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August Bonehead Award

Recently, the board of directors of the trade association I founded (Yellow-Tie International) was faced with a dilemma. We had a wonderful idea to customize our member's name tags by letting each member put his or her company logo on his or her tag.

This way, members could wear their name tags everywhere, instead of at only Yellow-Tie events. Problem was, our vendor simply couldn't customize every single tag without quadrupling the cost.

We resolved the issue by doing some quick math and learning that a minor up-front investment of $2,000 in some equipment would allow us to print the tags ourselves -- giving our members the customized tags they want, while actually saving us a lot of money in the long run (500 customized tags for $2,000 instead of 500 basic tags for $5,000).

So I went I-shopping and found a name tag printer that was perfect for our needs -- they had a great printer at a great packaged price that included almost everything we needed to print 500 tags.

I say almost, because in the very last step of the buying process the sales guy (he is an independent rep, not an employee of the company that manufactured the printer) asked me whether I wanted to buy the USB cable I'd need to connect the printer to my computer.

Let me see. Would I rather actually print name tags or am I more interested in purchasing a $2,000 paper weight?

Yes, I bought the printer and the $8.95 cable I needed to make it work. But no matter how much I love the printer, no one will ever hear how great it is, because I refuse to promote any manufacturer this boneheaded. (Note: I'm not faulting the sales guy. In fact, he and I were laughing about their attitude the whole time.)

Imagine the lost opportunity cost of that decision. As Yellow-Tie provides customized name tags to its next 500 members -- most of them business owners with large networks -- not a single one will ever hear how great the printer is. (I even chose to withhold the company name here just so they wouldn't get any positive exposure at all.)

Gill E. Wagner, Sage of Selling
President of Honest Selling
Founder of the Yellow-Tie International Business Development Association

One Step Toward True Value Billing

Whether you are currently billing by the hour and want to start getting paid for value instead, or you are using value billing but struggling to attach the correct dollar amount to the value you provide, here's a simple way to take one step forward on your mission to get paid based on the value of what you actually accomplish for a client.

Let the client determine the value after you've made your impact.

I'm serious. Do the work first. Then, let the client determine its value and write the check.

Before the litany of "what if" and "no way" scenarios running through your head produces smoke, allow me to demonstrate a way to do this while minimizing the associated risks.

The example I'll use is my Idea Transfusion™ session. Simply put, a company assembles a few decision-makers, some executive-level sales team leaders (VPs or senior VPs), some sales managers and a selection of sales people (figure 10-30 people total) for a four-hour idea-generation session.

I facilitate and lead the discussion -- helping the team articulate its problems, challenges and goals. Then I pull ideas out of the team, pepper them with some of my own and flesh them out until the team is excited by what it created -- effectively transfusing the best ideas from individuals into the entire group.

When the session ends, my client (a decision-maker who attended) writes me a check for whatever he or she thinks is fair. And I neither complain nor rejoice over the size of the check.

I choose this model for three reasons:

1. I'm playing to my strengths. There are few things I do better than generate ideas and pull ideas out of others.
2. An Idea Transfusion session requires very little preparation, because I'm really good at thinking on my feet. So at most, I'm risking a half-day of my time.
3. Even when a decision-maker thinks the ideas weren't worth much, at least a handful of others in the room will disagree -- they'll each have found immense value in at least one idea. So in the worst-case scenario of not getting paid anything, I've built some new value-based relationships -- always a worthwhile result.

What do you do better than anyone else? (What are your strengths?)

How can you do this with a company and not risk more than four hours of your time?

Are you willing to trust people completely?

If you can answer those questions, give this a try and see whether it works for you.

Gill E. Wagner, Sage of Selling
President of Honest Selling
Founder of the Yellow-Tie International Business Development Association