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Delivering on your promises as a service professional is key to gaining repeat business with clients.  Over-delivering on your engagements is the key to growing your business through word of mouth referrals.  People rarely tell their friends and colleagues about ordinary or sufficient customer experiences.  Whereas, extraordinary experiences are often related to others.

One way to set yourself up to create an extraordinary experience is to begin with the end in mind.  Plan on delivering something extra, something that the client was not expecting.  Don’t quote it.  Don’t talk about it. Just deliver it at the end.

I was asked this question by a group of students the other day.  ”When is the best time to start my business?”.  My conclusion is there is no right answer.  However, here is what I consider to be the ideal scenario:

Work in a certain industry for a few years to find under-served niches / opportunities. Be married to a spouse that has a secure, well-paying job, preferably with health insurance.  Wait to have children. Cut your personal spending to the nub.

This scenario allows for unbridled pursuit of your venture with the minimum of financial stress.

To your success,

Scott

I received a letter today from the Cincinnati Enquirer informing me of a price increase for our monthly subscription.

“Dear Subscriber,

Due to economic hardships in our industry we find it necessary to increase your subscription price”

While I have no doubt that the newspaper industry is encountering significant economic hardships, is this good justification for raising prices?

As service professionals, we seek to find the appropriate price to charge for our services.  The price we ultimately offer our clients should not be derived from our “situation”.  Our personal or business situation should never be considered when deriving prices.  The temptation is great to stray from this rule.  Most of our costs of doing business will increase over time (health insurance, salaries, rent, mileage).  We must remind ourselves of one crucial fact:  our clients don’t care.

Our clients only care about one thing…..the value we deliver.  Our pricing should always be “value based”.  What do we offer that our competition does not.  Offering additional value, relative to our competitors, is the only justification for raising prices.

I would gladly pay more for my newspaper subscription if the value increased relative to my alternatives.  Sadly, for the local newspaper, their value is eroding not increasing.

To your success.

Scott

Just start.  Enough of the business plans, the market research, the oversampling of advice from others. Just start the business.

Over coffee this week, I met with (another) would be entrepreneur who is considering starting a new venture. Most of the questions she had revolved around, “Do you think my idea is a good one?”.  Like most of us, we seek reinforcement and validation of our ideas by others.  It gives us comfort.  Comfort, before committing risk capital and time.

However, the question is not really relevant.  Everyone has an opinion.  But no one can predict the future success or failure of a new business venture.  Venture capitalists do well to predict the success of new ventures 20% of the time.

So what to do?  Start the venture.  Start as small as possible.  Use microscopic amounts of capital.  Go with your best interpretation of your idea.  Get a prototype in front of customers.  Try to make a sale.  Ask the customers what they like, how would they improve it.  Refine it.  Sell some more.  Morph it.

The business that lives on will rarely look like the business in the original business plan. Customers will take the business in new and profitable directions.  Stop suffering.  Stop planning.  Get started!

To your success,

Scott