
Why We Suck at Negotiating
The more I get to know procurement professionals through my pet project that is 20% – The Marketing Procurement Podcast, the more I am struck by how bad we in the creative professions are at negotiating.
The more I get to know procurement professionals through my pet project that is 20% – The Marketing Procurement Podcast, the more I am struck by how bad we in the creative professions are at negotiating.
I’ve written for years on the impact that three-option proposals can have on your closing ratio and your average selected price. Providing your clients with three or four different ways to engage you—at different price points—might be the simplest and fastest path to improving profit.
If you have the appetite for it, consider investing in a venture unit where one success has the potential to generate the equivalent of years of profit.
In this post I lay out the five levels of pricing success and ask you to do an assessment of where you are now. Then I identify the best resources to help you move up from your current level.
In this 2Bobs podcast, Blair addresses the internal struggle for margin that happens in many firms between delivery teams and business development teams due to their lack of distinction between cost and price.
The subjectivity of value works both ways. Value is highly personal and subjective but it is so to all parties on both sides of the buy-sell divide. Just as two different clients considering the same offering from the same firm will assign different value to that offering, so too will two different salespeople trying to sell that offering.
The battle to increase gross profit margin isn’t that complicated. By simply charging more you generate a higher top line with no change to delivery costs, thus increasing the bottom line. Battle won, right?
In the Win Without Pitching Workshop you heard me say that I think the ability to navigate the value conversation is the most valuable skill in all of business. Then we gave you the framework, a few hours of practice and we sent you on your way. Don’t worry if you haven’t mastered this important
Do you know the one key to being a better pricer? It’s the ability to have a good conversation. Pricing success really does come down to your ability to encourage and navigate respectful dialogue.
Many of your proposals fail because the client isn’t sure what they would be buying. One of the first pricing principles I address in Pricing Creativity: A Guide to Profit Beyond the Billable Hour is the idea that there are three things you can sell and price: inputs, outputs or value.
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