When you started your business, you tried a lot of things before you found what people would pay you for, that you’re good at, and that you enjoy. There aren’t many businesses I work with who still pursue the business idea and model they first started with.  So you try things, and you find clients. When they say “Do you do ______?” You say “yes” a lot, and pretty soon you can pay your mortgage—maybe you can even earn a nice salary.  But this process teaches us bad habits.  Saying “yes” a lot enables us to pay our bills, but it gets us into a bunch of assignments that don’t pay us very well (because we are learning as we go along) and get us into doing things we don’t like to do. So … [Read more...]

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 their problems. Different in a way that’s valuable to them. Here are some characteristics of firms that have positioned themselves as the “costs more, but worth it” provider. Take a stand Most “costs more, but worth it” providers have a unique perspective. They see their market differently from other providers. That position may be unpopular or even offend some … [Read more...]

We’ve talked previously about how important it is to find more significant, scarier problems. My father used to say it this way; ”No one gets hired to tell a client to take his vitamins. You hire an outside firm when you have an artery spouting blood and they need a tourniquet!” Dad had a way with words, didn’t he? Sometimes you can get hired to tell someone to take their vitamins, but usually, that work doesn’t pay well and it is unsatisfying. Think about assignments where the client regularly puts off meeting with you, where you can’t get them to focus or make a decision (or send your payment). In those situations the problem is just not significant enough, you are offering … [Read more...]

We’ve talked about raising your prices as a prime way that you can make more money in your business, but the #1 fear that I hear is that prospects will say no to the higher price. So when I saw this tweet from Chris Do I had to share it with you.  So when my wife threw her back out last week she was willing to pay anything if someone could loosen the muscle spasm. She had an urgent and important problem that made price a non-issue. When my client was being sued by the IRS for filing his tax returns incorrectly for a couple of years, and then not at all for a couple of years he found a tax accountant who only works with people who are being sued by the IRS and he paid whatever that … [Read more...]

One of the easiest ways to 1) grow your business financially, 2) help you to focus on your ideal clients and 3) free you up to spend more time growing your business is to raise your prices. But I get a lot of resistance from business owners when I start to talk about raising prices. It's pushing the limits of our comfort zone. Is it worth it to go into this scary place? How do you know? Here are 10 signs you need to raise your prices... If you can’t remember the last time you raised your prices…you need to raise your prices. If you’re working all the time, but not making the money you need…you need to raise your prices. If your business is growing and you need to get some help … [Read more...]

I had a prospect come to me with a desire to grow her income, and at the same time to make her business processes less dependent on being “hands on”.  “Why do you want that, Linda? What makes this important now?” I asked. “Well, I just came back from visiting my Father in Tucson, and I realized three things. First, he’s not getting any younger; I want to spend more time with him in the next few years. Second, Tuscan is beautiful, and I’m sick of Chicago winters. Finally, I love to ride horses. I’ve lived in Chicago all my life, and I haven't been able to do that regularly. If I moved to Tucson (It’s beautiful, have you ever been there?) I could ride my horse every day; I could see my … [Read more...]