Why a “No Apologies” mentality might work for your business.
Not too long back I had some miscommunication problems with a service provider.
I use the word ‘miscommunication’ rather loosely and euphemistically to be truthful. I’m trying to be positive about it.
If I was being blunt, I would say that they never listened to me. I was never heard. They attempted to make decisions on my behalf, and really, just never got to the point where they understood why I was so annoyed with them. Which leads to my second big issue in our relationship. Assumptions. In order to explain, I’ll need to digress slightly into some background on our company.
I’m an avid student of e-marketing, normal marketing, and any other kind of marketing. I devour article’s books, blogs, LinkedIn discussions and any other type of advice I can lay my hands on. This is a necessity, as a business owner, CEO and entrepreneur, I am the head of the marketing department. I have no formal training or education in marketing, so it’s really up to me and my own discipline to find out how to do things; and then make it work. Sink or swim baby. Sink or swim.
So I know all that stuff about the personal touch, how a handwritten note makes all the difference for example. Or congratulating someone with flowers when an event happens. If you’re a local or small business owner then you are perfectly positioned to know about these events, because you generally know a good portion of your clients personally, and behaving like a human being makes doing business with you a pleasant experience.
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What is value-based selling ?
There's a major shift taking place in the world of Print, as many small print shops expand out their business into value-based selling, and evolving into marketing specialists.
This is a good thing, short run print jobs are in fact a speciality custom manufactured good. Selling on price, and constant undercutting has led to many printers either going under, or even worse , staying afloat long enough to seriously hamper the market for those who would do well otherwise.
It takes a massive mind shift to move away from a "Cost plus Markup" mentality. If you're the kind of person ( like me) where 1+1 =2 , it's hard wrap your brain around the concept that when selling on value 1+1 =3, or even 4 or 5 if you're in the right part of town.
The truth is, it's not hoodoo vooodo, or thumb sucking. The pricing is based on factors that multiply, rather than add to the price.
Here are the broad strokes, and we'll dig down into them in future posts.