Last week I was blogging about 80% of your competitors are doing it wrong.  It pays to be different and stand out from the crowd.

On the day this blog went out, I got a tweet from someone I met at a conference a  year ago.  Janet Mohapi-Banks and I had a chat about her cup cake business and she picked my brains about how this sort of business could work.  She loved creating cakes and felt that the cup cake trend was something to focus on.

The tweet I got from Janet last week made me smile.  You see she had just blogged about how she had turned her back on this cup cake market and had decided to go premium!  Specialising now in luxury wedding cakes and sculptural pieces of cake art is her new direction. Way to go, Janet!

With Janet’s permission, here is her story.

From Janet’s Blog

I recently announced on Twitter that we would no longer be taking orders for cookies and cupcakes. All orders that are currently in discussion will of course be honoured.

I’ve been asked a few times to explain my decision so I thought I would tell you all.

My great pleasure and joy lies in creating wonderful works of edible art and although some of the cupcakes and cookies I’ve created have been good fun, it’s not really the area that I want my business to concentrate on. By not taking further bookings of cookies and cupcakes it means that we can concentrate our efforts in creating the large luxury cakes that we are best known for.

Why then, you might ask, did I offer cupcakes and cookies in the first place? Well the answer to that is simple; I thought I had to! With other cake companies starting to offer these products I felt that I should too otherwise I would be “missing out” somehow.

What I have come to realise though is that doing something just because somebody else is doing it, is completely the wrong reason to do it!

At the moment there is a big trend toward dessert tables offering cupcakes, miniature cupcakes, cake pops and cookies, and there are cake companies that have made them the focus of their business and they do it extremely well. Tempting Tables by Tempting Cakes are a prime example of beautiful dessert tables.

This is not where my heart lies though, and it is not where my business’s heart lies either. There are many sectors within the cake industry and as we don’t wish to be all things to everyone, we are limiting our products on offer to those we both enjoy and excel at. Our speciality is in creating large luxury wedding cakes and celebration cakes and tall, exquisitely iced miniature cakes. Therefore, along with our private parties, these will now be the only products we offer.

Talking of our private parties, please note that we shall soon be discontinuing the cookie and cupcake parties too and only offering parties in miniature cake and large cake decorating.

So there you have it. We’ve cut our product line in half, but the half we have left can never be beaten.

Click to check out some of Janet’s amazing creations

Wanted to share a BIG lesson I’ve learnt over the past couple of months.  Recently I’ve joined the Nigel Botterill’s Entrepreneurial Circle.  Love him or hate him, you can’t deny he’s been rather successful over recent years.  And it’s exactly that reason why I am loving the stuff he does.

But the BIG lesson I’ve learnt is a pretty obvious one really.  But with all obvious stuff, it only needs one person to flip something around and phrase it in a certain way to make total sense to you, doesn’t it?

Nigel claims (and I’m sure this is to be true!) that out of all business owners:

1% are super successful and very wealthy
4% are rich and doing very well
15% at getting there and making good money
60% are getting by
20% are struggling

It probably won’t surprise you that these figures reflect the infamous 80:20 rule.  And this is how I learnt my BIG lesson.

What these figures mean is that 80% of my competitors are doing it wrong!  And 80% of your competitors are doing wrong, too.

So stop copying what everyone around you is doing …. and start focusing your energies on doing something different to make you stand out from the crowd.

And that’s my BIG lesson.  Cool, hey?

How easy to read are your prices?

If there is one question that comes up time and time again with clients who want their website reviewed, it’s this: “Do I display my prices?”

My answer time and time again is YES! Of course! Why wouldn’t you?

“Oh, because I don’t want my competitors knowing what I charge.”

“I don’t want to put people off from contacting me.”

“I want to be flexible so I can charge more if I feel I can get away with it.”

Rubbish. Rubbish. Rubbish. And here are my reasons why:

Perception of being too expensive. I was checking out a new webinar system earlier this week and no matter how hard I tried, I just couldn’t find the page called “Prices” or “Packages”. All I could do was to either sign up for a free 30 day trial or fill in a form for someone to contact me.

I know they wanted my contact details first. They wanted to pull me in to their marketing system so they could follow up and wear me down until I decided to buy. But I wanted to know whether the product was within my budget.

By not having the price on their website easily accessible, my only thoughts were “bet they are too expensive!” (Note: this is a good strategy to take for luxury, top end products if you do actually want to create the image of being expensive in your marketing.)

Wasted time on enquiries. If you want people to contact you for a price, you have to have the systems and spend the time to respond to these enquires. Coaches, you are the worst at this! You offer a free consultation – up to an hour of your time – only for the potential client to say “thanks, but I’ll have to go away and think about it”. Translated: “Thanks but it’s more than I thought.  I can’t afford your services but I don’t want to say this to you directly”

My conversion rate when I first started out went from 30% to 60% as soon as I put my prices on my website. If the prices put people off before contacting me, great. It saved me that consultation hour and I was able to get on with other stuff that did make me money.

If you have created the right product/service to provide a solution for your client’s problems, be confident about your pricing.  If you are not overcharging or under selling yourself, charging the “right” price is a good business decision!  It’s nothing to be ashamed of ;o)

Makes the sale easier. If someone knows what you charge before they start talking to you, the whole sales process becomes so much smoother. There is no need for you to stumble over the question “What do you charge?” They already know, so you don’t need to feel embarrassed or awkward discussing it. (We really don’t like talking money, do we?!)

If you do a lot of bespoke work and have to quote per client, then make sure you publicize a starter package, for example. Or quote a price range, highlighting what they would get for that package.

Stuff the competition. So what if your competitors know your price. If you don’t put it on your website, I am pretty sure – if they really wanted to – they would find a way of getting your price lists. You don’t have time to be getting in to petty price wars with other businesses.

So be bold. Be brave. Clearly state your prices or packages so your potential clients know exactly what they are in for, so that when you get to speak to them or they click the order button, they are ready to make the decision to buy.

Photo credit goes to: Unhindered by talent

Have you ever run an event such as a workshop or training seminar and at the last minute panicked and dropped your prices?

You were just about to approve your leaflet design before sending to the printers and you heard a voice.  Just a little voice – but a voice none the same.

“The price is too high!  No one is going to pay that!”

At the last minute you decide to slash the price of that workshop by £50.  “That feels better!” you say to yourself.  “I don’t want the price to put people off.”

But does this make your workshop more marketable?  Do they really come flooding just because you’ve taken £50 off that ticket price?

No!  Of course not.  And here’s why.

Only bad sales people drop their prices.

This exact situation came up with a client of mine the other week.  We had been working on some new group workshops she wanted to deliver in the New Year.  Everything was planned and her marketing was taking shape.

And then I got an email from her.  She wanted to drop her price from £67 to £27.  Despite not even trying to market her group workshop at the original £67 price, she listened to that little voice of doubt and wanted to drop the price.  For no other reason but that little voice of doubt.

“But I don’t want the price to put people off” she emailed me.

If price puts someone off, then you haven’t done a good enough explaining the benefits and the results of what they are going to get from parting with their hard earned cash.

And by discounting your prices, the clients you find yourself attracting will be cheaper clients – clients who don’t really see the true value of what you do.  And if they do like what it is that you do, who do you think they will refer?  Yup, other cheap clients.

Of course, pick a price that reflects value for money.  Go too high and yes, price will cut you out of your market.

But go cheap and you’ll end up attracting no one.  Or even worse, cheap clients!

Only poor sales people drop their prices.

Exchanging tweets this morning with Marc Lawn of @businessgp about Tesco, reminded me of the recent Channel 4 programme Food.  They looked at a shopping basket and compared the prices of identical products with all the major supermarkets – Waitrose, Sainsbury, Tesco, Asda and a few more.

The results surprised me.  I had always considered Tesco to be one of the low priced ones.  After all, when you go in to the Store, you can’t but feel overwhelmed by all the discounts and 3 for 2 offers.

And yet, Tesco was more expensive than Sainsbury and second to Waitrose.  Not by much, but enough to make a couple of pounds difference to your pocket.

This has led me to think about your marketing.

What do your clients think of you?  What does your marketing communicate about you and your business?

Tesco’s image of being cheap is proably a deliberate brand statement.  And yet when you go in to their store you actually spend a little more than other supermarkets like Sainsbury who focus on quality rather than prices.  And without even noticing that you are actually spending more.  Clever!

But what usually happens with small businesses is that the message they communicate can actually go against what they stand for.

The coach who wants to attract clients who will spend £300 a month on their coaching and yet their website is a home-made affair with images straight off clipart.  The PR consultant whose objective is to attract more monthly retainer clients but they are offering a £25 an hour telephone session.  The consultant who wants to up his game and offer a £2,000 annual programme but is offering a £3.99 ebook on his website.

When small businesses try to offer cheap and go cheap, all they end up doing is attracting cheap clients – the freebie hunters, the tire-kickers or what ever you like to call them.

Take a step back from your website, leaflets, business cards and online profiles.  You may think you are doing the right thing to attract the right clients, but it’s what your clients think that matter.

Perception is reality – unless of course you are one of the marketing giants like Tesco!

I met up with a new client last week and was blown away by her photography.  A self-taught amateur turned professional, it was obvious – even from someone who knows nothing about the art of photography – that she had a real eye for capturing startling images.

But talent, a business does not make!

When she started to tell me about the story behind her business and where she was at today, it became clearer and clearer to me that it wasn’t a lack of business skills that was holding back her business.

What was holding her back was her business attitude.

Her pricing was so low, that even she couldn’t quite believe what her hourly rate really was once we divided her commission rate by the number of hours she took to do the project (and I know I was being generous with the actual time she spent!).  What was her reason for charging such so low prices?

“I am just so grateful for any work that I can get,” is what she replied.

Grateful is very dangerous word to use when talking about your clients.  Thankful and even appreciative are great words.  But grateful – never!

Grateful puts you in a place where you secretly beg for a client to work with you.  When you are on the phone to them, you find yourself crossing your fingers and talking randomly to fill up the silence while the potential client decides whether to hire you or not.  And when you do get a “yes” from them, you throw yourself in to the project, nothing being too much for you to do, despite the number of hours you end up spending.

Grateful will make you bend over backwards for a client who never pays you on time.

Grateful will make you drive for miles just to have a cup of coffee with someone who picks your brains and then says goodbye, leaving you to pick up the tab.

A grateful mindset must be left well alone and you must be able to speak with potential new clients with a “I’ve got a full diary this week” mindset.  Even if you have to pretend to flick through your calendar to arrange a meeting (I did this on many an occasion in my first couple of years!!), you’ll notice a huge difference to how your potential clients make their decisions and how much you are able to charge.

Have you found yourself being too grateful for clients?  And how has a grateful mindset affected your business? It always great to read your comments, too.

Niche marketing works for small businesses.  The more focused you are on the particular problem that you can solve, the easier it is to communicate and spread the word about the solutions you offer.

Imagine a coach who has a background in teaching and happens to love the great outdoors.  What if you came to their website and they offered you general life coaching, coaching support for teachers, a special programme that helped school children study better and a few walking holidays combined with personalised coaching sessions.

Phew!  All that from one person?  Really?

Think back to the last time you needed your boiler serviced.  Who did you use?  A specialist corgi registered boiler servicing company or the odd-job-man who offers to clean your gutters, re-paint your living room, fix and install bathrooms, trim your hedges as well as service your boiler?

If your odd-job-man comes highly recommended by your neighbours, then perhaps he is the “man for the job” – but looking through the Yellow Pages, he may not be your first point of call.

So, what about you?  If you are competing with everyone else and not at the stage that all your customers are coming via the “highly recommended” route, then you may want to take another look at your marketing messages.

Are you an “odd-job-man”?  Or are you a specialist?

I popped in to our local branch of Waitrose earlier this week for a couple of pints of milk and few veggies. Now the thing about food shopping in the likes of Waitrose and M&S, is that is very easy to get caught up and turn your 5 item list in to a over-loaded shopping trolley.

I came out with a couple of frozen pizzas (to top up my last-minute-supper freezer draw), bag of chicken breasts (they were on special offer so I saved £2.31), a selection of frozen herbs (3 for £4 – how I can refuse?), a punnet of strawberries (over-priced and out-of-season but remembered my 9 year old mentioning she wanted strawberries on the way to school) to name but a few things that I wanted – but I didn’t really “need”.

My quick shop turned in to a £69.54 shopping trip which was precisely £50 more than I had intended to spend!

Why did I spend so much more than I intended? 

The £50 was the difference between buying what I “wanted” and buying what I “needed”.

And this is the trap that many coaches, consultants and service based professionals fall in to.  The trap of trying to sell something that they feel their clients need – and not what they want.

Yes, some people “need” help with their time management.  But do they “want” to spend their money (and their time!) on a half day workshop or 3 month long training programme to improve it?

Some people “need” to organise their house and de-clutter their cupboards, but do they “want” to cough up a few hundred pounds for someone to come in and do it for them?

And yes, there are people who “need” to lose weight, feel more confident, find a perfect partner and know how to manage their staff better – but if they don’t “want” to pay for a solution then it’s doesn’t matter how much your service is “needed”, you’ll won’t find enough clients unless your solution is something they “want”.

So next time you are struggling to fill your workshop or find enough clients to work with on a 1-2-1, ask yourself is the service or product you are offering be tempting enough for clients to “want” you?

Are you challenged by the needs and wants of your clients? Add your thoughts or ideas in the comments box below

When you started up your own business, you were probably full of enthusiasm.  You may have felt like you had the power to change the world; you wanted to make things better for your clients.

But have you fallen in to the trap of discounting your services to clients you feel can’t afford you?

Have you found yourself doing that little bit more, for no extra charge because you didn’t want to bother them with an additional invoice?

Now I know money isn’t everything.  If you are just in it for the money, then, to be honest, you won’t really care about your clients; you just want to make the fastest buck as possible and get out of there.

But assuming that you do care about your clients, how much do you also care about your bank balance?   Are you running a charity or are you there to make profit?

Motivation to make profit can be tough to admit because, after all, if our clients think that we are out to make a profit, will they not object to paying the going rates for your services or products?

But let’s turn this around.  If you are not being paid well for what you are doing and you are not being rewarded significantly for the work that you are doing with your clients, then how can you carry on and work with more clients?

How can you carry on and improve on what you are doing?  How can you invest in your business systems and create new programs and new services.

So if you are avoiding the question “Am I really in it for the money?”, then maybe it is time that you should be honest with yourself and think “Well, yes, I can be in business for the money, at the same time as really caring about my clients.”

If you can focus yourself on setting strong financial targets this will, in turn, help you to push yourself to give a better service for your clients.

Your thoughts & opinions: What do you think about making a profit from your business? Leave your comments in the comment box below