Category: Customer Success
How do you think about business?
How do you think about business? Do you relegate your responsibility to simply carrying out the actions that others ask you to carry out? Do you simply see yourself as collecting a pay check for showing up? I tend to see people fall into a spectrum in terms of how they do business. On one end, I refer to their…
There’s no wrong way to do the right thing
Analysis paralysis can get the better of us when we’re evaluating alternative choices. If you seem to be stuck in indecision, perhaps it’s because you don’t really understand the decision you’re trying to make. You may not have a goal in mind. Or if you have a goal in mind you may not feel confident in what makes it worthwhile.…
Making it possible to try the little things
By quantifying and qualifying value upfront, I can align my success with my customer’s success. We’re both accountable for the same outcome. By fixing a price upfront, based on that value, we put money behind us and we plow forward with a laser like focus on the desired outcome. One of the side effects of this model, or perhaps the…
Why high billable rates don’t work
When it comes to billing by the hour, I find most people defend their rates in terms of skill as it translates to efficiency. Certainly in terms of efficiency there are distinctions individuals can make in terms of their hourly rate. Distinctions that may make the difference between $50 per hour and $150 per hour. It is possible that some…
Customer alignment
Revenue / profit targets alone neglect to consider the one factor that actually leads to revenue and profit: happy, satisfied customers. Imagine how successful you would be if you align your goals with what makes your customer successful. Otherwise, even if you are successful in the short term, you won’t be successful in the long term if you’re harming and…
Sticker shock is a good thing
Sticker shock, finding out the price of something you want to buy, is something firms tend to avoid. That’s why hourly billing is so prevalent. It puts off the hard part of engaging an external partner. One of the reasons I price upfront is to get the money part of the conversation out of the way, so we can get…
The revenue will follow
Many organizations obsess over measuring revenue. Both historically to see how much actual revenue was generated and estimations for how much revenue may be generated in the future. Objectives are set to increase revenue. And people lose sleep when expectations aren’t met. Which only leads to more measuring. Organizations also obsess over cash flow issues, especially timeliness of invoicing and…
Fat or muscle?
When it comes to personal fitness some people want to lose fat, some people want to gain muscle and some people want to do both. Of course there are other priorities but fat loss and muscle gain are pretty common. What’s interesting is when people want to both lose fat and gain muscle simultaneously. Pulling that off is challenging to…
What kind of results can you guarantee?
In a past post I referred to some podcasts on value, value pricing and software development. Michael had a few questions about the podcast. These are deep questions so I thought it would be fun to answer them in a video format where I can talk through the considerations and my response.
The second question from Michael:
What kind of results can you put in your proposals in a way that lets you put your guarantee under it and be 99% sure you will hit the results?
What if there are factors contributing to the the results that are not under your control? Do you usually measure the results in units like hours saved, new customers aquired etc. or more like “employees are able to do X with an effort no more that Y per week while processing Z number/percent of widgets more than before”.
Here’s my response: