A Full Pencil Cup and Nothing to Write With

Is it just me, or does everyone else experience this phenomenon? I have two pencil cups at my desk, a “junk drawer” in the kitchen, and other random writing utensil stashing places and while there is always a plethora of items to choose from there is nothing to write with. The pencils aren’t sharpened, the markers are dry, the pens have lost their spring, and who writes with a colored pencil?

Do you experience this same phenomenon in your business? Are your marketing materials and/or website full of services and offerings that are only muddying the waters to the useful services? Take a look…it might be time to clean out the pencil cup!

Remember to always lead with the most complex and compelling services you provide. Once you engage your client you can then educate them on the wider variety. Sell the services that sell you.

Pick Your Own

One of the “summer favorites” in New England is the ongoing “Pick Your Own” season at the local “farms”, which are a far cry from any farm I grew up near! But in any case, families come out in droves to pick their own strawberries, raspberries (my husband’s favorite), peaches (my favorite), apples, etc. A few weeks ago we headed out for strawberry picking and trekked out to the field, which was like a million miles from our car, to pick two quarts of strawberries for a rate two times that of what we could have bought them in the store. While we bent over in the heat (the one warm day that we had in June) and picked our strawberries, we got our great family photos for our “memories” and gladly paid the outrageous cost—because we do it for the experience.

It got me thinking—how can I retool my service offerings to provide a more enriching “client experience” that gets the clients more involved, lessening my workload and allowing me to charge more for the said services? I’ve always been a proponent of getting my clients involved in the planning of their events and promotions—as involved as they want to be, so that the day of the event, or when the promotion goes out they can take all of the credit and feel like they accomplished something great, but I’ve never charged more for this.

I certainly don’t have all of the answers, but I would be curious to know if you have been able to achieve this “Pick Your Own” model within your own company, or have seen it used in others.