Replicating the Founder’s Skills 28 Apr 12:50 PM (7 days ago)
Many advisory practices tend to grow quickly to a certain size then get stuck there, unable to grow past some invisible barrier.
I have long observed that in the creative and marketing space there’s a strong pattern of a firm’s growth plateauing around the seven-year mark. The reasons aren’t clear to me.
It may be that seven years is roughly the point at which the founder has tapped out their network. David C. Baker has suggested it may also be the declining effect of passive referrals. (We only take referrals from people we look up to or see as peers, therefore they are “handed down” and run out.)
The Other Plateau
While both of these might be factors at the seven-year plateau, many successful firms plateau later, at a larger size. And these cases have a pretty obvious common cause: they are firms that have grown as far as the founder alone can take them.
Getting to the next level requires a sharing of the sales load across the broader team. The senior leadership team needs to step up on the new business front, and the client services team needs to step up on growing existing accounts.
Everyone tries—with new plans, pep talks and reports—but it doesn’t work. The founder cannot seem to impart to the broader team a skill that is so natural and intuitive to them.
The Mediocre One
Wayne Gretzky was the greatest hockey player to ever lace up skates, but he was a sub-par coach. I imagine him in the dressing room, addressing his players in exasperation, “Guys, it’s not that hard!”
Uhh, yeah Gretz, it is. We’re not you.
“Just do what I do” isn’t good direction, but it is the goal. And while few of your people will be able to do what you do to the level you do it, enough of them can do it well enough to get you through the plateau and back to growing again.
A Path Back to Growth
Let’s get this team turned around. Here are some structural issues to consider first:
- If everyone’s chasing utilization targets, look no further for the main culprit. The more you push the team to bill hours the harder it will be to scale sales—a non-billable activity.
- Incentives matter. Look at how your people earn their money and ask if the incentives are aligned to your growth goal or if they need to change. Revisit incentives carefully, and in combination with utilization targets.
- A handful of people being 75% as good as you at selling is a massive unlock. While there are some advantages to trying to bring the whole team along, I recommend you identify the smallest group of key people that could unlock a new level of growth. The rest will follow if you succeed with these leaders.
With those structural issues considered, let’s plot the path back to growth.
Step One: Train the Core
Those key people you identified? Give them to me. I’ll teach them a model of principles and frameworks that lets them bring their expert self to the sales role, instead of trying to be the clichéd salesperson they are not.
The principles you’ll recognize as the things you do intuitively but have never codified. The frameworks are the tools they’ll use to navigate through the sale without going into pitch mode or writing unnecessary decks or ridiculously long proposals.
You may be Wayne Gretzky, but I’m Scotty Bowman. (IYKYK)
Step Two: Support the Core
Everyone who goes through training now gets free lifetime access to the new Win Without Pitching Academy, where my team and I support them for as long as they want.
In the Academy and mobile app they will find:
- Their training materials and tools
- A global discussion forum of their peers
- My daily blog, weekly blog, podcasts and videos
- Monthly AMAs with me
- Live guest interviews
- Access to one-on-one coaching ($)
Think of the Academy as insurance on your training investment, except it’s free for life. The Academy is where I live these days.
The Rest Will Follow
A small group of inspired, trained and supported individuals is enough to kick-start growth and seed more ambition into the culture of the firm. Once they validate the approach and shine with an enthusiasm for their new skills, others will want to play too. Start small.
The need to replicate the sales success of the founder is one of the most common challenges cited by those who reach out to us.
If that’s your challenge too, let’s talk.
-Blair
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Can We Talk? 14 Apr 5:00 PM (21 days ago)
“You can present to people or you can be present to them. You can’t do both.”
I grew up (professionally) in the brief-and-present dynamics of the advertising business where honest conversation was almost entirely absent from the sale.
Instead, there was an expectation by both parties that the buyer (client) would brief the seller (agency) on what they were looking for, then the seller would retreat.
Working in isolation from the buyer, the seller would then craft a customized solution which they would present in a pitch. The client would sit through the pitch with arms folded and lips pressed together. They might ask a few questions at the end but they otherwise wouldn’t say much.
I remember these moments vividly. As soon as we walked out of a pitch, we would turn to each other and ask “How do you think that went?”
We shared our guesses, and they were just that—guesses. It never occurred to us to ask the client how it went. Even if we had, they wouldn’t have given us a fully honest answer.
We Never Talk Anymore
Honest answers to thoughtful questions are the basic elements of any good conversation. And any sale of expertise should be a series of conversations where each party is open and honest, asking the questions they want answered and, in turn, honestly answering the questions posed to them.
This rarely happens.
There is something about the context of selling that causes us to lose our ability to converse. Instead, we go into presentation mode, signaling to the client that our goal is to convince, not converse. Two-way communication stops. The sale gets more costly for both parties. Each gets a little bit frustrated with the other, with neither seeing the best of the other.
There are many benefits to seeing the sale as a series of conversations instead of a series of steps the salesperson should take. They include less time wasted and costs incurred, fewer surprises and better fits once into the engagement, and a preservation of the expert advisor status of the seller.
If you are a good advisor then you have the tools to be a good salesperson.
When you slip into presentation mode however you jettison all those tools and relegate yourself to the status of needy vendor. The conversion is over. All you have left is the pitch. So you go all in on the pitch.
Again.
Waving My Magic Wand 
If I could do just one thing for you it would be to reach inside you and pull out all your ideas of what you think it means to sell.
I would take away your value propositions, your scripts, your decks, and I would rewire the Conversation / Presentation switch inside of you so that when you next found yourself in front of a prospective client you would be left with nothing more than your ability to have a conversation… and you would shine like the expert you are.
-Blair
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When To Have The Answers 31 Mar 2:05 PM (last month)
I was young and stupid when I first learned that there were two main types of expertise: subject matter expertise and process expertise.
Being young and stupid (and a little full of myself) I was dismissive of the latter. I mean, I was so arrogantly dismissive of process expertise that I refused to acknowledge that a facilitator’s skills had any value at all.
Surely, knowing how to use a framework is nowhere near as valuable as the deep knowledge of a subject, like the deep knowledge I so proudly possessed.
I did properly understand one difference between the two:
The subject matter expert has the answers.
The process expert has the questions.
And I equated “being the expert” with being the person with the answers. I clutched onto this belief so tightly that it’s been one of the hardest challenges of my career to go from being seen as the person with the answers to the person with the questions.
I still struggle with it, even though today I understand that in my domain of selling, questions are far more valuable than answers. Even when there is a role for both.
The Roles of Questions and Answers
In a sale, your subject matter expertise gets you to the table, with a prospective client on the other side, weighing whether or not to hire you.
You proved your expertise by sharing your “answers” in the public domain and they have reached out to you for this conversation.
But it’s your process expertise that gets you hired.
As an example, take the Value Conversation, the third conversation in our Four Conversations model for selling expertise.
The Value Conversation is a framework for asking questions. It’s a process.
In a Win Without Pitching workshop I always say about the Value Conversation framework, “It’s simple, but it’s not easy. The reason it’s not easy is your subject matter expertise gets in the way.”
You clear your mind and start working the framework. Step one: What is it you want, dear client?
The client begins to answer. Being a subject matter expert, you spot the patterns.
You’ve seen this before. You know what the problem is. You know what the solution is. You know what the client needs to pay.
“No further questions, Your Honor!”
You’re ready to pitch. To transmit. To communicate that you know the answers.
It takes all your willpower to let go of these SME thoughts and stick to the framework, the process. If you succumb to your SME instincts here you will give up power, put the client back on their heels, lower your odds of closing and raise your cost of sale.
Stop asserting and resume your questions.
Subject matter expertise gets you to the table. Then it gets in the way. Process expertise—asking the right questions—gets you the deal, and it does so more often, at higher prices and at a lower cost of sale.
You need both forms of expertise. Being the subject matter expert requires you to have answers, but selling that expertise requires you to drop answers for questions.
Simple. But not easy.
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The Power of a Metaphor 25 Mar 11:58 AM (last month)
Many years ago, a friend was getting certified in whitewater kayaking so she could compete in a televised multi-disciplinary, multi-day race called the Eco-Challenge.
At her behest, my wife and I joined her on the water thinking, “how hard could this sport be?”
Pretty hard, it turns out. I thought it would be like ocean kayaking, something I was familiar with.
It wasn’t.
I struggled to stay upright in the river. It was bad. Then the instructor shared with me the simple phrase that changed everything. She said, “kayaking is like skiing.”
In those four words, a massive amount of information immediately became available to me. I understood in a flash that current was slope, that I should quit leaning into the hill and I should fall forward down it, that I had been carving with the wrong edge.
In four words I had a library of information and muscle memory that I could tap into instantly. I immediately understood something I had been struggling with and I began to improve quickly.
This is how metaphors rapidly communicate volumes of information. I’d essentially downloaded an entire model for how to think about something I’d never done before, with the words “this is like that.”
Selling Expertise is Like…
I can do the same for you with selling. I’ll give you four different ways to think about your second job (selling your expertise) with four simple metaphors. With each of them you will instantly have access to an entire playbook.
“Selling is like dating” is the most common metaphor that I hear from participants in the Win Without Pitching workshop. While valid, I don’t find the dating metaphor particularly useful because there’s little surprise in it. (The more unexpected the metaphor, the more information it carries.)
Here are four less-obvious metaphors for selling expertise that I think you will find useful.
1. Leading
In any sale of expertise, the sale is the sample of the engagement to follow. If you don’t lead in the sale, you won’t be allowed to lead in the engagement.
You can read any good book on leadership and substitute the words “selling” for “leading” and “salesperson” for “leader” and you will have a good framework for how to improve your sales.
If you’re already a good leader, just view the sale as a leadership moment.
2. Change Management
Changing is a very good model for how people buy. Selling, therefore, is change management.
Any change management model can be adapted to a sales model. Study how people change and you will learn secrets about buying and selling that you would never learn in any sales book.
You will learn more about selling theory by studying change than all but a few of the world’s most successful salespeople.
3. Parenting?
While some say selling is like dating, I think selling expertise is more like parenting. Sometimes the other party doesn’t know what they want, isn’t well behaved, or makes unreasonable demands.
Someone needs to be the adult in the relationship. That someone is you.
Channel your hard-earned parenting skills into the relationship to chart a path forward that’s good for the client in the long run. Do it without sounding like a bossypants.
And yes, good parenting books are also good playbooks for selling expertise.
4. Facilitating
Some advisors have to tell their clients what to do—it’s just the nature of some specific jobs—but most of the time it’s the advisor’s job to lay out the options and explain the tradeoffs inherent in each option, then let the client make their choice.
This is also how you should view selling. It’s not your job to tell your clients what to do. It’s not your job to convince them to hire you.
Your job is to lay out options—different ways the client might engage you, at different price points—and then facilitate a discussion on the pros and cons of each option, leaving the decision to the client.
No convincing, no coercion.
Experts that facilitate a selection from multi-option proposals this way see an immediate increase in closing ratios and average proposal value.
Each of these metaphors imparts all kinds of new information on what selling is, or could be, if you’re willing to let go of the old model of selling as an act of talking people into things.
Maybe it’s time you thought about selling differently and adopted a new playbook.
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Anchor High 10 Mar 12:18 PM (last month)
Shortly after I wrote a book about money (pricing, actually) it occurred to me that I should look more like money and therefore I needed a new suit.
I figured out the cut, the color and the cloth I wanted and then I set a budget. It was by far more than I had previously spent on a suit, but not ostentatious.
I had planned to buy it on my next trip to London but before that trip I found myself walking past a high-end men’s clothing store in Vancouver. For some reason I could afford to shop at this place back when I made one tenth of what I was now making, but hadn’t shopped there in years because I thought it was too expensive.
I had time to kill though (my wife was buying something elsewhere in the mall) so I walked in and explained to the salesperson what I was looking for. Then I asked, “Can I get that suit for that price in this store?”
The salesperson smiled and said, “Follow me.”
Next, he did exactly what I expected him to do. He said, “Let’s start by trying this one on—just for sizing,” and he helped me into a beautiful Italian suit jacket. It fit perfectly. I looked in the mirror and thought, “Damn.”
I mean, it’s hard to convey how good I looked in that suit. You’re going to have to take my word for it.
The salesperson then did the polite thing and disappeared for a moment so that I could be alone with the price tag. When he walked away I peeked. It was multiples of the budget I had given him. I could not take that jacket off fast enough.
If you know anything about price anchoring you know that this visceral reaction to an exorbitant price is no big deal. The salesperson knew I would recover. He wasn’t the slightest bit worried.
When he returned I handed him the suit jacket and said, “Nice try. I know what you’re doing. I wrote a book about this.”
Unfazed, he smiled and once again said, “Follow me.”
He picked out another nice suit and said, “This one’s more in line with your budget.” I tried on the jacket and looked in the mirror.
“Damn.” Not quite as handsome as I was in the first suit, but still looking good. I went to the dressing room, tried on the pants (I couldn’t find a price tag) and returned to the salesperson.
“Damn. You look good.”
“Right? Okay, how much?”
It was only 1.8x my budget.
In my head I bought it right then. It seemed so affordable compared to the original anchor that was more than double this price—and quadruple my original budget.
Before I could commit to the salesperson he noted that I was wearing running shoes and asked, “Do you want to see it with a pair of dress shoes on?”
Yes, I did.
As he disappeared to find something in my size, my wife texted. “Where RU?”
“Buying a suit,” I replied. I told her the name of the store.
“BRT”
Uh oh. I needed to act fast. She wouldn’t understand that 80% over my budget was entirely logical. She wouldn’t appreciate how much money I was saving over the first suit, a suit I was completely justified in buying because I looked So. Damn. Good.
The salesperson returned with a pair of shoes.
“Damn.”
They finished the suit beautifully. “How much for the shoes?” I asked.
“$1,100.”
I didn’t need new shoes. Plus, I don’t know what you spend on shoes but it had never occurred to me that at any point in my life I would consider paying four figures for footwear. To me, this is a stupid number for one pair of shoes.
But still…
I mean the shoes and the suit combined were still far less than the first suit. I was still saving a lot of money.
My phone buzzed.
“Don’t do anything til I get there!”
Now I moved from buyer to seller. I had to sell this suit to my wife, whom I could see hurrying in my direction. She relaxed a bit when she realized I hadn’t bought anything yet.
As she slowed to a normal walk, she got a look at me in the suit and shoes.
“Damn.”
“Right?”
“How much?” she asked.
Like the salesperson before me, I anchored high. I gave her the combined price of the suit and shoes.
She responded physically, somewhere between a wince and a gut punch. It was the same reaction I had when I looked at the price of the first suit that the salesperson anchored me with. That was thousands of dollars ago.
I knew she would recover.
The anchoring effect is the idea that the first piece of information on a subject skews the final decision on that subject. A price anchor is like the moon hanging in the sky, pulling toward it the tide that is the average settled price. The job of the price tag on the first suit the salesperson put on me “for sizing” was to reframe the purchase and have me adjust the price away from the anchor, instead of adjusting away from my budget.
Kahneman and Tversky, who coined the term “the anchoring effect” often referred to it as “anchoring and adjusting” for this reason. It’s a form of bounded rationality that sees us limit the cognitive load in our decision making. We quickly select a starting point for the decision (or it’s selected for us in the form of an anchor) then we reason our way away from that point.
But reasoning is a lot of work. Most of us don’t spend the calories to do full and proper reasoning, so we remain biased by the starting point.
I was now doing the same thing with my wife.
After I let her sit with the combined price for a moment, I said, “I love the shoes but they’re too expensive. I’ll just take the suit.”
I told her the price. She exhaled and agreed it was the sensible thing to do. We walked out of that store with all three of us—my wife, the salesperson and me—happy with the outcome of me exceeding my budget by 80%.
The anchoring effect is so powerful that it’s difficult to counter it even when you know it’s being done to you. If you don’t anchor high, your clients will anchor low.
I’ve been thrilled with my suit and even a little grateful that the salesperson moved me off of my budget. There was never a rational basis for my budget in the first place, it was just a number I somewhat randomly decided I was willing to spend.
I still think about those shoes.
Anchoring Resources
Anchoring is one of a small number of tactics that you can easily employ to quickly raise your closing ratio and average proposal value at the same time. Here are some resources to help drive these new levels of revenue and profit.
The pricing book I referenced is Pricing Creativity: A Guide to Profit Beyond the Billable Hour. Available in three formats, Pricing Creativity is a deep dive into the subject of pricing with a lot of specific how-to guidance. Anchor High is one of the six rules in the book.
My most recent book, The Four Conversations: A New Model for Selling Expertise is a less expensive and wider ranging book on selling that also contains some pricing guidance including a small section on anchoring.
The Win Without Pitching workshop is our training program on the selling and pricing model described in The Four Conversations. In the workshop or private training engagement you’ll practice constructing multi-option proposals and anchoring high in a negotiation. The next workshop runs from April 7th to 10th (3 hours a day, via Zoom). Grab your seat here.
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The Four Priorities of Winning New Business 3 Mar 1:23 PM (2 months ago)
There was a question in the Win Without Pitching Academy1 last week about what the playbook is for those situations where “we have to pitch.”
I wrote a reply which was an almost verbatim lift from The Win Without Pitching Manifesto and the fourth proclamation, We will rethink what it means to sell.
From The Manifesto in 2010, here is the original framework for navigating those opportunities where you cannot win without pitching.
The Four Priorities of Winning New Business
To follow the twelve proclamations and Win Without Pitching does not mean that we must always have our way. It is not our goal to replace the client’s rigid and often ridiculous selection process with one of equal rigidity and absurdity. Let us be guided by the following hierarchy of four priorities of winning new business that will ensure we do not become overly rigid in our approach. The goal is to win. The preferred means is to not pitch. A firm that does not win will not last.
The First Priority: Win Without Pitching
We first strive to secure the business before it gets to a defined, competitive selection process in which we are pitted against our peers and asked to give our thinking away for free. This is easiest when the client sees us as the expert and reaches out to us first. It is also easier when we reach out to the client at a time early in the buying cycle, when they are unaware of any need; and we stay with them as they progress through the buying cycle, at first helping over time, then inspiring when appropriate, and finally, reassuring at the end.
To Win Without Pitching is the ideal, but it is not always possible.
The Second Priority: Derail the Pitch
We often do not become aware of opportunities until late in the buying cycle – when the client has already formed intent, has already put a selection process in place and has reached out to numerous firms. In these examples our priority is to derail the pitch – to get the client to put their process aside and take an alternative first step with us. The twelve proclamations offer guidance on the principles of derailing the pitch.
The Third Priority: Gain the Inside Track
There will be times when, try as we might, we cannot derail the client’s selection process. Some organizations’ policies are too strong. Some clients are too unwilling – even when they do recognize and value our expertise. In these examples, we apply the same principles laid out here, but our priority is now to get an edge over the competition within the process.
When we do choose to participate in the client-directed selection process we should do so with the perspective that every competitive bid process has a preferred option.
Somebody almost always has inside information or access to hard-to-reach decision makers. Sometimes the outcome is predetermined and the process is but a veil of legitimacy. Our default assumption should be that somebody always has the inside track.
If we cannot Win Without Pitching, if we cannot derail the pitch, then we endeavor to be the one on the inside track. We begin to participate in the process but do so while constantly gauging whether the client recognizes and values our expertise. We ask for concessions. We ask for access to decision makers. We negotiate what we will and will not write in a proposal or show in a presentation.
We measure the client’s words, but more importantly, their behavior – their willingness to treat us differently – and if they grant us the inside track then it may make sense for us to proceed.
The Fourth Priority: Walk Away
In the sixth proclamation (We will be selective) we will discuss the need to walk away. There will be many times when it makes sense to do so; but for those prospects that would otherwise meet the parameters of clients we can best help, walking away is the fourth priority.
We walk away when we cannot Win Without Pitching, when we cannot derail the pitch and when we are unable to gain the inside track. Good prospective clients who recognize and value our expertise will grant us one of the above. The others are not worth sacrificing our mission on in a long-shot attempt to out-pitch others, one of whom almost certainly has gained the inside track ahead of us.
1The Academy is our new post-training resource, packed with all kinds of free content, forums and coaching for anyone who has been through Win Without Pitching training on The Four Conversations. If you’ve been through training and haven’t received your invitation to join the Academy, reply to me here and we’ll get you set up.
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Who Should Set Prices In Your Firm? 24 Feb 2:37 PM (2 months ago)
Most expert practice owners don’t think too deeply about pricing responsibility. Instead, they default to assuming that the pricing function is automatically attached to a role (e.g., account manager, consultant) with everyone in that role having the authority to set price by default.
If you decide on this full decentralized model after careful consideration then I’m all for it. But there are three other models you should consider, as well as the idea that perhaps responsibility for the pricing function should shift over time.
A Caveat
This guidance applies to firms using a customized pricing model where you price the client instead of the service. I wrote about this distinction in my book, The Four Conversations, and I discussed it with David C. Baker recently in the 2Bobs podcast episode, To Standardize or Customize?
First, Check the Numbers
The first point of consideration is the numbers, specifically the wide variance in prices and gross profit (GP) across all your pricers. The GP of your best pricer should be the standard across your firm.
Do the math: how much margin are you leaving on the table by letting everyone but your best pricer set prices?
Four Levels of Pricing Authority
I mentioned there are four models for assigning the pricing role1. They are really four levels of centralization. Let’s explore each of them.
Fully Decentralized: Each client-facing team member sets price independently with minimal guidance or oversight. This is the default norm I mentioned at the top.
Center‐Supported: A central pricing authority, like your best pricer or perhaps even a chief pricing officer or pricing council, acts like a consulting resource for client-facing personnel—providing tools, data, and best practices—with the client-facing individuals making the ultimate pricing decisions.
Center‐Led: Your central pricing authority sets guidelines, strategy and perhaps specific pricing recommendations, but individuals or teams still have some discretion to alter those recommendations.
Fully Centralized: One entity sets price. It might be an individual (Chief Pricing Officer) or a formal Pricing Council, but they and they alone set price for everyone.
There Are Pros and Cons to Each Level
I won’t delineate here what you can uncover with a simple LLM prompt (explain the four levels of pricing centralization, including the pros and cons of each). You can also listen to David C. Baker and I discuss these pros and cons in the 2Bobs episode that drops tomorrow (26 February 2025).
Consider Evolving Through the Levels
I think firms that systematically underprice, over-serve and struggle with profit should look seriously at who is setting price and do a role reset.
Move to centralized pricing (or center-led) at the reset then decentralize over time as certain benchmarks are met.
Here’s an outline of how you might think about that:
- Look at moving to fully centralized or center-led over the short term as a way of resetting the pricing function.
- Centralize based on aptitude, not on title or seniority.
- Move to center-supported once certain price, margin or profit thresholds are reached.
- Train everyone and let the top performers rise to the top. Consider them for some version of a centralized role where they will always be a resource to the other pricers.
While fully centralized might not be necessary, I don’t think fully decentralized pricing is all that wise.
I think you owe it to your pricers to always have some sort of centralized resource or even authority. The pricing function is just too valuable to let everyone do it.
The right to price should be earned, not assumed or assigned by default.
- I’m unsure of where I first encountered this model of four levels of pricing authority. ChatGPT says the originator is Toby Brown, co-author of Law Firm Pricing: Strategies, Roles and Responsibilities. I’ve reached out to Toby to verify this but have not heard back. I’ve checked with Ron Baker and he is equally unsure of the source. When I get a definitive answer I will properly attribute it to the author.
︎
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The First Step 21 Jan 2:53 PM (3 months ago)
When I moved to the woods over twenty years ago I signed on to the local search and rescue team as a way of educating this naive city boy on the ways of the wilderness.
The training that followed was incredibly interesting and valuable, even though it led to occasionally gruesome accident scenes and sombre body recoveries.
Wilderness first aid was part of that training, and I loved it. As someone who enjoys bringing outside models into my business and yours, I started drawing comparisons from the steps of first aid to the steps of aiding a stalled or declining business.
The first step in first aid—as it was taught to me, anyway—is Take Control.
(ChatGPT clearly didn’t have the same instructor as me because, like most people, it skips this vital first step and jumps to Assess The Scene. I can see my instructor, Helen, tsk–tsk-ing unapprovingly.)
The last thing you want at an accident scene is someone enacting a plan who hasn’t taken a moment to steady themself first (“Pull it together, Enns!”), then others. (“You, go for a walk and compose yourself. You, call 911.”)
What about you?
If I asked your team members if, before enacting your growth plan, you first steadied yourself and then calmly instructed others, what would they say?
I’m guilty of occasionally skipping the first step, too.
“Do something—do anything—and things will happen” is one of my mantras, but if you’ve been frantically “doing something” and results aren’t forthcoming then it’s probably time to stop, center yourself, make sure you’re showing up with a calm presence, then impart that calm presence to others.
Now you’re ready for the steps that follow.
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A New Theme for a New Year 6 Jan 12:49 PM (3 months ago)
Happy New Year. Let’s make some money.
How did you react to that last sentence? I hope it was Hell, yeah! But money is a funny subject. Some of us have a messed up relationship with money and with capitalism in general. It’s possible that this relationship might be the biggest obstacle between you and your goals for the year.
Capitalism is far from perfect. It’s often been called the worst economic system except for all others that have been tried thus far. But it is also hailed as the best system of cooperation between strangers ever devised. I see truth in both these statements. Capitalism is awesome. And imperfect. It will never be perfect and we have to accept that while we try to improve it at the same time.
The Fire Keeping You Warm
I’ve long thought of the wood stove in my living room as a good metaphor for capitalism. The fire is trade. It is the fuel of cooperation that creates value and wealth, lifting people out of poverty, spurring innovation, enriching lives and warming the world.
But the same fire also destroys. Hence the iron box that contains the fire and makes useful its benefits while reducing the likelihood of it killing us while we sleep. In our capitalist metaphor the box is law, in both judicial (legal) and social (conventions and mores) forms.
No box and the house burns down, whereas too safe of a box strangles the fire and loses most of its modest heat up the chimney.
It’s impossible for us to all agree on what type of box should surround the fire. Some want the thinnest metal of property rights and not much more. Some want to make sure that nobody can ever be burned by the stove. Tribes form around box preferences. Arguments arise over Christmas dinner as the strong-box relatives fight with their light-box cousins. Each tribe characterizes the other as being at the extreme—sealed-boxers and anti-boxers.
Whatever your view on the box, it is just that—a view. It’s not “right” and it certainly isn’t the truth. It is simply the way you think things should be, based on the tradeoffs you would make.
Through elections and other more violent means, the world moves back and forth on the box. Every once in a while the box aligns with your view of what it should be, but that never lasts. You’re never happy for long.
So while we argue over the box, let’s not get carried away and start thinking that the fire is the problem. Trade is the fuel. And in trade, both parties are better off than they were before the trade.
Trade today is mediated through money, therefore making money is a sign that you are creating value in the world. It’s not the only sign and it’s not necessarily the most meaningful sign (whether it is or isn’t is personal to you) but it is one of the tests you must pass to prove that you are creating value in the world through your for-profit business.
You can make more money in 2025 by claiming more of the value you already create (increasing your prices), and also by creating more value in the world (increasing your effectiveness). This will seem counterintuitive to you unless you’ve already done it but the path to increasing your effectiveness is through increasing your prices first.
Are You Charging Enough?
Are you charging enough for the value you already create for your clients? Or have your own conflicted ideas around money and capitalism caused you to undercut yourself, to let most of the value in the trade accrue to the client?
Has your relationship with money made the sales function difficult for you? Does asking the client to pay you well make you feel like you are taking from them instead of creating value for them and proposing to share in that value creation?
Learning to charge more is as much about learning to have the proper conversations with your clients as it is about learning new pricing techniques.
Learn to have those conversations first. You will raise your prices as a result and your improved effectiveness will follow.
Are You Creating Enough Value?
The counterintuitive part is that better conversations not only lead to higher prices but to increased effectiveness (which drives even higher prices) because the way the conversations become “better” for both you and the client is they move away from a focus on solutions and costs (what you typically think about) to a focus on value (what the client really wants). This shift in the conversation then changes how you think about and scope solutions for your proposal, unleashing unexpected creativity in how you propose to create value.
It’s as true in business as it is in other domains of life: the answer to so many challenges lies in better conversations.
Better Conversations in 2025
I don’t set goals for the new year so much as I select themes, and it seems to me that having better conversations would be a great theme for 2025. Among other positive outcomes, you’ll make more money.
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Marketing Language vs. Sales Language 28 Oct 2024 10:35 AM (6 months ago)
When marketing your expertise, you think and work in averages, developing messages that are tailored to the average of a market or segment. Your positioning statement or key value proposition are examples of such marketing messages.
When selling your expertise, however, you are in a conversation with an individual. And almost no individual in a segment is exactly like the average of that segment, no matter how large the segment.* So when you aim for an average, you hit approximately everybody in the group but precisely nobody.
For this reason it’s important to make the distinction between marketing language (crafted for common denominators) and sales language (bespoke to the individual). Because marketing is directed at a construct (an average of many) and sales is intimate (one-to-one), parroting marketing messages in a sale can make it seem like you’re not listening, that you don’t understand the client.
When we’re on the receiving end of marketing messages, we accept that close enough is good enough. But when we’re in a conversation with another human being, we want to be seen for who we are, for what makes us different from others rather than what makes us similar to others.
In your search for the right thing to say in the sale, the mistake is to fall back on generic marketing language and make claims of value creation.
Marketers make claims to averages of groups.
Salespeople converse with individuals.
Marketers use value propositions.
Salespeople use value conversations.
Don’t pitch your value in the sale. That’s marketing’s job. Your job is to uncover the value the client is seeking. Arm yourself with questions, not claims.
*Todd Rose’s excellent book The End of Average: How We Succeed in a World That Values Sameness does a great job of driving home the tradeoffs we make when thinking in averages.
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