I had a lovely lunch in Brisbane this afternoon. The food was a bit ordinary, but the beer was cold. And that’s all you really want in a lunch!
I was having a chat this afternoon with a client who had been reading the blog. He asked me if I gave away too much information on the web site – after all, with the info provided, couldn’t people just go off and do it themselves without paying us?
I guess the answer is yes. But I don’t think that happens too often. As much information as we provide to our clients and on this web site, we don’t provide it all. We’d be crazy to.
I’ll give you an example
As you might know we have a number of holiday resort clients. In examining the statistics of the resorts side by side yesterday, Jo and I identified a very important aspect related to the web site visitors.
This is something that we’ve just started testing today and if we’re right, and I’m 90% sure we are, the knowledge we have about marketing resort web sites is hugely valuable. In a conversation with a client today we established that knowing what we now know would result, after about 10 minutes work on his site, in a benefit of about $50,000 per year.
That’s big, big money.
So the question I have to ask myself is this:
1. Should I tell prospective clients this very valuable information in an effort to demonstrate my expertise?
2. Or should I keep this information to myself until such time as the person engages our expertise?
The answer: Not too sure. At this stage I’ll be holidng onto the information. And thinking. (I can’t say to a prospective client – “Employ us because I know a secret!” Sounds like I’m back in Primary School).
Don’t be afraid to demonstrate your expertise with clients. But you don’t need to spell out the nuts and bolts of how you will achieve the results for your client.
Cheers
Perhaps you should implement your “secret” with one of your existing clients, possibly as part of some new enhancement or something else you are being paid for. Then you can use the results as part of your marketing, eg Client X benefited by 50K after we enhanced his/her website. We did this as part of our standard work (re-word as necessary), an example of how we ALWAYS strive to help our clients.
Another reason for this approach is to disguise the fact that it is a 10 min job (I assume you are speaking loosely). Not only will clients undervalue simple and quick work, but they will suspect you of over pricing on things that DO take a long time.
John
I’d point out that he’s *losing* $50,000 because of a simple omission. I’d give him my credentials again, and suggest that we develop a business relationship.
I’d say outright I can’t tell him without a consulting engagement as this is how I put food on the table. I’d then ask him whether if I explained the work required, and he agrees that it is indeed worth $50,000 to him, that if he would engage me for a consultation and do the work.
Remember: He’s paying you not for what you have to do to fix the problem, but what you had to do to gain the expertise to know what the problem is.