grundyhome.com

When should you charge your customers?

Answer: When they are happiest with you. A happy customer recognizes value and will gladly pay for it.

How do you get customers to pay an initial deposit?

Answer: By asking for it. Refuse to do any work until you’ve both signed an agreement and are satisfied with the terms. Include the deposit in this agreement. This puts both of you at ease with the risks you’re taking.

How do you raise your rates without losing your customers?

Answer: Balance their pain with pleasure. Provide new features, free upgrades, or other perks. Give plenty of advance warning and increase in reasonable increments. Position the rate hike alongside extra value and the change will be acceptable.

I consume hundreds of articles a day for hundreds of different websites through my feed reader of choice. Today, I saw two posts that irked me. They both went something like this:

“We’re moving so please make sure you update your bookmarks and feed subscriptions!”

And these sites promptly ceased to work for me. In one case, the old site was down but the new site wasn’t even up.

Like a store moving locations, these sites are competing for my attention. They work hard to earn it in the first place – so why not take a couple of extra minutes to make sure I’m not accidentally lost in the move? When Sofa Select moved locations, I knew because they advertised the move and launched with a grand re-opening. And I’ve never even been to Sofa Select.

On the web, it’s easy – set up redirects. Your web host can do this (DNS), your domain name registrar can do this (for a couple of bucks), or you can do it yourself (.htaccess). You’ll keep your traffic and if you do it right, you’ll keep all your search engine mojo.
It might take five minutes for you to set this up… or it can take me five minutes tracking down your new address. I’m just going to let those feeds expire from my reader and move on.

The stereotype threat is a psychological theory where a person’s performance can be influenced by hearing about a stereotype.

A classic example involves a group of black women on the SAT. Before the test, they are told that black women traditionally do poorly on the SAT. On average, the group will perform poorly. That’s the stereotype threat.

And there’s one key component: It doesn’t matter if the person agrees with the stereotype. The stereotype threat influences their confidence, which affects performance.

And it works in reverse. Tell that same group of women that their demographic tends to excel, and they will perform above average.

An aside: In psychology, no matter how consistent the results, you can’t claim it has been proven—like gravitational theory. I get a bunch of interesting stories and blog posts from my psychologist wife.

We’ve known for a long time that performance is influenced by factors such as this. I knew a guy in college that wore a suit to every test because he believed that looking good made him feel good and that feeling good meant superior performance. When parents drop their kids off at summer camp, the kids are more likely to be homesick if their parents fuss and tell the kids that it’s alright if they get homesick. Going into a meeting expecting the worst often produces a poor outcome.

Why don’t we take this into account in our schools and workplaces? If employees are set up for success, they will perform better and be more likely to succeed.

What are some ways that you encourage success (such as celebrating small victories)?