Magic
Delighting your customers. Making the sale for what’s worth to your customers (aka. with the right pricing) is no magic. It will feel like magic to them. All it takes is taking them at the center of what you do. And that will look like magic to your competitors, too. Magic is the feeling of surprise and delight. Aim to that.
What makes you the winner?
You can’t win in business. It’s a common thing to hear “you have to win (in) business.” For you to win, others have to lose. And vice versa. If they win, YOU lose. That’s not reality. Ponder this: if you’re to “win” in business, what makes you the winner? Revenue? Profit? Innovation? Efficiencies accomplished? Efficacy? Better cost structures? More units sold? Less returns? More “brand awareness”? More customers served? And is it one of these (and more) factors? Or all of them at the same…
Stop caring
Stop caring too much for closing the deal. When you approach your customers to try to close them, you get overinvested. You feel you have more at stake. The fear of missing out on this opportunity kicks in. While, yes, they’re qualifying you, you’re also qualifying them. The more you care, the less power in the negotiation you have. Approach it and stop your convince-mode. Go, evaluate if it makes sense for both of you to work together, qualify. If it works out, great. If it doesn’t, great,…
How low can you go?
That’s what your customers think when you either price your offerings low, give discounts right away, promise over servicing, etc. What are you currently doing to avoid having this thoughts in the mind of your customers? (You can’t control their thoughts, but what you can do is control the context for them to think or not to think of this)
Can’t / Won’t
When you’re thinking of how to stand out from your competition and gain a better position of advantage, you can use this simple tool: can’t / won’t. And that’s about your competition. What are things that you’d be really good to do and they could not? What are things that you’d be really good to do and they will not do? The reasons behind why they can’t/won’t are within a wide range. The kicker here is, the more it would disturb how they do business is the thing that will give you this…
Best branding (and business) advice
It comes from Geraldine Carter, coach to accountants so that they can leave the nonsense of hustle. Read it . 👇 What are YOU worth? “But aren’t I supposed to charge what I’m worth?” Nope. You can decide what you’re worth, but the marketplace is going to decide what it’s going to pay. … You are you. Your business is your business. When your name is on the door of your business, it can be hard to separate the two. … Your business sells product offerings. You are not your business. You are…
Revenue is not your friend
Or “sales”, if you’d like to put it that way. Not even cashflow is your friend. You can have millions in revenue. Millions in cashflow. And still on the verge of killing the business. You need to focus on your profit and your margins. And this comes from the value you help create to your customers. Because those (profit + margins) are the ones that make your business sustainable. They are the things that fund your mission. Without that fund, you’ll run dry or burn out. It’s that time when you…
Which one is better?
A bunch of responses about yesterday’s message —where offer A is priced at 3,3X and offer B is priced at 0,9X— said that A was better than B. For a few reasons… (and all of these assumptions are with the only context of price.) Offer A… Would help for longer Would be custom. Is premium Feels premium Has more bells and whistles Has better performance Gives more guarantees Is more reliable Has a clear position in the market Is not desperate for a sale Has to be the expert Has more…
Would you like fries with it?
Doing what your customers say they need you to do without a proper diagnosis from your side is asking that question. It’s leaning into taking orders and leave all the responsibility (and risk) on them. So when things go south “they got what they asked for”. And to get those things done (what they say they need), you’ll compete with LLMs and AI, amongst other who “do” the same. Start with a diagnosis. That’s one of the first indicators you’re the expert.
Yield and Concede
A school of thought on sales has this principle: “For you to win in a negotiation, you need to be ready to yield and concede”. Bullshit. You don’t. You can always walk away. The only thing customers have: money. The thing that only you and your business have: your expertise. Money is fungible / exchangeable. Your expertise and what you bring to the table, isn’t.