by JimRaffel on September 6, 2010
My friend Cindy shared the following on Twitter recently.
What does best really mean? Obviously I already tipped my hand in the title of this post. Clearly what Cindy does is deliver the goods at a fair price. That price may not be the lowest and based upon Cindy’s track record I’m guessing it’s not. I find that people always find money for the things they; A. Want; and/or B. Need.
The next paragraph is from the cornerstone post of this blog Real Authentic and Sustainable. In hindsight and with Cindy’s tweet (and the conversation that followed) I now see that my customer was talking about paying for the “best.”
My most striking business example of; real, authentic and sustainable is a customer who recntly turned down a discount I offered on a fairly large order. He said to me; “Jim, price is not the only consideration, your ability to support us in the future matters. You have proven over the years that you are worth the price you ask.” [...]
The price you ask. How often do you negotiate over your price? Please stop doing that. You know your worth. If you know your customer and the situation well (which you should – we call this doing your homework) you have some sense of what the customer can and will pay. Save yourself and the client all the time and hassle of the negotiation and submit a bid that reflects what you are worth and what the customer can pay.
Know your customer. To be your best in the eyes of your customer you must take the time to know thy customer. As a customer begins talking about a new project you should be doing the math in your head. By the time the first serious conversation is over there should be a number in your head that fairly represents what your customer has to spend and what you can afford to do the project for. In my book we call that professional salesmanship.
Am I looking at this the right way? What’s your take?
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by JimRaffel on July 4, 2010
Take the time to find yourself and your message will magically materialize. How do you make your money? That’s what you do. If you are trying to find yourself, start there.
I’m a Small Biz CEO. Yes, take a peek at the tag line up above (below my name). It’s only been “Small Biz CEO” for a few days, so you may not have noticed the change. It’s taken me almost a year of reinventing this blog to figure that out. Three or four tag line changes in that time is a lot. Now it’s right and I know it.
I’m not a blogger. Sure I blog, but I am not a blogger. If I was a blogger somehow someway this site would generate the lion’s share of my income. It does not. Does what I do here help support my income generation as CEO of ColorMetrix? Absolutely, 100% yes. Still, I make money via my business skills, not my writing skills.
Message clarity. Last weekend I sat and looked at my last year of posts. Read the work of other great bloggers about finding your message and creating calls to action with your posts. I started looking at tag lines of others bloggers. Remember, I like to model the success of others. About this time last week it hit me like a ton of bricks, I’m a Small Biz CEO, not a blogger extraordinaire, and from there my message materialized.
Business and personal success. That’s my message going forward. Please don’t think, “Oh no, he’s changing everything.” That’s not the case at all. I will just be focusing the posts more tightly around inspiring your success. So, by definition I will often structure the message around overcoming adversity and what others perceive as and label failure. Sounds familiar, right? Like lasts week’s well received “Public Speaking 101″ series and hopefully this week’s “Small Business 101″ series.
Yourself may be closer than you realize. A year ago I was already a small business CEO and had been for fifteen years. Take a look at all the things you do. One of them is who you are. That “who” should be responsible for the message you deliver on your blog. (See, I’ll still give blogging advice even though I am not a blogger) Making sense yet?
While changing the tag line, I spent a few hours cleaning up the site and making sure it loads faster and is more loved by Google. If you see anything strange or just want to let me know how much faster it loads please jump in the comments.
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