Pricing: Two cautionary tales

The first, from a geneticist blogger, shows the perils of letting your competition do all your thinking to set price...then automating with an algorithm. Needless to say, the case of the $23 million textbook carries a couple of lessons with it. Never assume that you've automated a process so perfectly that you don't need to check on the results, and don't distract grad students who spend their time studying flies because--ooh shiny!

Then we get the small business beat from the NY Times, telling a story of entrepreneurs raising their prices. Take-away: Price is just one factor in your customers' minds . Provide a valuable product or service at a profitable rate, and ignore your competition's pricing. Odd that the reporter never thought to add, Because all too often intangibles have to compete with something "free", copying prices or even payment model (this much a month, yearly subscription, this much an hour) isn't a strategy.

What did your least productive 20% of staff do today?

Please assure yourself that if you don't yet have a network security/filtering device, none of these folks works for you.

Because there is no cognitive surplus at your business, right?

"It sells itself."

Can't count how many times I've been told about newly developed software: It sells itself.

You know, the odds are that it doesn't. Or we wouldn't be having this conversation. Seriously, some percentage of our clients apparently find that everyone who sees their product buys it. And that's great!

It means that they've built a solution that responds to a real, painful business problem. However, there are a number of steps that happen before a new prospect sees the product, and that's where we  come in.

More on this tomorrow--the SaaS product on my desk isn't selling itself at this hour, which is why we're busy around here.

Is this thing on?

Social media bubble--it's like the South Seas, tulips and Fresno starter homes, all rolled into one! You, yes you, have got to plant your business's flag in all the social media.

Meaning, user-generated content. Meaning, what Clay Shirky approves of (cognitive surplus: it's a new world of labors of love, paid for in unicorn dust!) and Nick Carr disapproves of (go outside and play, you're rotting your brain!) has become required for all serious businesses.

Even those of us who are pretty sure that no one buys complex intangibles because they got 'liked' on Facebook.