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Painkillers, Vitamins, Candies, Cures, and Trophies
5 lenses to guide your business’s development
While I’ve worked with a lot of really great clients, I’ve also had some prospects tell me that my business’s services were way too expensive. In fact, some of them seemed to get offended when they saw Wonder Shuttle’s rate card, or when I told them the price over the phone.
I’ll always remember one particular week a few years ago, with back to back sales calls. One CEO of a well funded startup said, “What?! That’s way too expensive.” In her defense, she was benchmarking my team to a freelance writer, which wasn’t exactly an accurate comparison; still, it felt discouraging. The next day, with the same rates, a director of design said, “That sounds good, please send the paperwork and let’s get started.”
If you’re in the business of freelancing, providing professional services, or offering expertise, this piece is for you:
CANDIES AND CURES
There’s a startup framework for this situation: it uses the metaphor of painkillers and vitamins. If you’re starting up and looking for a problem to solve, you want to find pains that people are already feeling (like a painkiller). You don’t want to sell supplemental services to prevent future pains that they don’t feel (like a…
