You’ll be forced
“And remember: if you can’t differentiate yourself from your competitors, you’ll be forced to compete on price.”Jonathan Stark Just that. You can read Jonathan’s full post here.
Culture
A set of behaviors shared and understood by a group of people. Behaviors that are tolerated or reinforced. Whatever behavior you accept and tolerate (from your own team, customers, suppliers, competitors…) is the one that will define how you act —consciously, or unconsciously. Choose wisely.
Who are you talking to?
When going into sales conversations, who are you talking to? Is it the final users of your products/services? Is it the economic buyer? Is it the ones who pay the checks? Talking to the wrong person can get you to, sure, make the sale, but at the same time, leave money on the table. Recently, I was talking with a few CEOs on a research for a client. When they got asked about what they were paying on certain items that —to my client and their competitors is big figures— they needed for the…
Friction
“You need to reduce friction” That can be true and helpful in a context. And wrong on others. On others, you need to produce friction. To create (or encourage) change, you’ll need friction. Without friction your wheels will spin on the same spot, there won’t be movement. And to change things, you need to feel that movement. Does it have to be radical? Not necessarily. Does it have to be soft? Not necessarily. It does have to be at critical points. Friction applied at the wrong spots will also…
It’s all about the keepers
There are 2 types of people in each customer (or prospect) that you reach: Budget keepers. Value keepers. You wanna talk to the value keepers. They’re the ones who see the future and are comfortable with uncertainty. They’re the ones who can fight for a high return in value.
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…
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…
It’s a year from now… (cont.)
Next time you’re on a sales conversation with a prospect, ask them this: “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?” [Now you don’t say a word. Embrace silence. Bite your tongue if you need to. :)] This question will push them to think. And you need to give them space to do that. If you talk, you take it away from them. When they talk, they’ll give you A TON of valuable information to start seeing…
10 years from now
What do you see yourself still talking and interested in in 10 years from now? How many of the current things you do/research/write/publish/work on are in that spectrum? Think it’d be worth going on one of them deep enough to experiment and build new offerings/products/services? That’s a quick way to see if what you’re working on is aligned with what you see in a (not-so-distant?) future. 10 years can pass quickly. And 10 years can also be long enough to figure out if what you’re currently…
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.