27. People don’t pay for average — 30 Days Of Medium
Thank to you everyone who has been reading and following along to my 30 Days Of Medium posts so far.
Make sure you subscribe to my content using the little sign up box at the bottom to make sure I can email you each new post.
If you’re just discovering my posts, you can check out the other 30 Days Of Medium below.
0. 30 Days Of Medium
1. What do you need to build your own website? — 30 Days Of Medium
2. How to find a business you love — 30 Days Of Medium
3. How to build your own website — 30 Days Of Medium
4. How to measure your website’s performance — 30 Days Of Medium
5. How to get more customers by answering their questions -30 Days Of Medium
6. The successful business website cheat sheet — 30 Days Of Medium
7. How to measure success — 30 Days Of Medium
8. Understanding the Online Sales Funnel — 30 Days Of Medium
9. What is traffic and why is it important? — 30 Days Of Medium
10. What is Google URL Builder and why should you use it? — 30 Days Of Medium
11. Double your traffic by automating your social media schedule — 30 Days Of Medium
12. How to tell what sells — 30 Days Of Medium
13. How I grew my Medium following 6,500% — 30 Days Of Medium
14. How you look at things matters — 30 Days Of Medium
15. How to SELL services to small businesses — 30 Days Of Medium
16. How to win more deals with effective proposals — 30 Days Of Medium
17. How to setup an online store in 10 minutes — 30 Days Of Medium
18. How to work from anywhere — 30 Days Of Medium
19. Why your website is sabotaging your sales — 30 Days Of Medium
20. Where does your traffic come from? — 30 Days Of Medium
21. How to actually recognise burnout — 30 Days Of Medium
22. How to hack your schedule and get twice as much done — 30 Days Of Medium
23. Don’t copy your competitors — 30 Days Of Medium
24. How to SEO optimise a blog post — 30 Days Of Medium
25. Be unique or be forgotten — 30 Days Of Medium
26. Going with your gut — 30 Days Of Medium
27. People don’t pay for average — 30 Days Of Medium
28. How to do keyword research — 30 Days Of Medium
29. Why The Pareto Principle is the world’s biggest hack — 30 Days Of Medium
30. Your content is more profitable than your telephone — 30 Days Of Medium
Have you ever paid for average?
Have you ever taken the time to go out and pay for something that wasn’t great?
When’s the last time you went out of your way to go to a restaurant and purchase a meal you thought was just o.k? Those are the restaurants you don’t go back to.
People don’t pay for average, and there’s a simple reason why.
Why average companies don’t grow
The expression ‘meh’ comes to mind.
An average company is a company that inspires a feeling of — o.k
Nobody pays for o.k. Nobody pays for average. As someone who runs a Norwich web design agency, which is a competitive space, I can tell you first hand that people only pay for above and beyond.
These companies don’t grow because they are trying to charge for mediocrity. I use the restaurant analogy above because I think its a simple one.
If you’ve ever watched Gordon Ramsay’s Kitchen Nightmares (I’ve watched them all) you’ll see he continuously tries to instil in the various owners that — “Average restaurants don’t last”.
Love him or hate him, he’s tremendously talented at what he does and a very strong leader.
Gordon tells the owners that they need to “Strive for excellence”. Which isn’t far from the mark.
In almost every single turnaround I’ve watched, the problem is the owners are accepting and serving up mediocrity in some form of another. Usually the food (the service offering).
This is why their businesses are failing and they desperately need Gordon’s help.
You don’t leave home to pay for average
Another common line from the show is — “Why would these people leave home if they could cook better and cheaper at home themselves?”.
This refers to the do it yourself approach.
If your customers could do it better, or the same, themselves, why would they pay you to do it?
Well, if you’re trading purely on price, they could use you to save time.
You would then have to wow them with your service and turnaround time.
There’s always a way to go beyond average in business.
So if the bottom line is that people don’t pay for average, you can’t expect to grow if that’s what you’re shipping.
Sure you can spend a fortune on sales and marketing and you will grow, but at what cost?
Sooner or later the average service and complacency will catch up to you. Just like the restaurants on Kitchen Nightmares.
Mostly they are 5–10 years into their business and the story is always the same.
The business was o.k to start with, then it started to flat line.
Taking an average audit
Business isn’t complicated. It’s hard and requires a ton of hard work, but it isn’t rocket science.
There are three key areas to look at if you want to shift your business away from an average one to an excellent one.
- The product or service.
- Customer service.
- Sales and marketing.
Your product or service needs to be great consistent to the level of investment your customers spend.
Your customers need to love you (within reason, you can’t please absolutely everyone but try your best).
And you need to be consistent in your sales and marketing approach, not sporadic.
Good customer service is easy. It’s about going above and beyond and doing that little bit extra.
Take the onus off the customer wherever you can, be quick and friendly to answer any of their questions and most importantly exceed their expectations. Get the work done quickly and in full.
And wherever you can, give away some free value. People love stuff for free.
So the key takeaway from this article is, if you wouldn’t pay for average, how can you expect your customers to?
Give them what you’d pay for if the shoe was on the other foot.
You might also like this:
Why WordPress Is The BEST Platform To Build Your Business or Startup Website On
How To Build A Website — The Ultimate Guide
If you enjoyed this story, please click the 👏 button and follow me for the other 30 Days Of Medium.
This story is published in The Startup, Medium’s largest entrepreneurship publication followed by 338,320+ people.
Subscribe to receive our top stories here.
