Aug
17
As solopreneurs, we often focus on customer characteristics but in the process we fail to figure out what’s inside our customers’ heads.
In his book, The Sales Bible: The Ultimate Sales Resource, Jeffrey Gitomer lists reasons why people buy products and services:
• To solve a problem
• They need it
• They think they need it
• To get a competitive edge
• To save money or to be more efficient
• To eliminate mistakes
• To feel good
• To show off
• To change a mood
Aug
16
My 14-year-old daughter is The World’s Toughest Negotiator. (Consider yourself forewarned.) She’s held the title for the past 12 years. I think she’d be a magnificent Hollywood agent, and as of last week she wants to attend UCLA and major in psychology.
What’s the secret to her negotiating success?
It’s simple: she asks for what she wants and doesn’t stop asking until she gets it,.
Mar
13
There’s a lot of discussion about how narrow a solopreneur’s niche should be.
Seth Godin maintains that the secret to being the best in the world is to make the “world” smaller, i.e. to narrow your niche.
He tells the story of Alan Scott, who was the best artisan pizza-oven builder in the world. “It was a niche that didn’t exist before, but it spread, it engaged people, it created a tribe that supported him. Alan was passionate about his craft and wasn’t shy about sharing it. He trained others and turned it into a movement.”
May
09
For many years I have enjoyed Matt Kramer’s column in Wine Spectator magazine. In the May 31, 2011 issue he wrote a piece titled “Nobody Ever Went Wrong.” Matt is talking about wine, of course, in this column, and he writes:
It seems a good — indeed, useful — exercise to see what truths might be extracted from this “nobody ever went wrong” formulation.
I think it works for our solopreneur lives, too, so here we go.
No solopreneur ever went wrong…
…Asking for help. The return on investment when we ask for help is extraordinary. If you don’t believe me, just try it and see what happens.
Apr
19
The Solopreneur Life Crowdsourced Question (the name just rolls of the tongue!) is a new, occasional feature for The Solopreneur Life. It’s kind of the like the “Person on the Street” feature that newspapers used to publish.
I’m hedging my bets and saying “occasional.” While I think crowdsourced articles are a great idea, I think their use is going to become very popular and possibly over-used, due to the advent of a tool called BlogStampede.com. We’ll see. Plus, I don’t want to detract from the superb Q&A that Dr. Shannon Reece does on a weekly basis. She was doing this pre-BlogStampede.com, and she does a superb job.
Apr
11
It’s seemingly part of the solopreneur how-to canon: “Work with people you like.” It sounds great and it makes sense; you didn’t beceome a solopreneur to work with clients that you hate, right? But as a solopreneur, how do you know if a prospect is someone you will enjoy? How do you determine that a person will be a good fit for you?
Join the conversation and share your ideas with your fellow solopreneurs. I will publish the responses next week. It’s great PR for your business and it’s an effective way to network.
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