After surviving and succeeding in relative anonymity for years in business, isn’t it remarkable how much attention you get from people who now confront you with black and white decisions you are told you just have to make?

In charity and volunteerism:

If you are told, “To be respected in your community you better give both your money and your time to visible causes,”  I suggest you remember to that you must continue to do well before devoting yourself to doing good. 

In politics:

When you’re baited with, “You must be a Republican, because Democrats will just tax and spend” or “You have to vote Democrat because Republicans are for NAFTA and against immigration!” Consider that since elections, issues and platforms come and go, and aren’t you really independent?

In loyalty to town, association, or team:

As you are admonished with, “Can you believe that LeBron James would root for the Yankees?” or “Our industry practices require that…” and “If you don’t say nice things about your town, don’t say anything,” remember that although groupthink mostly creates fond memories of great moments, it rarely to leads your success.

As an independent, committed owner, you grew your business by staying true to your best and highest use and making grey decisions to serve your clients, employees, and vendors in a very uncertain world.  Your flexibility and tenacity will always be keys to your success.  And your commitment and independence are your most valuable strengths.   When you are told you must make a choice from their options, reject their dogma, go with your gut and create your own choice. If confronted with black and white, remember what they tell you on the plane, “When the mask appears, place yours on first and then help the person next to you!”  Until Willie Nelson stages a benefit concert to save the small business, your best assets are your own strength of commitment and power of independence.  Invest these wisely!

 What do you think?

In writing The Five Catalysts, I described how confidence and conviction is any owner’s first catalyst for growth. And this confidence and conviction comes from a defining point that pushes on owner to turn her or his passion into action.  With October being National Women Business Owner’s Month, I got to thinking how so many successful women-business-owning clients of mine got started and how they built their businesses successfully despite surviving divorce, being widowed, or having to support a family where success was not an option but an imperative for survival.

And as their businesses have grown, I see that “women’s intuition” has caused many clients to make better decisions based on reasoned judgement.  Certainly, fewer women owners are “too smart to help” and aren’t making testosterone-driven decisions based on ego and “diminishing capabilities.” Maybe I have just been lucky, but women are more willing to listen to outside advice which has made them great clients I have been able to help more than average.

In this time of changing business environments, customer demands,and irrational financial markets, there are a lot of women business owners whose patience and perseverance have brought great value to their customers, employees and vendors!  And on top of this, many are also raising families at the same time.  Do you agree, why?

This week, my friends at Executive Renaissance Forums reprinted my article, The Seven Commandments of Pricing.

Rereading it, I got to thinking how often all of us who believe in value pricing either forget to do so or refuse to pay someone else for their value.  If you agree, why is it so difficult for us to walk this talk?  I have two thoughts and ask for your reactions.

 1.  While we know our service or product is “worth it”, when we actually sell it, we often forget to define precisely how it resolves our client’s pain or creates their opportunity for success. Assuming our clients will do this creates the second challenge we can all understand.

2. When we are presented with a service or product that is priced based on its ultimate value to us, we have to accept responsibility for producing expected results through consuming it.  Accepting this accountability in front of others is hard.

What do you think?

Last Friday October 5th, Birol Growth Consulting sponsored Ed Poll of LawBiz who led an excellent workshop to an invited group of lawyers on practice development.  Attendees were Managing and Senior Partners of a cross section of large, medium, and small Cleveland firms. Here are my notes amd observations from the presentation.

Please post your comments, reactions or questions at the bottom or contact Ed Poll atedpoll@lawbiz.com or Andy Birol at abirol@andybirol.com.

• There is a direct correlation between a law firm’s business proficiency (not their legal prowess) and a law firm’s profits.

• Lawyering is a true team sport. If your client participates in the process to achieve their outcomes they won’t criticize themselves or their lawyer. Show your client that you are on the same team in implementing their success.

• Most lawyers don’t bill for learning curves when starting to work with a client and lose 15% of revenues for not doing so. Lawyers also lose revenues through pre-bill write-offs (due in part to the learning curve problem lowering their realization rates. Lawyers finally lose more if they don’t collect at least 90% of what was billed.

• The reason lawyers lose so much in uncollected work is by not knowing enough about their client. Since the client assumes the lawyer is an authority figure there are only three reasons the client won’t pay:- They did not want the work

  - They did not expect the bill

  - Too much time was spent on the work

• Raise rates annually and gradually by selling first to yourself, then to prospects and finally to clients.

• Rainmakers are the most valued people in a firm, despite most lawyers preferring not to sell. You can always find a lawyer to do the work if you have sold the work!

• Remember 60% of prospects come from referrals. You start a client relationship with full trust and can only screw it up with insufficient service

• It is never the client’s fault that they don’t pay it is always your fault you did not do something right.

• Running a successful law firm means being proficient at getting business (marketing), doing the work (being productive) and thirdly getting paid (administration).

• While the bar association will never give continuing education credit for developing sales or marketing expertise, it will do so for repositioning the lawyer’s need to better communicate with the client which falls under the category of ethics so lawyers should seek out educational opportunities accordingly.

As the host of the event, I found it eye-opening to listen and learn how lawyers see their businesses operate from “their side of the table” and how similar yet different a law firm is from any other service business. While the legal vocabulary is quite different from that of other industries, I saw common ground in the challenges of balancing any firm’s need to sell, deliver and develop their businesses all at the same time as I have defined here. Whether you could attend or not or are a lawyer or not, what do you think?

If your company’s Best and Highest Use is what you and your people like doing, are good at doing and have been valued by your market for doing, how does this relate to sales and marketing?  Let me explain as follows: 

Sales is agreeing with qualified buyers exactly how you will exchange your BHU for their money.

Marketing is the creation of demand among buyers within your target market for your Best and Highest Use by determining the Five P’s:

     “P” 1. Your target market niche and their buying and your selling process    
     “P” 2. Your product or service line
     “P” 3. Your pricing plan
     “P” 4. Your sales, distribution, and fulfillment plan
     “P” 5. Your promotional plan to build “AIDA”
         Attention
         Interest
         Desire and
         Action

Do you agree?  Isn’t it that simple?  Do you have questions about Best and Highest Use?  If I don’t answer them here Please ask me now and I will answer you right back

Years ago, I wrote an article encouraging business owners to confront their options to do or not do business with China and every other low cost producer.  Now, I encourage every owner to rethink the following.  If you are a small business who cannot be the low cost provider, what can you do to leverage the quality, safety, and reliability of your products to win back accounts, higher margins and customer loyalty?  For every purchasing agent who loves buying products at the lowest cost, there is an insecure employee hiding inside worried that they will get exposed and fired for buying low cost goods that don’t work or worse are unsafe.

There is no time like the present to beef up your product’s safety, reliability, and performance.  How can you sell FUD (Fear Uncertainty and Doubt) to overcome the very pricing concerns you have fallen victim to in the past?   What better time than now to promote the upside of doing business with your company and the downside of taking chances with vendors’ products whose necks your customers cannot choke across an acean.  Try it out.  Even if you don’t move mountains, you can feel really good about standing tall for your value.  And if you need to look at all all the places you can add value, please take at my concept of Best and Highest Use and think about all the ways you and your business really are superior!  There really is no time like the present!

If I am asked once, I am asked too often, “Why are you a consultant?”

Because (with my apologies to gym teachers)

1. Those Who Can, Do

2. Those Who Can’t Do, Teach

3. Those Who Can’t Teach, Teach Gym

4. Those Who Can’t Teach Gym, Consult

5. Those Who Can’t Consult, Do!

So if you ever wonder how and why people become or stop being consultants, I hope I have solved this conundrum for you!  Your comments and any consultant jokes are welcomed.

Here is one serious article on how to choose a consultant and another on how to be a consultant. Enjoy!