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.
Sausage and THE sausage
If you’re selling sausage, you need more than just saying that. If you’re selling THE sausage, all that pre-work has been done. Here’s the thing: Yesterday’s message was about how to make things simple for your customer when you’re in your conversations. Giving them more information might turn out being more confusing than what they actually need. And THE sausage is a metaphor for what they want. Not an actual sausage. 🙂
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:…
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…
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 not about growth
Pricing is not about growth. It’s about profit. About getting the maximal monetary amount your customer is WILLING to pay. BUT, also, it’s about profit AFTER bringing your customer to a better place. If you don’t get this one principle clear, any pricing you’ll try won’t last.
How’s that going?
Have you ever done work for free? If so, how did it go for you? Did you get what you were excpecting at the beginning of the engagement? Quite curious on that one. 🙂
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…
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?