Is Your Value Depreciating Unchecked?

With very few exceptions, business owners include a depreciation schedule when they file their taxes. We become very familiar with these forms. They are black-and-white evidence of the relentless loss of value. Brian Tracy he points out that there is perhaps an even more important item that continually loses value that never shows up (at…

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Why the First $1,000 is the Hardest

You’re not getting paid what you’re worth. You feel under-appreciated, and no one takes you seriously. Your income comes in fits and starts, if at all… and it never adds up to enough. Here you are, trying to get your business off the ground, and it’s such a struggle that you’re almost tempted to throw…

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Be Helpful or Be Gone

Last week, we explored the idea that email marketing is about earning the audience’s permission to keep talking. I suggested that there were two equally important elements – intent and content – that had to be in sync if you want to stick around in someone’s in-box. Now it’s time to talk about being helpful.…

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Earning Your Spot in Their Email Inbox

Weird as it sounds, with all of the new technologies, email seems almost old school today. It’s been around for decades and much like other mature mediums, we value and loathe it at the same time. Part of the loathing comes from the daily experience of being barraged by emails we didn’t ask for, don’t…

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Our Value Creation Starts Within Our Own Company

Recently, I wrote, “Sales People Don’t Have The Time To Create Value With Customers…” Clearly, this is unacceptable if we are to drive business results. If we aren’t taking the time to create value with customers, then customers have no reason to waste their time with us. In the post, I suggested sales people don’t…

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Make Yourself Discount-Proof

Are you often asked to discount your fee or price? Typically, when a prospective customer or client balks at your price, it’s because they believe that the value of your offering is less than what they are being asked to pay. But, not always. There IS another reason. It’s this… They subscribe to the theory…

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5 Signals to Evaluate to Test the Value of Your Brand

Brands are people first. Customers are people too, so customers tend to take their relationship with a brand personally. Thus it’s not a surprise that people love their favorite smartphone brand, cringe when you mention their cable company, or even hate the mention of a particular bank. Startups, as well as every existing business, need…

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5 Ways to Turn Today’s Leads into Tomorrow’s Customers

There are a lot of statistics out there that say successful businesses should end up closing about one out of every three calls. But I know from experience that this is often not the case, and I’ll tell you how I learned that. A few years ago I was driving a plumber phone leads from different ad campaigns like…

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Are You Really Different?

We know the importance of differentiating ourselves in attempting to win business. We try to do this at our web sites, often posting comparisons and charts showing how we have more features and functions than the alternatives. Too often, we think differentiation is about checking more feature boxes, having a richer product, than the competition.…

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Avoid the Race to Zero

When do you sell your company? Obviously we all want to sell at the top. And there is the problem. How do you know when you are at or near that right point to sell for maximum value? Those of us in the business of calculating (guessing) this mythical peak in value often make the…

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