Following up on my post about how focusing is essential to growth I got a question from a fellow business owner, Paul asks; Hi Brad, I love this Venn Diagram; in fact, I have a copy hanging on my office wall! The dilemma occurs when the intersection of something we do well and don’t love…
Finding your core service that is valuable to your ideal client and focusing on that means that you are going to do a lot of similar assignments. For creative people, this sounds like a kind of death. “You want me to do this thing over, and over, and over, and…ARUAGHHHH!” Well, yes, and no… First,…
We’ve talked this week about how to position your firm as the “costs more, but worth it” provider in your niche, and about the huge advantage a unique expertise to solve those big, scary problems that your prospects face can be. It’s a lot of work to develop that positioning — both in your mind…
To get a premium price for your services it’s important to be positioned as the “costs more, but worth it” provider. Your prospects need to see you as substantially different from your competitors. And not just different like you “dye your hair orange” different, different in a way that makes you uniquely qualified to solve…
Remember my list of ways to make more money? The one that the most folks told me they wanted to hear more about was focusing on higher value clients (and firing your lower value clients). I can see why this idea is attractive — it’s conservative and low risk — but also has the potential…
“I’ve tried that, it didn’t work…” I was having a discussion with an owner of a B2B creative services firm about his business development process. He had a strong business that he’d built by leveraging his personal network, but he wanted to see more growth. This is a business owner who’s aggressive and isn’t afraid…
As I write this, it’s the first day of summer in Chicago, and I’m thinking about taking some time off. But not the whole summer! There’s still work to be done, even though some of my clients, partners and prospects may be away or moving at a slower pace right now. The summer months always give…
How is Hooters different from other restaurants that serve wings? Do Hooters’ wings taste better? Do they have low prices? No? Then why do people go there for wings? Hooters built a whole business around the one thing they know their target market – twenty-something men – likes. (And, it’s really not wings, is it?)…
Marketing isn’t always a high priority for some business owners because they can feel intimidated, even defeated, by it. They understand sales – but marketing? What’s it for? Why do you do it? And when you only turn to marketing to pull you out of a slump and then it doesn’t deliver, we can see how you could feel…
Small-business owners often are self-conscious about being small. We are often very conscious of the ways that we compete at a disadvantage to bigger businesses. They have the big budgets, the high-powered executives, attorneys and banks at their beck and call, they have all the advantages… Well, maybe not ALL the advantages. There are some great things about being small….