Escaping the Modern Business SQUEEZE

The daily reality at too many companies is just a series of squeezes:

• Pricing squeezes driven by aggressive competition and ever-higher customer demands

• Margin squeezes driven by shrinking gaps between employee profitability potential and their pay expectations

• And ideas and innovation squeezes between the changes that executives know are needed at their companies….

…and their creative and execution capacity to get them done.

Is your business experiencing one or several of these squeezes?

And if so, are you even more frustrated because of all of the growth you hear and see in the economy right now?

My friend and famed marketing consultant, Paul Lemberg, talks about how four things working together can transform these tight and sad feelings of being squeezed, into loose and happy ones of progress and profitability.

They are:

#1. One above-average idea that inspires your market and leverages your assets.

I love Paul’s use of the phrase “above average” – that we don’t have to wait for that one Einsteinian, Steve Jobs-esque, world-changing idea to transform our business.

No, just a pretty good one will suffice.

Like repackaging an existing product or service into a more modern and customer-friendly form, such as selling services on a subscription versus a fixed project fee basis or…

…“extending the day” via serving an adjacent market – like school caregivers (therapists, nurses, etc.) working in home healthcare in the afternoons and evenings…

 …or even something as organizationally simple as starting work 30 minutes earlier and ending30 minutes later every day.

These are good, but not world-changing ideas.

But any one of them, properly executed, can take a flat growth vector and turn it upwards.

#2. Communications so clear that new prospects easily grasp their value.

The guidepost word here is simplification.

Say in fewer words what before was said in many.

Or – better still – with a picture.

Our modern business world is filled with many amazing role models in this regard.

Apple. Uber. Slack. WeWork.

All of Hollywood.

Yes, simplifying at the level of design elegance and creative excitement, as these big boys do, is hard.

But my experience is that the branding and marketing of most smaller companies is so bad that even a quick refresh can make a big difference.

#3. Pricing so both you and your customers are happy and you earn excess profits.

Hermann Simon, author of Confessions of the Pricing Man: How Price Affects Everything, built a $300 million+, 860 employee consulting firm focused exclusively on advising many of the biggest companies in the world on pricing strategies that maximize profitability and the customer purchase and consumption experience.

He talks about the “Win-Win” duality – that yes, we can charge a profitable price for our products and services, and still have it be one that our clients and customers feel good about.

How do we arrive at these right prices?

That word again, innovation.

Odds are high that the prices we charge now are sub-optimal, so it is just a matter of analysis and courage – first to determine, and then change to price structures that perform and feel better for all.

#4. Consistent marketing that creates new business at an acceptable cost.

In spite of the speed and constant churn of modern markets, we must have faith that as we increase the value we offer to our customers, and then sell it to them focused on the right benefits at the right price…

…that these changes we make will last and work for a long time.

And this current, very solid macro economic environment just makes everything easier.

So what are you waiting for?