November 14, 2016

You are what you eat

Many of you seem to be scratching your heads a bit about some of the advice I’ve been giving lately related to positioning, specialization, differentiation, and premium pricing.

For example:

“What if I’m successful at talking my prospects out of hiring me during our Why Conversation?”

“What if I can’t articulate a difference between me and my lower priced competitors that my prospect finds meaningful?”

“What if a prospect insists on an hourly billing arrangement, but I want to value price the project?”

The answer in all cases is:

You probably won’t get the work.

And guess what? That’s fine. In fact, it’s better than fine. It’s GREAT!

Why? Because those clients are not a good fit for the New Improved You™.

Now, I recognize that this sounds like the height of insanity if you are wondering how you’re going to make your next credit card payment. Or car payment. Or rent payment. Or mortgage payment. Or payroll deposit.

HOWEVER

Not being picky about who you work with is like not being picky about what you eat.

You wouldn’t dumpster dive for dinner. Why would you dumpster dive for clients?

You need to break the vicious cycle of living hand to mouth so you can be choosy about your clients. Until you do, you’ll continue suffering from the stress of the feast/famine cycle.

The most realistic way to break feast/famine cycle is to increase the number of prospects in your pipeline.

When you’re getting a few leads every week, you won’t be too freaked out about turning away the bad ones.

Yours,

—J

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