Yesterday I talked about making a quick buck and how it’s not the way to be a good long-term business owner.
Unfortunately, many businesses allow deceptive practices to creep into their interactions with clients. For example, what may start as a monthly support package for clients may turn into a minimal amount of service charged at hugely inflated rates — with no mention to your clients about competing services like WP Site Care.
The best way to test any new business practices as you develop them is to ask yourself:
How would I feel if a company treated me this way?
Be honest with yourself. Think about it: Ninety-nine percent of us wouldn’t want our business equated with an airline because so much about the flying experience is terrible.
Nor would we ever want to be accused of having service contracts and lock-in policies like cell phone companies (and to my mainly US readers, know that it’s worse in Canada).
So ask yourself that question when you develop any new business practice. Ask your spouse/partner. Ask your mastermind group.
Run an awesome business that values your clients.
4 responses to “Would I want to…”
What’s your connection to WP Site Care?
You seem to be insinuating that anyone charging more than a competitor for similar services is doing something wrong and should immediately inform the client about the competitor. If you think about that for a minute, I believe you will start to see some of the problems with it. This is by no means an unethical situation on par with the other examples you mention. When you bring up airlines (bad service) and telecom companies (monopolistic lock-in) you’re really talking about something else entirely. Bad service and lock-in are bad at any price
My ‘connection’ is that I’ve met Ryan a few times at conferences. But I’ve met lots of people doing lots of things.
I don’t think that it’s bad to charge more than a competitor. If I did I’d have a hard time justifying rates that are double what many WordPress people charge if not triple.
What I do think is bad is the lock in you speak of. Just charging because someone doesn’t know better. That’s not actually serving your client at all that’s just taking them to the cleaners.
Just because a service might run someone 10x over another service, doesn’t necessarily make it a “bad” option.
So long as (if you’re the one 10x’ing) the expectations are being properly defined for that service. We have (as I’m sure you do) rates that are 10x WP Site Care, but only for a segment of our clients. On paper, our deliverables might look exactly the same, but there’s a lot that goes into the *value* of our contract:
— Long-term rapport (we know their business and their team)
— They know what to expect from us
— They aren’t thrown into the “pool of the system” i.e. we have an expedited turnaround time.
— They just like doing business with us and what *us* to be responsible.
I know you were just trying to make the connection, but I just wanted to expand upon it. Also, we refer some clients that don’t fit our mold to Ryan as well.
🙂
Agreed on all points. It would seem I wasn’t clear enough with this post based on the comments.