There is something that I both love and loathe about business in general: nothing is simple.
I mean, it would be so much easier if everybody would just agree on the simple formula that [having competition = bad for your business, and especially your price].
But no, people like Dr. Ivan Misner show up and confuse everything with his philosophy called Givers Gain®. It’s based on the law of reciprocity – you help others get business, and although they may not help you back, they will help someone who helps you back in the end. If you are wondering if that actually works, it’s a core tenet of networking, especially BNI, a huge global networking group.|
This also means that direct competitors can gain by passing off potential clients to colleagues that are a better professional fit. If I’m a property law lawyer, and you are a divorce lawyer, we both lose if we have to dabble in each other’s specialties to keep clients. If we simply exchange clients and keep to our zone of genius we have to work less, and clients get better service. It’s breaking the supposed golden rule of capitalism, and yet everybody wins.
In the strange pond of pricing expertise, birds of a feather can profit if they stick together. If most serious competitors realize they can charge more, it’s a “cover” for you as well. It takes trust, restraint, and patience but it’s definitely possible within many niches.
Want a real-world example that his works?
f you would like a real-life demonstration that this works, check out the podcast episode of “What I should have charged” with Alan Stevens, a famous Australian profiler and communication specialist that taught for Disney and Gillette, who swears by the principle of actively seeking out and nurturing his own competition as a means of, among other things, positively affecting his price.**