TDW #029: Be the Expert, Not the Commodity (How to Position Yourself for Success and Avoid Price Wars)

There’s a revenue limit many entrepreneurs seem to hit and can’t get past, no matter what they try. The magic number? $500,000 per year.

Sometimes a little more. Sometimes less. But it’s right around here where growth-minded biz owners either accept their 500k fate or push through to a new level.

(And even if that number seems way off from where you're at right now, this framework can still help.)

The answer for breakthrough isn’t what you'd expect. It’s not adding more offers. It’s not spending more money on ads. It’s not hiring more employees. In fact, you won’t need to add anything at all to achieve breakthrough.

It’s always an issue of positioning. Meaning, how you’re perceived by your clients (and your broader market.)

There are three ways to be positioned against your client:

1. Superior
2. Peer
3. Inferior

Don’t let the names fool you. They aren't meant to be insulting. It’s just how the world works. If you don’t intentionally choose the position you want, one will be assigned to you. Spoiler alert: it will always be the inferior position.

You want to be in a superior position, not because you believe yourself to be better than your client (that's not what "superior" means here), but because it puts you in a leadership position. Your clients are paying you to lead them on the path to achieving their desired outcome. You have something they need, and they want you to guide them towards it.

If you don’t lead, they’ll resent you. If you’re experiencing any of these five symptoms with your clients, you’ve got a positioning problem (and you’re likely leaving tens of thousands of dollars on the table).

1.) “I can only meet on this date at this time / that time doesn’t work for me.”

Code for: I have zero respect for your schedule and you’ll meet when I say we’ll meet.

If you’re hearing this from clients, it’s because you either (a) don’t have boundaries or (b) don’t know how to enforce them. Your calendar is the #1 indicator of a client’s respect level for you. If they’re trodding over it (calling / texting / messaging at all hours, not showing up to meetings, etc.), no matter what they might say, they have no respect for you.

It might sound like a small detail, but it’s a massive indicator of whether a client sees you as an expert (good) or a commodity (bad).

2.) “So-and-so [your competitor] does it for cheaper, so I want a better price.”

Code for: I’m shopping around because I see you as a cog-in-the-wheel and easily replaceable.

If you’re hearing this from clients on a regular basis, you’re failing to clearly demonstrate and communicate your value. If you’re seen as a commodity, no price you set will ever be low enough. The clients you do manage to get will turn tail the moment they find someone to do it cheaper (and there’s always someone who will do it cheaper).

3.) “I’m sorry I haven’t gotten to your invoice yet. I’ll get to it soon.”

Code for: paying you is optional for me.

If you hear this every once in a while, that’s fine. There are situational triggers at play. But if you hear this frequently from clients (and your accounts receivable shows it), you’re failing to establish clear boundaries. You likely don’t have a way to collect payment from slow- or no-paying clients. You probably don’t have clear payment instructions laid out (and what happens if those are violated), so you naturally fall to the bottom of the invoice pile.

That means your cashflow takes a massive hit, putting your business in jeopardy.

Or...maybe you’re just really bad at getting people to pay you.

4.) “I want a refund.”

Code for: I don’t know if you’ll give me a refund or not, but I’m gonna try my luck because there’s no clearly communicated policy stating otherwise.

Hopefully this is not an issue for you, but you might be a magnet for shady clients. Usually this is because there’s no onboarding process in place to weed out the bad eggs from the very start. So they get into your client roster, mostly unchecked. Then they wreak havoc once they're in.

If this is you, I’d have to see the inside of your business to identify the specific problem, but usually it’s one of three things…

a. You don’t know how to spot bad-fit clients from the start (before they make it into your business ecosystem).

b. You don’t have a way to quickly quarantine a client who misbehaves and fix the situation before it becomes a larger problem.

c. You don’t have a way to replace bad clients with good ones, so you cling to clients who treat you poorly because you need the money.

5. “I think we should do things this way [that’s completely backwards and wrong].”

Code for: I’m not convinced you know more about your given topic than I do, so I’m just going to boss you around.

If clients regularly hi-jack the strategies and plans you put into place, or just simply don’t do what you’ve asked them to do, you've got a big problem. It’s likely not about “proving” yourself to your clients. It comes down to one simple issue...

• Lack of communication.
• Lack of communication.
• Lack of communication.

(And, maybe: lack of boundaries, lack of confidence, lack of expertise, and, of course, lack of positioning.)

Positioning Power Plays

After working on these five positioning issues with dozens of clients, I can spot them really quickly (and solve them really quickly). And when we plug these basic positioning gaps, we see massive ripple effects in their businesses.

Positioning Power Play #1: One of my clients finally had the confidence to set much-needed boundaries with her clients so she could get control of her schedule again. All were super agreeable to the new changes; and the ones that weren’t? Bye Felicia!

Positioning Power Play #2: Another client set up his onboarding system to automatically collect everything he needed from clients to get started. Not only did this save him time (he was doing it all manually before), clients remarked about how professional the whole process felt. This increased client confidence, which increased how long they stayed!

Positioning Power Play #3: Finally, I have a client who moved his entire business to what I call “pre-billing,” getting paid for the month that’s coming up instead of invoicing for the month that just passed.

Final Words

So, if you know that one of these five positioning gaps is keeping you from attracting trophy clients, making them fall in love with you from Day One, and hitting your revenue goals, then it's time to take action and address these issues head-on.

Don't leave tens of thousands of dollars on the table by ignoring these positioning problems. By identifying and solving them, you can gain confidence, establish clear boundaries, and communicate your value effectively to clients. This will not only improve your relationships with clients, but also increase your revenue and help your business thrive.

Talk to you next week,

Justin

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