Pricing your Services

I am often asked how one should price a service. Many consultants tend to go for the lowest possible price they can name in order to secure the customer. At the other end of the spectrum you have the lofty upper-end service providers who wish to convey their exclusivity by charging a very high price.

Clearly a start-up consultant cannot command premium prices. What you can do is offer value. A service offering with that additional something that your client will value.

Sell your value and not your price.

Customers respond positively to value. Low prices tend to raise suspicions of the product or service being ‘cheap and dirty’. The fact of the matter is that customers are often too lazy to do their research and many latch on to the price as being indicative of value.

There are, of course, certain price sensitive markets that are heavily competitive. Of course, here you may be forced to compete on price alone. Ultimately what will decide is the market, and you may have to stop midstream, evaluate and modify your pricing to best market your services.

Thank you, Lexxion and Black x

This excellent post on hacking the Intel 82852/82855 GM/GME driver to work with Windows 7 worked for my 6 year old VAIO VGN-T17GP. I installed Windows 7 and was desperately looking for an appropriate driver for its flat panel widescreen LCD monitor. Intel has no version of this driver for Windows 7.

Intel 82852/82855 GM/GME

Working with chancers…

…almost always end up in more trouble than it is worth.

Who is a chancer? A person who takes a chance, who does not put in the time, who expects to make easy money. A person who does not return calls, does not follow common business courtesy and appears to have his head somewhere in the clouds. Someone who does not follow logic, is a loose cannon.

Important components to a Pitch

I came across an excellent article  on important signals you need to convey in your pitch to investors.

The signals are as follows: Familiarity, Distinctiveness, Credibility, Connectedness, Viability.

More details here: http://www.entrepreneurmag.co.za/advice/funding/attracting-investors/how-to-sell-your-ideas/

Dealing with disruptive personalities at work

Many- a-time, disruptive personalities thrive in dysfunctional work environments. The initial expectation would be that such a person will soon be set right. But this usually does not happen, for a variety of reasons, but mostly due to inertia and typical dysfunctional office dynamics.

Do not count on external forces to deal with a disruptive force in your project. The sooner you can call out the offender – the better. Keep your facts straight. The offender should realise that you are serious.  Stick to the facts – do not allow the discussion to veer off on a tangent – mainly because this is what this person will attempt to do.

Be honest and call out the facts as you see them – in private, with the offender, followed by a detailed email capturing this in writing. About 90% of the time, you will fail in getting any behavioral changes effected, purely because of the psychological makeup of the offender. You will then be forced to escalate this with a superior, but at least you have the defence that you made a sincere attempt to address this with the person concerned.

School & Society

What we learn at school often scars us for our entire life:

On being unpopular: Most people who are adults now, do not speak up, in spite of knowing that their interests are being compromised for fear of being unliked.  It is a subtle manifestation of the human dread of ostracism. Their fear is losing the affirmation that comes of being party to a group. This is something that society teaches us, right from our school days. The notion of popularity.

How can you be a successful entrepreuner if you are afraid of being unpopular? This can creep up on you. I caught myself attempting to explain a decision to a junior staff person. It is not the explaining that I later had an issue with, it was my own need for affirmation that I was seeking through that explanation that bothered me.

Sizing up your opponent

Donald Trump is a master negotiator. He talks about sizing up  your opponent here. He says if you cannot size up the person sitting on the other side of the negotiating table, you shouldn’t be in business. You should look for a job.

Words of wisdom indeed. However, how do you size up a person? In a multicultural society such as South Africa, how do you size up a person from a different socio-economic background, from a different culture, and probably a speaker of another tongue. One who is not as proficient in English as you are. Think of the mistakes made in interpretation.

Allow some leeway for the above, when sizing up your opponent. More to the point, shouldn’t we rather make the mistake of giving away too much rather than losing out on an opportunity because of mistakes in translation?

Equity or Returns?

Do you offer equity or a a fixed return to an investor? The answer, I believe, may demonstrate your faith in your business.

Option 1: An investor invests 1 million dollars in your business. You give the investor certain equity in your business. You are therefore splitting the risk with the investor.

Option 2: An investor invests 1 million dollars in your business.  You promise to pay 20% interest on the capital every year and after five years, pay back the double the capital, namely two million dollars. The risk is entirely yours.

If you do not pay up, the investor can sue you and take you to the cleaners.

If you wish to maximise your returns and are confident of success you may opt for Option 2.

If you wish to hedge your bets, you may choose Option 1.

If you wish your investor to mentor you, open doors and work hard to make your business a success, you may choose either of the two options, but more probably Option 1.

Sins of ommision

Warren Buffet claimed once that his mistakes were more of omission rather than commission.

If that is true, he is the same as the vast majority of people. More people make mistakes of omission rather than deliberate commission.  People lose out on opportunities all the time because of irrational or rational fears. There is indeed a phrase for this that financial planners sometimes like to use: ”lost opportunity cost” .

Think of the man who stays on in a job because he is unwilling to take the risk of venturing out on his own. Think of a spouse caught in in an unhappy marriage, unwilling to take action to end it. Think of the better life and impact that both of the above two are losing out on.

Think of the entrepreuner who is scared of using the principle of gearing to take his business to the next level. Lost opportunity.

Think about your last boss, who lost out on a good employee because he or she did not take care of that person! Lost opportunity.

I have now uninstalled this crap about 6 times, and every time I look it is back again!

I recently came across this user comment about an app for the Chrome browser:

“I have now uninstalled this crap about 6 times, and every time I look it is back again!”

It speaks volumes about the app’s usability. It definitely scared me off from trying an otherwise appealing app. This comment will scare off other potential users too. Why? Because we have had far too many experiences with applications that stubbornly refuse to uninstall themselves completely.

Usability includes the ease and simplicity of installation and uninstallation of an app.