Discipline makes Daring possible.

Musings from The Disappearing Boss on People, Process and Responsible Autonomy for small-business employers.

Category: Promise of Value

Share your Promise better
January 15, 2020

Share your Promise better

Pinpointing who you are for as a business makes it much easier to share your Promise effectively and efficiently.

The people you wish to serve become much easier to find when you know who exactly who they are demographically.   If you start a new bus service on a route that is not currently covered, you know exactly where to look for potential passengers.

The people you wish to serve become much easier to find if you know who they are psychographically too.   If your new bus service uses luxury coaches with attendants, snacks and entertainment, you know which subset of potential passengers you need to appeal to, and probably what you need to say.

Of course, you need to find out whether there are enough of these people to make your bus service viable before you start it.

But if you know who you’re looking for, that’s easier too.

Making better promises
January 14, 2020

Making better promises

Assuming that your Promise of Value is already in the intersection of things profitable and things useful, how do you make it better?

Here are a few ideas:

  1. Make sure you’re absolutely clear about who you are for, and who you are not for.   In psychographic terms first (how they behave, what they believe, what problems they see), then demographic.   The more specific you can make this, the better.   Why?  Because it helps you to really see, touch and actually talk to the kind of people you wish to serve.  And it helps those people to see that you are for them.
  2. Spell out what you really do for these people.   Who do you help them to become?  How do you help them transform?
  3. Surface more about how you behave as a business – your values, style, culture, ‘the way things get done around here’.  Probably the most overlooked part of your Promise, how you do what you do is as important as what.

A simple way to test the result is to try and express it in this form:

“We do X.    Y people do/achieve/become Z because we do.”

Huge thanks to the brilliant Bernadette Jiwa for this format.

Making it better
January 13, 2020

Making it better

If a business is about making and keeping promises, what does better mean?

Making more promises?  Or keeping more?

Making our promises better?  Or keeping them better?

A good place to start might be to make better promises.   After all, the set of all useful things and the set of all profitable things do not fully correspond.

Better starts with finding our place in the intersection.

Gifts
January 6, 2020

Gifts

What’s your gift?  The thing you can do better than anyone else.  The thing you can’t help but do, even though it’s not what you get paid for?

Perhaps you feel guilty about wanting to be paid for using your gift on behalf of others.  Perhaps the people you’ve met so far don’t value it, so you assume nobody will.

It seems to me that for the moment at least, life is about finding a balance between exercising ones talents, and making enough money to live on, and there are at least two ways to achieve this.

  1. You can earn money in a field that doesn’t involve your gift, and exercise your gift outside it, when and where you can.
  2. You can invest time thinking about what your gift really is, who lacks it, and who needs it most right now – to the extent that they will be more than happy to pay you for it.

Option 2 is always worth trying, because the worst that can happen is that you’re back to option 1, but the potential upside is that you get paid handsomely by people who appreciate your gift – perhaps even handsomely enough that you can give some of it away to those less fortunate.

Leverage doesn’t have to be selfish.

 

Thanks to the cool women at this morning’s Like Hearted Leaders for prompting this thought.

Signing Up
December 23, 2019

Signing Up

About 20 years ago, when I bought my first mobile phone, it was compulsory to take out an insurance policy alongside.

I signed up of course.

15 years later, I was digging around, looking at direct debits going out of my bank account.  It turned out I was still paying a monthly fee to insure a phone I’d long since ceased to own.

Unlike normal insurance, I got no reminders, no renewal letters, the direct debit never referenced what it was for.   In fact when I checked with the bank, the company taking payment had ceased to trade (which did make me wonder where the money was going).

Being in it for the long run is a great mindset to have when signing up a client, but only when the value goes both ways.

The people you serve want to be enrolled, not press-ganged.

Free Samples
December 20, 2019

Free Samples

A free sample is a tester, a test drive, a small taste of what I might expect to get if I enroll with you to experience your Promise of Value more fully.

That means your sample, whatever it is, must demonstrate at least one key benefit I will only get by working with you, rather than someone else.

For services, that kind of sample is not as easy to create as opening a pot of jam or giving away a spoonful of Thai green curry, but it pays to persist in looking for the right way to demonstrate the unique value you offer.

You may even charge for it.    The point is to make it low-risk for both sides.

The important thing about a free sample is not that it’s free, but that it’s a true sample.

Trust your gut
December 19, 2019

Trust your gut

The person in front of you is saying all the right things, but something feels wrong.  Something jars.   You don’t quite believe that they share your core values or your vision.

You have a feeling that you should say no to this prospect.

An initial consultation, sales meeting or discovery meeting is there to help both sides decide whether they really want to work together.   It is perfectly OK for the prospective client to say no at this point.   It’s also perfectly OK for you to say no too, especially early on in your business.

You don’t have to agree with the people you serve on everything, but a misalignment on core values spells trouble.   Both sides will end up dissatisfied and resentful.

That means that the time and positive energy you gain to spend on your business by saying no to the wrong kind of client far outweighs the money they may pay.

Trust your gut and say no.

Show up and listen
December 18, 2019

Show up and listen

It’s tempting to think that showing up where your prospects are is all about you.  That it’s about promotion, raising awareness, getting their attention.

Showing up is really about showing that you care, and one of the best ways to do that is to use the time you spend with the people you wish to serve to listen to what’s really important to them.   Then create products and services that help.

The surest way to gain the kind of attention that matters is to give it first.

Community
December 17, 2019

Community

I spent Sunday with some of my family.   My sister and I both read Seth Godin’s daily blog and were trying to explain why to her daughter.

At one point we both said, almost in unison “Some days its just like he’s got inside your head.” 

I’m sure many of Seth’s readers say this every single day.

You can only do this if you know a) who it is you are trying to talk to; b) what’s likely to be going in inside their heads and c) where they are likely to go for inspiration, and the simple pleasure of being with ‘people like us’.

And the best way to know where the people you want to serve are at any one time, is to create a space and a community that does all these things just for them.

Not necessarily in that order
December 16, 2019

Not necessarily in that order

Where choosing from many options is unavoidable, you can help people choose (and keep them engaged in the process of choosing) with hierarchy.

Start with a few big options to select from, then gradually increase the granularity of choice until your client is happy to deal with 57 varieties.

That way you’ve educated them in how selection works, and you’ve made them interested in what comes next.

That makes them much more likely to stick with it to the end.