Feed The Soil, Not The Plant: Client Version. (The Worksheet)

Having a great place to buy makes people want to buy from there.  It is not just your employees who thrive in a good environment.  Your clients do too.  There will always be another version of you: another law firm, another restaurant, another hair stylist, another marketing agency, another everything.  It’s three things: value, quality,…

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The 5 best ways to alienate your clients

Learn from your mistakes, examine your failures, and begin with your blunders.  We all know the importance of doing things incorrectly, as a way to learn to do them correctly. Thomas Edison is credited with saying: “I didn’t fail. I just found 2,000 ways not to make a lightbulb”.  Let’s embrace the value of finding…

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Which piece of the pie are you?

Your client’s desire to buy from you hopefully knows no bounds.  But the thing that does have limits is budget.  Your clients can make more money, or move money around, but there is only a finite and specific amount of it available at any one time.  It is a set pie.  Which piece of that…

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The problem with offering discounts

Discounts and low prices are not the same things. We all know the problem with competing on price, and discounts mean the opposite: the price is higher than desired, so a discount will allow the client to make the purchase.  In which case, discounts are a safe negotiation tactic, right? Wrong.  Let’s take a closer…

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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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Service vs Price: Who Wins?

Where should a business strategy focus to win clients? Does better service outweigh a higher price? Or are most buying decisions ultimately a battle between pricing options? Most business owners and leaders have wondered this at some point or another; often after having lost a deal to a cheaper competitor. Slashing prices seems like such…

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