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.
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…
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?
Why should we hire you (or your firm)?
That’s the tricky question that pushes you to start thinking on how you’ll convince them. What can you say that will make them want you SO BAD, that it’s only logical to go with it? Well, it’s definitely not logic. And has to do the opposite to convincing. What if you stop from going full-speed? Breath. Stop. Think on their words. Why We Hire Why? It actually has nothing to do with you. It’s about them talking to you. If they’re in that conversation, it’s them who saw something to talk with…
Types of sausage
The sausage is a metaphor for what your customers want: the outcome, the transformation. Here are a few types of sausage: Increasing revenue Decreasing delays Improving message clarity Enabling their sales to better fits Streamlining their ops Accessing new markets Expanding the brand presence Being the top-of-mind choice in new business Take a bigger share of the market Keeping better track of their processes Improving their new product launches Increased revenues or profitability Faster…
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…
The importance of your insight
When you have prospects trying to figure out whether or not buying from you, the main thing that will make you stand out is how you see your market. Here’s a simple way to start. The rest of players see [the category] this way: your view of what goes on with the others. I (or we, if it’s REALLY more than you) see it like this: how you do —not how you’d want it to be in a future, but how you do things NOW. Putting this in the simplest terms you can, will give you a strength on how you say it,…
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…
Pop Quiz
Can you charge different prices for the (very exact) same thing? For services. For productized services. For products. Let me know. 🙂
Involution
When moving prices up little by little, it’s all about the seller (you). About their costs, their margins, their “compensation” on inflation, etc. It has nothing to do with the customer. It’s involution. Because it focuses more and more to the inside. The short term. The survival of today.