A lot of small business owners are much better at “doing what they do” than selling. I’ll count myself among them. But all is not lost. For many of us in the business-to-business world, the better you get at selling, the less it feels like selling, and the more it feels like collaborative problem solving. [...]
People often start a business to pursue a passion and to have more control over their lives. Unfortunately, the business often ends up taking control instead. The owner has less time with family, rather than more, and even when not at work, work is always present. The passion fades, the owner feels stuck, but doubles [...]
Cut costs without hurting sales. Raise prices (nominally, by raising list prices, or effectively, by reducing discounts) without hurting sales. Ummm, ummm. What’s the 3rd one? Costs… prices… and the 3rd one, let’s see… No sir, no sir. And the 3rd one, I can’t. Sorry. Ooops.
Many business owners and sales reps hate price objections. They view price objections as some kind of faux pas that they should have avoided, an awkward situation, best resolved quickly (and often with huge damage to profits). Do you like price objections? When was the last time you heard one? (I recently spoke to the [...]
Last week, we looked at how preparing a pricing battle plan increases your sales and profits while decreasing your stress. This week, let’s look at another example, a service business with about 10 professionals. To protect the guilty, we’ll call it Smiley Services, which helped companies with various process and legal issues. Service companies often [...]
How many businesses build a cool product, then figure out what to charge for it? How many companies decide what to quote on a proposal after they’ve written the proposal? If you make your pricing decisions then, you are at your most emotional and least rational point, and likely to mis-price (usually underprice) your offering. [...]
As expected, Amazon this week launched a new media tablet, the Kindle Fire, at a $199 price point. This immediately started the debate about whether the Kindle Fire was an iPad killer. Indeed, this debate overshadowed the overhaul of the entire Kindle line up, which now starts at just $79. These devices are less portable [...]
Creative people love making things– widgets, software, knowledge, service calls. A lot of businesses and product lines get started this way. Someone has a cool idea to make something. Skeptics shoot down the idea. The founder or engineer makes it. Eureka! Triumph! Now, how to price it? At this point, you’ve done the hard work. [...]
How can you charge more for a commodity? Here’s one of my favorite examples. 24 ounces of ketchup at $0.07/oz. Turn that idea on its head. 32 ounces at $0.079/oz. The price per unit goes up almost 13%. Not bad for a commodity. Note that the different sizes make it harder for buyers to know [...]
Many small business owners consider pricing some kind of dark voodoo that you can only get right with the appropriate incantations, or access to a pricing consultant who knows the right incantations. At risk of hurting my own business, I’m going to tell you that pricing doesn’t have to be so hard. In fact, customers will [...]
