7 Profit Killing Facts
In 38 years of teaching high-level professionals, we have learned seven profit-killing facts about business. In any given field:
1. Everyone is an expert.
Problem — Management concentrates on technical expertise so everyone becomes an expert. Clients expect expertise. So everyone has more technical expertise than they need to acquire new business. Expertise is not the problem.
Solution — We help translate your expertise into information the Client can use to make a decision.
2. Everyone has a great track record.
Problem — This is an extension of the technical expertise problem. If you can’t explain your track record in the Client’s terms, it is useless; you might as well not have one.
Solution — We help you package your history so the Client can understand its value to them.
3. Everyone sounds alike and works hard to do so.
Problem — Because you study the technical side of your business and understand the language of your specialty, you and all your competitors use insiders’ jargon. To buyers, you and all your competitors sound alike.
Solution — We teach your people to hold a simple, clear, honest, executive conversation in the Client’s language.
4. Hot new features offer only short term selling advantages, if any.
Problem — Your competitors will match any new processes, bells or whistles, which you invent, within six months or less.
Solution — Today’s Clients are looking for a skilled professional who can understand and solve their business problem. If one is solving the Client’s problems, exciting new features become secondary.
5. No one can defend their asking price.
Problem — 95% of the companies we see cut their price because they allow their competition, that is, the “market” to set their price. Your people are defenseless in a price negotiation.
Solution — When a firm has a big story based on quantifiable benefits, the fee loses its dominance in the executive conversation, it becomes simply another discussion point in proportion to everything else rather than a deal-killer. It is no longer the decision point, that is, not the only feature upon which the Client makes a decision.
6. Every company is unique and can't explain why.
Problem — Because companies have never determined the unique advantages and benefits they bring to the market, privately they believe their services are commodities. They cannot explain in meaningful terms why they are different from the competition even to themselves. Until a firm can say in plain language how it is different from the competition, to the Client you are a commodity.
Solution — We help find your company’s voice by merging your company’s natural strengths, market knowledge and the advantages you offer and design a position unique to your company.
7. No company believes these facts apply to them.
We recognize the difficulty for managers to find facilitators and consultants who actually do what they say they will and produce the results they advertise. Our Clients know that we do and we will. All of our services are guaranteed, of course.Problem — Hot market conditions can cloud the awful truth about market positioning and make amateurs look like professionals. This is an easy mistake to make when business is good. When the business climate sours, lack of market positioning can be fatal; an otherwise strong business can look and sound shaky and vulnerable.
Solution — In every case, managers are shocked to discover how conventional wisdom, institutional arrogance, and mythology shrink their people’s creativity. We teach your people to think like their Clients and increase sales revenues 25% to 100%. Historically, these incremental sales create a five to ten times return on the total VASS® workshop expense.