November 17, 2016
It’s hard to know when to shut up...
It’s hard for me to know when to shut up.
Over the years (I’m pushing 50 :yikes:), I have learned that covering a topic from many angles — and with lots of examples — is super helpful for people who are learning a brand new topic.
Especially a topic that requires a fundamental shift in mindset, like how to price your services. Pricing cuts the core of our assumptions about the world and how it works. Changing your thinking about something so foundational takes time.
That said…
I’ve been rambling on about positioning and specialization and uniqueness here for what seems like quite a while.
These marketing strategies and tactics are critical to the creation of high ROI for your clients; and by extension, to justifying premium fees that reward your smarts instead of your labor.
At this point, I think that I have covered these topics as exhaustively as I am capable. Please feel free to send in questions about positioning, but I’m going to move on to other pricing topics.
In my coaching, I cover the five aspects of a successful consulting biz. I (perhaps somewhat strenuously) refer to them as the “5 Ps”:
- Positioning
- Publishing
- Proposals
- Products
- Pricing (last but not least!)
All of these work work together to create a durable business, but - IMHO - pricing and positioning are the foundation. However, publishing, products, and proposals are very important and I will devote some attention to those topics in the coming weeks.
If you’d like to get a head start, I have published quite a bit on these topics that you can binge watch/listen/read if you like.
Here’s a link to my free resources page:
https://jonathanstark.com/free
Please feel free to reply to this email with suggestions, questions, comments, etc. Cheers!
Yours,
—J
P.S. If you want to go deeper into positioning specifically, you should check out the Positioning Crash Course from Philip Morgan. Philip has forgotten more about positioning than I’ll ever know and his email course is free.