’s your view of the world, how you do what you do and approach your market to serve?
Revisiting pricing studies. A trend to see.
Digging deeper into more sources and resources of that McKinsey study re: how your best chances at improving your profit rest more on changing how you price than looking for higher volumes or cost efficiency, I ran into this graph presented (and visiting a more updated version of that report in 2016) by Tim Williams, pricing specialist. You can check out his full presentation (40 min —you’ll find this explanation within the first minute) on this here. The trend to see. On the first study…
Approaching pricing different
The one thing that can drive a higher impact in your business is your price. From all things, increasing your price (and charging differently) can improve the way your business does. There’s this McKinsey study from 20 years ago —yeah, that far back— where they show that a 1% increase in the price, would generate 8% increase in operating profits. Way larger of an increase if you’d get to improve your costs in the same 1%. Yet, the question remains in: what are you doing to price different —if…
Bratwurst
Bratwurst. (noun) .— a type of German sausage made from pork or, less commonly, beef or veal. The name is derived from the Old High German Brätwurst, from brät-, finely chopped meat, and Wurst, sausage, although in modern German it is often associated with the verb braten, to pan fry or roast. You’re selling the sausage. Better yet, your customers are trying to buy the sausage. They’re hungry. They have a craving. Help them fix that, so that they’re satisfied and happy. When they’re looking…
A language you don’t need.
Even when you’re highly specialized in what you do, the way you do it, and in the people you serve (your market), you don’t need to talk highly technically most of the times. Because, at the end of it all, your customers are not looking for what solution will be specifically implemented —they’re not the experts after all. What they’re looking for is how you can help them, as in what’s in it for them. Help them get a clear big picture of what they’re really wanting. Help them gain altitude….
Solution-mode Off
When you approach your sales conversations without trying to find a solution in the very moment, you find yourself listening to understand. To understand HOW you could help your prospect get what they want. And to KNOW what they REALLY want, you need to listen. And deactivate your solution mode. It requires you to not be the expert (in an expertise-based business, right? 🤯). It requires you to lead the conversation to help your client (and yourself) gain clarity. Blair Enns calls it the…
It’s a year from now…
It’s a year from now. We’re having coffee together and you’re happy. What has happened in your business in that year for you to be happy? I’d love to know. 🙂
It’s a sign
Your price is the representation of your brand. One of the touchpoints your business has that is the simpler to understand is price. If you can’t articulate what’s the relationship between your price and the value your customers seek, that’s a sign. A sign for you to work on making that relationship a no-brainer in terms of understanding. If you can’t command an uncommon price, you have a me-too (common) offering.
The problem with sustainability
Sustainability, ESG, climate change, circular economies… they all have a problem: they’re jargon. They go full-on academic, or fuzzy, or whatever, actually. It goes around in very small, strict pods that make them feel like a bubble. They go hard on technicality, definitions (I mean, do you even get what “taxonomy” is? I don’t), specifications, and so on. It makes them unreachable. Impossible to explain. And when you can’t clearly explain that thing you do, people won’t care. And worse:…
Your price is arbitrary
Price, at the end of it all, is related to what the customer gets in return. It’s the acceptable amount of money they decide to pay in exchange for something. If you, as a customer, decide that this thing is important to you, and that the monetary value of it is X, you’ll be happy to pay anything less than X. “This seems like an arbitrary number.” And it is. Like anything else you’ll find in the world. It’s an arbitrary (made up) number, that comes from the mind of your customer.