Conrey is for Closers

It’s true.

If there is one of you among my readers that loves meetings, let me know and I’ll send help. I’m not talking about meetings with clients necessarily, but usually those internal meetings that we all dread when we see them on our calendar for the day.

Why do we dread them? Because we know that they are going to be an hour or more of our time for something that could have been handled in a 2 line email, or that 58 of those minutes aren’t going to be relevant to me, or whatever else.

Luckily there are people who want to change this. I was given a copy of Al Pittampalli‘s new book “Read This Before Our Next Meeting” through The Domino Project. It’s a quick read – and right now it’s free for your kindle. I highly recommend you spend the hour it takes to read this book if you agree with what I wrote above. If you don’t agree then I think you should read it twice or more until you realize the time waste and productivity waste that goes on in meetings.

This isn’t the first time this message has been said. It’s common among people who follow Seth Godin, Tim Ferris, or any of the 37 Signals crew (especially in Rework). But this is a well written response that will help expand this movement beyond the geeks with macbooks crowd.

Meeting adjourned.

Download the Free Kindle version here

Between this blog and the Don’t Sell Me Bro podcast, I’ve talked about pricing a few times now, and I leant my ear to some friends talking about their pricing structure last week. They too were going through the fear of raising their rates and what that would mean for their current and future clients. I asked off hand, “Have any of your current clients pushed hard for a rate decrease when you signed them?”

Their answer was none of them had. This should be a shock to anyone selling a service or an item that has taken a basic economics course. If no one is complaining about your price, or trying to negotiate it down – you’re not charging enough. You’re giving significantly more value out than taking in if this is the case.

It’s ok to be lower priced than other people (see Wal-Mart or Southwest Airlines) but there is also the cost-perception of value curve. If you’re priced high enough, people will assume that there is value to be had there. Your job is to continue to deliver on value even at a higher rate.

After some deep soul searching this past week, I was inspired to write a manifesto. Working around a ton of people who believe strongly in the Agile Manifesto, led to a natural starting point. Coalesced from my experiences and many of the topics I’ve debated and argued with you over the years, I am thrilled with what came out of this, and can’t wait to press it even further as it evolves.

Please go check out The Manifesto for Post Modern Sales at my new venture, PostModernSales.com