It’s All About Service

value proposition

It has finally happened: it is 2020 and your business advantage is all about service.  Back in 2018, I spoke at Jim Moran Institute Small Business Leadership Conference. My talk was a workshop to focus attention on how customers buy, rather than how businesses sell.  The theme that year was “It’s all about the customer”.…

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Effective Efficiency

We all want to be effective, and we all want to be efficient. Too often, these two qualities do not play well together.  To be more efficient, businesses cut resources and steps. Then, struggling to achieve results (i.e. seeing their effectiveness decrease), they throw money or time at the quickest fix available.  It is the…

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Selling Peace of Mind

A comment I have heard in at least four different conversations over the past couple of months: “I sell peace of mind”.  The four people who said this were: an attorney, a beauty salon owner, an auto mechanic, and a doggy day care owner.  But they all sell the same thing… or do they?  What…

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Be The Best Option – A Case Study

People have options. The content in this blog is about finding ways to always be the best option.  To be the best option, you must be targeting the right clients and then solving their particular problems.  I saw this happen recently with a CPA firm.  The problem They were serving anyone.  Everybody needs to file…

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Your Ideal Client

Might have red hair, or be a company with fifty employees, or drive a Honda. Your ideal client might have a certain job title, be in a particular marital status, have a particular responsibility. Different companies and products will have different essentials to describe their ideal clients. Each list of “must-haves” and “nice-to-haves” will be…

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The System is the Solution

Another view on last week’s message: that good process is what makes your business unique and successful. You may have heard this expression before, it was the old AT&T business slogan: The System is the Solution Once again: the words used, matter. The solution is the product Regular readers of this blog will have heard…

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Business Orchestration

If you haven’t orchestrated it, you don’t own it. As written in The E-Myth, by Michael E. Gerber. I read this book at the perfect time, when I was struggling to express the importance of systems in my business. As I rolled out a new right way/wrong way to operate, this line helped me explain…

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Be The Best Option

People have options in life. Whenever you buy a product or service, you choose what to buy, based on the issue you want resolved. Your clients are the same, they have choices. You may know that you are the best and obvious choice for them, but here’s the problem: all of your competitors know that…

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Don’t Be Perfect: Be Valuable

Analysis Paralysis is a real and insidious. The problem grows because we tend to speak in terms of necessity: I need more information; I need more preparation; it has to be perfect. My suggestion to you today is that you focus not on being perfect, but rather on being valuable. What is Perfect? That is…

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The Process is the Product – Customer Service

The process is the value, the brand and the outcome driver. The process is, in other words, the product. Effective business is managed with effective process, and it is in those steps and decisions that a business can find ways to stand out and be of value. This is true for all aspects of business,…

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