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.
Win Without Pitching®: Thinking
Pricing
Beyond Good, Better, Best Pricing
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.
Should Your Firm Launch a Venture Fund?
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.
The Five Levels of Pricing Success
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.
The Enemy Within
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.
Five Alternatives to Cutting 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 Complex Battle for Margin
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?
Pricing Difficult-to-Quantify Forms of Value
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
The Most Important Pricing Skill
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.
Clients Deserve to Know What They’re Buying
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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