One way to protect margins is by being more efficient (though always taking your costs as the base for it). What if you forget about your costs for a moment?

Protect your margins overall. Find ways to improve your efficiencies. Cut costs. Add extras to what they pay. Transfer costs out (to your customers). Control scope better. Adjust your rates

Being transparent about how you set the price you give. It has nothing to do with your customer. It’s all internal. It’s about how you can capture the most of

Being transparent about the price you give. It’s giving the right and complete information to your customer about what they will pay for, beforehand. It has to do with them

About the prices your business has. Are you supposed to be transparent about: the price you give, or how you set the price you give?

“We’re dedicated to our customers.” Shit. I’d sure hope so. Would you choose to pay a significant amount of money to someone who’s not dedicated and does an incompetent job?

Who told you it’s greedy / needy / bad to have high prices? Who told you it’s good to give discounts? Who told you that giving a discount is a

A common belief is that over delivering delights your customers. That’s a misconception. You can delight them with delivering on your promise. Over delivering entails expanding your costs without a

It’s pretty clear on a lot of replies to yesterday’s email that under delivering is not the best option of them 3 (under delivering, delivering, over delivering). That’s great. And

You made your promise to your customer (aka value proposition). Delivering it is as important as making it. Which one do you think is best? Under-deliver Deliver Over-deliver

“Every customer is important.” It’s not. If you had only 4 hours to have face-to-face conversations that define the future of your business, who would be these customers you’d have

After a 2-month break, we’re back. This time off was important to re-evaluate some thinking, pressure test some more, and focus more. Anyways, now that we’re back, let’s get down

One way that makes the process of articulating what’s different about you simpler (not less painful, though) is through your insight. April Dunford defines insight as “the thing we understand

They’re all a by-product. You don’t look for them as the main focus, they are the result of what you do in service to your customers.

A common pattern that I see in people who are new in leading positions is they try to maximize the results. What’s that even mean? That in order to get

That’s what most people will tell you: “Don’t burn bridges.” Here’s the thing, though: sometimes there are bridges that need to burn. Still, you can make them burn graciously.

This one is taken over by Geraldine Carter. It usually sounds like this: “I should probably say yes to this revenue, right?” Or worse: “I already said yes.” Or worse:

You don’t get to hire somebody highly qualified to do non-qualified-to-do work (paying top dollar). It makes no sense. It’s the same in business. Your customers don’t want to pay

How do you assure financial predictability to your customers? One way of doing so is by giving them fixed prices. Another way is through warranties. Another one from helping them

“Clarity comes in the articulation, not after it.” David C. Baker Taking your ideas off your head and putting them onto paper (or whatever media you use) gives you the