A week or so ago, I used the example of choosing an accountant to do your taxes to demonstrate the advantages of focusing on a specific target market that has predictable and expensive problems. Let’s look at that again. Pretend that you met two accountants who could help you file your taxes. One was the…
There’s no doubt that he’s stuck. We got on the phone and he told me about his business challenges. So I ask him about his target audience and what he offers. What’s different about his agency? What does his team know more about than the agency down the street? Brad, it’s our creative! Don’t you…
“I always say, “Be so good that they can’t ignore you.” If someone’s thinking, “How can I be really good?” people are going to come to you…” ~ Steve Martin Last week I told you the story of my client who tripled her business and only added five employees, by focusing on a specialty and…
In my recent survey of over 100 business owners, I asked them to agree or disagree with the following statement. We are priced significantly higher than our competitors. The results showed an almost perfect “bell curve,” with a slight tilt toward agreeing. Which brings up the question, “How do we know what our competitors are charging?…
In our last conversation, we talked about choosing an industry, or vertical specialization, as a way to find your “people like us,” but what if there’s not one industry that fits your business? One of my clients, Diane Yetter of Yetter Tax, helps people with their most difficult sales tax problems. Though we think of sales…
In our last conversation, we talked about how “people like us, do things like this.” How identifying your tribe, and then acting in ways that show you are a part of that tribe, can significantly accelerate the growth of your business. Which begs the question: who are your people like us, and how do you…
Just like children, businesses grow through predictable phases. We talked about start life as baby startups, that progress to raging growth companies in our first email. Then we talked about the adolescent crisis that leads to specialization. Today, we finally reach a more stable “adult” phase. Here’s my version of this story focused primarily on B2B…
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…