Doug Richard is fond of saying, “All businesses are not created equal”. One of the reasons he founded School for Startups was to help new business owners learn how to evaluate business opportunities the way investors do.
Entrepreneurs put time, energy and money into every business they start, and they give up the opportunity to put those assets in other businesses. So choosing a business to start is a crucial decision. Starting the wrong business will cost you both time and...
To set a price for a new product or service, start by creating a list of competing solutions from other providers. Record the price and then, next to each product, record the advantages each offers to the customer.
Note that your competition is not limited to products that are similar to what you sell. For example, a cheap car competes with motorcycles and the bus as much as it does with other cars.
Add your product to the list and, based on...
This morning, we posted an article by Doug called “Successful Startups Almost Never Compete On Price”. Due to the popularity of the article, within hours, our website started to receive an unprecedented amount of traffic.
Naturally, this tells us we’ve hit upon a key issue that faces most entrepreneurs.
We thought it would be helpful to post a video clip from our S4Stv library entitled “Prices Are Discovered” with Doug explaining the thinking behind pricing, turning around some of the more commonly...
I have counseled and supported many thousands of entrepreneurs over the years, and something that never ceases to amaze me is how many initially enter the market with the intent of competing on price. Since I have an extensive background in sales and marketing, and since I've managed more than my fare share of sales teams, the idea of maximizing the number of low margin sales a business makes just seems completely insane. Startups rarely have the returns to scale or the marketing and sales efficiency to do large volumes of business profitably at a low price.
