Slicing a pizza into 12 pieces instead of 8 won’t give you more pizza. Surprisingly, such a pithy concept is not always obvious in different contexts. Offering customers more choices could mislead them about your product or have them walk away.

In the 1984 cult flick, This Is Spinal Tap, a character claims his sound system is louder because his volume dial goes up to 11 while everyone else’s dials topped out at only 10. (Fun fact: IMDB rates the movie at “7.9 / 11”; all other movies are rated up to only 10.)

In a study published in 2019, the researchers explored how the number of settings, e.g., blenders with 4 vs 7 speeds, influences judgments of a product’s maximum output. They found that consumers not only perceived a greater precision, i.e. more control over the device’s settings, but they often mis-attributed a higher maximum output in the product with more settings.

This “more levels, more power” mis-attribution happened despite the device’s maximum output specifications in watts. (Journal of Consumer Psychology, Nov 2019)

Offering too many choices can cause negative responses in other ways. E.g. carrying inventory of 50 styles of jeans might not lead to more revenue than if you simply offered 2 styles.

The logic is understandable – with more to choose from, each customer is sure to find a style that’s just right for them. After all, being able to choose from a wide variety epitomises the principles of free market, where consumers have the freedom to pick a solution that’s just right for them.

But we seldom behave rationally, especially when purchasing. Having too many options can lead to choice overload, mental fatigue and indecisiveness. When it’s hard to decide, it might be easier to just not decide.

Researchers at Columbia and Stanford universities published compelling findings in 2000: customers at a grocery shop were much more likely to make purchases of a promoted brand of jams after visiting a table of 6 jam samples than a table of 24 samples.

It also depends on where customers are in the buying process. A high choice variety early on can encourage exploration. But too many choices at the moment of truth – just before checkout – easily dissuades an indifferent shopper.

Each industry, product and type of customer is different, so finding the balance between too much and too little choice should be validated empirically. And once you’ve found the right settings in your business, don’t expect them to remain static.

Continual market research will help keep customers satisfied and coming back for more.

That title might elicit a, “Duh, that’s obvious” response. But with the media hullaballoo of everything entrepreneurs could be doing to survive COVID lockdowns, this isn’t always top of mind. Secondly, there’s a deeper meaning than simply, say, “Get more customers.”

A survey report published by Visa Economic Empowerment Institute (VEEI) in January 2021 gives insight into what matters most to survive lockdown. Over 2,000 responses were from small businesses in Brazil, Colombia, Malaysia, Philippines, and South Africa.

Maybe survival isn’t a dire priority for your business. In the survey, 20% of respondents reported a very optimistic outlook for 2021. “These are established, fast-growing small, medium, and large firms that tend to be designated as “essential” businesses, accept remote orders as their main sales method, use ... digital marketplaces, and export to a number of markets.”

Conversely, 60% of the businesses most at risk include micro and small businesses (1-10 and 11-50 employees respectively) and those in an early stage (start-up or not yet established, regardless of age).

Importantly, regardless of size, industry or growth stage, the common traits of enterprises in jeopardy are that they have a heavily local customer base and they have immature online payment methods.

In other words, if your customers live close to you and you make them pay in cash or by EFT, your best chance of survival is to be in a “lucky” industry.

So if your business is at risk and you’re not in the “right” industry, what are your options?

Waiting for government policy changes and financial institutions to soften their lending criteria or make additional recovery funds available is not an option.

You’ve already cut your costs to the bone. You’ve surely negotiated with clients to pay sooner and asked suppliers to extend your payment terms. You’ve put staff on short time and you’ve cut inventory holdings to minimal or even a sale-to-order basis.

Even if you implement all of these options, this is not sustainable on its own.

Coming back to my opening paragraph, the only long-term and sustainable solution is to prioritise customers. Obviously, you’ll want to minimise churn and you’ll want to get more customers, but it’s much more than this:

Put yourself in your customer’s shoes and map out their journey. Start with your marketing, be where your customers hang out. How do they progress from their online search to find your website, through to payment, and to delivery of your product or service? Literally, draw the customer process on paper and describe the key steps and even their decision criteria and emotions. (It’s what we call a customer journey map.)

You’ll want to keep customers satisfied in your channel all the way through to payment, fulfilment and beyond to customer retention.

Learn from the VEEI report and fix your payment systems to reduce whatever friction might dissuade your customer from checking out their cart, literally and metaphorically. Fix your website and find a better e-commerce plug-in. Sign up with a credit card merchant or debit order collector. Set up QR code payments. Step up your online payment and data security.

If you don’t see your business as a customer sees it, you might not see many customers.

There’s a popular negotiation maxim along the lines of: “The side that states their price first is the side that loses the negotiation.”

It’s bollocks.

The thinking is that when the other side makes the first offer, you have the advantage of seeing their cards before you put forward your price. You don’t want to give away some of your bargaining zone, right?

That’s a disempowering way to frame it, though. It only hurts to be the first to state a price because it literally hurts – the anxiety and vulnerability linger beyond the moment, making even a successful deal feel unsatisfying. If you struggle with the emotions, you can role play with a safe partner until you’re de-sensitised enough to try it in the real world.

Whether you’re the buyer or seller in the negotiation, being the first to put an offer on the table puts you at a huge advantage. This is chiefly due to a cognitive bias known as the anchoring effect, and it’s most obvious when negotiating the price.

The first number stated creates a kind of gravity around it, keeping subsequent numbers from orbiting too far. It can influence almost every other aspect of what’s being negotiated, as if it’s been painted into the conversation.

There are only 2 situations where anchoring the price could work against you: either your number falls outside the zone of possible agreement (ZOPA) – you’ve high-balled the buyer (or low-balled the seller) – or you answer the “What does it cost?” question too soon. Naming your price too early has the conversation focus on price instead of value. After this point, it’s almost impossible to circle back to a solid discussion about value.

In all other scenarios, anchoring the price can work in your favour.

But does being the first to name the price and anchoring the negotiation make you a cunning sales snake? No, only if you’re high-balling.

Making an offer that fits within your client’s ZOPA likely means you’ve accurately assessed her needs and helped her build a perception of fair value that justifies your price. Both sides can be satisfied with this outcome.

So, if feeling “nice” in your negotiations is important, avoid making the first offer. But if you want a business built on deals that satisfy both you and your clients, be the first to name the price.

Many business owners take pride in their service and are personally involved in delighting their customers. While this can be a powerful competitive advantage, it's difficult to maintain as your company scales.

An inevitable consequence of growth (particularly exponential growth) is the cannibalisation of your attention by new responsibilities. It won't be possible to allocate the same proportion of your personal capacity to the things that you used to prioritise when your business was much smaller and simpler.

The logical solution is to grow your team and delegate the service activities that you once personally fulfilled to specialist professionals. However, that's easier said than done, not least because of the challenges and complexities introduced by Price's Law.

Companies that successfully scale without compromising their service standards often invest heavily in culture, leadership, recruitment and training. Fortunately, there are also some tactics that can be implemented quickly and without much cost.

Case in point: researchers from France, Germany, Switzerland and the USA found that displaying photos of customer service personnel can raise perceptions of service quality amongst people who haven't made a purchase yet. This shouldn't be too surprising, since one would expect a humanisation effect.

Of real curiosity, though, is that this tactic also increases service perceptions and staff ratings amongst customers when recalling their experience. In other words, it literally changes peoples' memories, even if the actual service is exactly the same.

If you compete on service, then this is a very simple tactic that you can implement almost immediately by adding photos of your service team to your website, email signatures, and other marketing assets.

(I suspect that doing so may have the added benefit of improving employee accountability by literally putting a face to your customers' service experiences and eliminating employee anonymity).

Whether you're just starting out or trying to 10x your business, loyal customers will make it a lot easier to achieve your objectives. Most entrepreneurs prioritise purchase satisfaction to keep their customers coming back. However, it turns out that isn't actually a reliable indicator of customer loyalty.

There are good reasons why a satisfied customer may shop elsewhere. They might be curious whether the grass is greener somewhere else or simply crave variety. Conversely, unhappy customers may persist with incumbent suppliers out of habit or because the cost of switching feels too high.

So what actually drives customer loyalty and how can you harness it?

Research carried out at Texas State University provides some valuable insight: emotional attachment is a far better predictor of customer loyalty than purchase satisfaction. Until your customers care deeply about your business, there will always be a risk that they might wander away.

Surefire tactics for cultivating emotional attachment include delivering consistently and personalising service as far as possible. A simple "thank you" will also go a long way, but be careful about overdoing it because excessive gratitude can annoy your customers and drive them away.

As a popular science fiction author, Theodore Sturgeon laboured for decades defending good science fiction from critics who claimed all science fiction was bad. He argued that science fiction was no different from any other literature: while most are indeed bad, some are excellent.

This principle should apply to all endeavours, from creative literature to film and advertising, medicine, law, software apps, and even leadership. In every field, only a few exemplars rise above the morass of mediocrity.

As Sturgeon highlighted, if all you’re looking for are bad examples, there’s plenty to find. Hence his eponymous law, “nothing is always absolutely so”, more popularly cited as Sturgeon’s Revelation, “90% of everything is crap.”

This could just be another way of articulating the Pareto effect, AKA the 80-20 principle. But I think it’s more nuanced than simply an objective measure of what we do and the results we get.

Thing is, who decides what’s good or bad? Who’s the observer doing the measuring? And what are their criteria?

It seems most sources I’ve found on Sturgeon’s Law reference generalised ratings, like a travel establishment’s stars, how many accolades are lavished on a TV commercial, or how many weeks a book listed as a best seller.

Closer to the work of entrepreneurs, we love to cite the Big Four as paragons of the consulting world, the stars to aspire to emulate. But they’re good examples for only a specific audience – usually big corporates with big budgets. I can’t think of too many scenarios where a small business hiring a Deloitte or E&Y would be good. It would be really hard to churn out anything that's both appropriate to small business and within a reasonable budget.

Within each rating system, behind each average rating is a collection of high and low individual reviews. High-ranking billets on Trip Advisor have a collection of poor reviews. Low-ranked restaurants often have a few good reviews.

Affirming Sturgeon’s Law, there are very few of anything that are all atrocious or all excellent. If you look deeper at individual ratings, I often see that bad ratings come from people who shouldn’t be there – they’re not the target market.

In your business, “good” is defined by your audience. Just like the Big Four are good only for some clients, your work could be the best thing for just your niche, but 90% crap for everyone else. Whether it’s your internal leadership, your advertising, or the thing you sell to your customers, you don’t get a say in defining “good”. Only your target audience has that right.

Applying Sturgeon’s Law to your business, you have 2 priorities:

1. define exactly who it is you’re trying to please and,

2. get their regular input and feedback on how you’re doing.

Without this, having a business that rises above the 90% crap would be a crapshoot.

A client hired me to help improve her firm’s cash flow and profitability. A key point in our coaching revolved around how to price their services and our ensuing conversation had her settle on higher rates that put her old price list to shame. Here’s how we got there…

I started by asking how she came to her current prices, whereupon she referenced various cost inputs, like salaries and other typical business overheads. We talked through the billable hours and the rates for each service, break-even points and other good ol’ accounting principles. It was easily apparent why she wasn’t making much profit. (Hence investing in the coaching!)

Having modelled the operations and financials, we played a game of “What if?” We experimented with operational factors, like billable hours, staff unavailability, and the price points of each input. This pseudo sensitivity analysis was eye-opening: the business was – by her own metaphor – skirting the precipice leaning over the abyss of business failure.

We’d already explored that there was very little wriggle room to cut costs – they’d already done a great job with that. (Why would anyone hire a coach to help do the easy stuff, eh?)

So we took a new approach: instead of what-iffing marginal increases to the rates card, we explored a single fee to cover all services. (A related discussion later helped us streamline services to reduce the menu of choices. This not only eliminated the infrequent services, reducing the internal complexity and skills needed to fulfil the remaining services, but the reduced palette also reinforced the new brand as a specialist service for just her target client.)

Back to raising her fees, her first suggestion still looked like a marginal increase from the current rates. When I probed into the reasoning for this marginally better price point, her feeling was that, putting herself in her customers’ shoes, it felt reasonable, safe, and unlikely to frighten away her client base.

That’s when the coach stepped in to challenge “safe” and “reasonable”. (Because you don’t get coaching to be even more comfortable in your comfort zone, right?)

I suggested she double the rate.

She took several seconds to process that.

Then we doubled the rate again.

And again.

Now we were well out of her comfort zone. What was initially scary turned to a near-catatonic mood of OMG-I’ll-lose-all-my-clients.

While we worked through the mini trauma, the principle for everyone wanting to raise prices is that the benefits to her clients could still be argued, rationalised and bought into by her clients.

Specifically, we explored the value to her clients in terms of their gain. As a corporate attorney crafting commercial agreements, negotiating and giving strategic advice on big deals for her clients, what she’d be charging would usually be less than 1% of the reward her clients would enjoy from those deals. She needed to sell the business case – the return on investment ratio of benefits over costs.

Also, she had decades of specialist expertise and a track record that put her streaks ahead of her competitors. Her sales slant had to focus on her years of know-how and not a consulting rate per hour.

With all of this, her paradigm mutated from one of, “How can I charge so much?” to be replaced with, “How can my clients afford to not hire our service?”

So that’s what she did.

In a follow-up conversation months later, my client confirmed that by positioning their services using a business case approach, she eliminated many of their high-maintenance clients and replaced them with far more valuable clients.

But the real gem from their new sales approach was this: not only were her clients valuable to her business, but her services were also valued and appreciated by her clients even more than the old ones.

Encouraging customers to buy from local businesses just to save jobs is misguided. We see popular memes and authors espousing the need to buy more from local industries – wine, tourism, textiles – because thousands of jobs are at stake. I’m sure the message has some effect, but it shouldn’t be the only message.

Despite the well-meaning intention, expecting consumers and business to shift their buying criteria for no tangible benefit is not sustainable. As an entrepreneur, this appeal should rank as one of your last ploys to entice a customer’s patronage.

The employment rate is a surely a key performance indicator for any nation’s economy because it reliably predicts and affects almost all other aspects of running a nation. So the only entity accountable for directly affecting employment is government. Preferably not through the current trend adding even more jobs in government, but through policy that creates the environment conducive to stimulating business, thereby indirectly increasing employment.

But whatever the environment, entrepreneurs don’t start businesses to create jobs. The only place job creation should exist as a mission statement is a government department.

Don’t get me wrong. Lockdown is decimating employment levels and creating hardship for thousands. Losing a job is traumatising for both the worker and the boss. At the macro view and micro, individual level, unemployment is a blight. But nobody buys local purely for the sake of buying local. “Buy local” is not a sales pitch.

As an entrepreneur, your business exists because it solves a customer’s problem. In this, value is created for your customer where the benefit of your solution outweighs your price tag.

As a consumer, whether the benefit is a tool that helps us make money, save money, enrich our life, reduce pain, or even lift our social status, we spend our money because we expect greater value in return.

That being said, buying local to save jobs does have its value, just like any other charity, except there’s a limit to how much customers can spend on charity. Whether your customers are businesses or consumers, that limit comes fast: the feel-good from charitable spending is quickly sated. Beyond this, a “buy local” campaign quickly peters out when more-substantive factors, like functional and economic utility, dominate the decision criteria.

If you’re relying on artificial conditions to prop up your business (and save jobs), then there’s a problem with your business model. Sure, play on the heart-strings in your sales pitch if it works, but only as a bonus benefit.

Don’t conflate government’s job of reducing unemployment with your customer’s problems and needs. Your job as entrepreneur is to help your customers buy your product because it’s the best product to solve their problem, and their problem is not to keep you in business.

When you’re shopping and you see prices ending in 9s, like 49.99 or 1,999.99, do you also round up to the next round number? Do you also enjoy a brief moment of smug satisfaction that you weren’t fooled by the retailer’s pricing mind-trick?

I often feel irritated and mis-trustful of retailers who use charm pricing – reducing the left digit by 1 – especially for higher-priced products. I wish they’d just use a round number when there’s basically no difference between 10,000 and 9,999.99, instead of forcing me to make micro “corrections”.

Except, depending on what you’re selling, rounding your prices is not always a good thing. There’s a case for the 99 effect and there’s a place for convenient, rounded prices.

Even for high-priced items, decrementing the first digit by 1 still has an unconscious effect in the buyer’s mind. Although R199.99 is as good as R200.00, our minds instantly and subconsciously get attached to the smaller first digit.

Despite the mental maths of rounding up, the lower first digit takes hold before we’ve even finished reading the rest of the price. Irrational as it is, R199.99 feels closer to R100 than R200, and it’s this feeling that persists despite the rational correction.

Charm pricing also creates a psychological sense of uniqueness, raising the perceived value of the product. This could be reinforced literally by adjusting the cents across different product lines. E.g. instead of prices ending in only 99, vary them to 98, 95 or 90.

Gumroad, an e-commerce retailer, A-B tested  several products at alternate price points to prove this. In some cases, products priced at 1c less achieved over double the conversion rates as the same product at its rounded price. For example, products priced at $2 earned a 2.39% conversion rate (users who bought it as a percent of users who viewed the product), whereas the same products priced at $1.99 enjoyed a 5.2% conversion. That 1c discount made a massive difference in turnover.

But there might be times where the 99 effect could work against you.

If you’re selling anything positioned as luxury or high quality, a rounded price is more likely to strengthen this positioning. Have you noticed how top-end restaurants, hotels and boutique retailers list their rates in whole numbers, often using only even numbers?

The rib eye steak is R148, not R147.95 or R149.90. The oyster starter is R18 per oyster, not R17.99 (assuming the establishment even lists its prices!)

Prestige pricing – whole, rounded numbers – makes it easier to convey the price and create a sense of quality. With less attention on price, the value to be perceived lies in other attributes.

But even luxury brands might need to use charm pricing. If you’re going to run a discount promotion, your sales tactic should switch from fancy pricing (round numbers) to value (99 effect). E.g. a half-price sale shouldn’t cut your R200 list price to R100, but to R99.99.

How are you using your prices to reinforce your buyer’s perception of value for money, or quality and prestige? Does your pricing support your intended product positioning?

Mea culpa! I’ve been guilty of presenting exclusively positive testimonials in my marketing literature, CV and web sites. But we could improve our customer ratings by 20% if we include some bad reviews.

If your sales copy for your guest house, mobile app, professional services and products depend on customer reviews, you might be harming your marketing effectiveness by presenting unbalanced reviews.

Understandably, we want to put our best foot forward, make a good first impression, right?

But put yourself in your prospective customer’s shoes. In fact, think back to the last time you bought something for yourself. Something that needed saving up for. Something that you needed to be reliable, to do what it’s advertised to do. Chances are you didn’t rely on just the sales blurb, right?

I bet you scoured for reviews by previous customers. Did you make a big buying decision based on only positive reviews? Or did you check out a few complaints? Did you suss out the patterns of what typically goes wrong? Or see how the seller solved the problems, or not?

If I can’t find anything negative on the sales pages, I’ll explicitly google for complaints and reviews off the seller’s site. I’ve eliminated many high-budget items from my shortlist after sleuthing for rants and gripes.

There’s plenty research to prove how positive a few negative reviews can be. Have you noticed that Amazon highlights a positive and negative review? I’m sure Amazon A-B tests the crap out of their site, so surely it works, right?

But, why does it work?

In a paper by researchers at Chung-Ang University, Korea, the authors found that “…Providing consumers with positive information followed by a minor piece of negative information appears to enhance their overall evaluations of a target, relative to providing exclusively positive information.”

It’s about credibility. They summarise that “The credibility of web sites…can be damaged in the long run if all of the…messages are positive.”

Of course, once you allow a few complaints on your sales pages, don’t just leave them there! Respond as quickly as possible and try to resolve them.

Researchers at Queen’s University, Canada, reported that when complaints got responses, 38.7% of reviewers changed their rating after the response.

So what? Those changes resulted in a median increase of 1 star on a five-star grading scale. I.e. a massive 20% increase.

Nice to have a good star rating, but more importantly, negative reviews can show your prospective customers that you have nothing to hide and that you're responsive when something goes wrong.

The knee-jerk response to seeing the sales pipeline and revenue drying up would be to cast our marketing net ever wider. If you’re a fisherman, it’s surely a good idea to literally follow the shoals.

But that idea seldom translates as a useful marketing metaphor in business. In fact, quite the opposite.

There are only two methods to increase sales: increase prices or increase volumes. And to increase volumes, we also have only two choices: get more leads or improve your conversion rate.

The easy choice is to simply spend more, do more and try to attract more customers. That’s why we’ve achieved greater success for our clients by focussing on the quality of leads than simply buying more ad space – the easy choice is already exhausted!

Counter-intuitively, improving lead quality might even work better if we target a smaller audience. That might sound nuts to the scarcity mind-set! When the economy is tanking and we head for yet another quarter of economic recession (in a string of more recession quarters forecast), how can it make sense to target fewer prospects?

In most industries, whether B2C or B2B, people are still buying. Overall volumes might be down and those who are spending might take longer to hit the till, but there are still customers to woo.

With fewer customers in the market, you want to improve your chances with those that enter your sales funnel. So do your competitors.

Which is all the more reason you need to stick out above the competition. It starts with getting clear on who your ideal customer is, then getting your message to them in a way that they notice.

The zaniest thing I’ve seen recently is Bright Side’s list of 50 unforgettable business cards. There are some genius designs here. Check out the edible biltong card by an outdoor survival training company, or the roof manufacturer’s simple folded card that looks like a roof, and some outright peculiar ideas.

If your business needs 5 new clients per month, imagine attracting only 5 leads every month who all fit your ideal client profile. Think of all the time you’ve saved in not trying to convert the wrong client. How much more time can you give to the right clients?

To attract your ideal client – and to finish the fishing metaphor – you probably don’t want a net. To catch only the fish you want, all you need is a rod with just the right lure.

Is your success built on millions of wrong clients, or a few right clients? For most entrepreneurs in small business, it’s probably the latter.

(Image source: Bright Side)

Earlier this year, I recommended "Never Split The Difference" (by Chris Voss) and "Start With No" (by Jim Camp). Both books eschew a win-win approach to negotiations that encourages unnecessary concessions and increases the risk of exploitation. Instead, they argue that you should insist on fair value for your solutions and not allow yourself to be manipulated into one-sided agreements.

But what about extreme situations where someone appears to have all the leverage, has no concern for your interests whatsoever, and wants to win at your expense?

For many, the tempting solution is to walk away. However, this won't always be practical. If you are highly dependent on a single customer or supplier, walking away might put everything that you have worked so hard for in jeopardy. It could also have devastating consequences for your staff and other stakeholders.

Even if you can afford to walk away, there will still be a lost opportunity cost. Only negotiating with nice, reasonable people will limit your growth potential. If you can swim with the sharks without being eaten alive, then you will unlock more opportunities for creating wealth and scaling your impact.

Fortunately, there is a definitive handbook for dealing with people who inspire revulsion or dread: "Getting Past No" by William Ury. It focuses exclusively on hostile situations where there is no pretense of civility or cooperation; where the stakes are high and the emotions are higher; where you're sitting across people who have no qualms about being deceitful, manipulative or blatantly coercive.

There is no padding, navel-gazing, or self-aggrandising. The book is crammed with practical advice that you can apply immediately, covering everything from maintaining your composure, defusing antagonists, turning conflict into cooperation, as well as breaking deadlocks and resolving standoffs.

It's impractical to recount everything that I have learnt from Ury's masterpiece. However, some of my favourites include looking for low-cost, high-benefit trades to expand the pool of benefits and avoid zero-sum arguments; helping others save face so that they are more receptive to pivoting from their original position; and disarming belligerent adversaries by querying the legitimacy of their dirty tactics for your own use.

If you've ever felt like David going up against Goliath, this book will be your slingshot.

Earlier this year, I recommended the Straight Line System developed by Jordan Belfort, an infamous penny stock broker portrayed by Leonardo Di Caprio in "The Wolf Of Wall Street". There are countless books, courses, and other resources devoted to sales and negotiation, but I consider Belfort's Straight Line System the ideal starting point for complete novices and experienced veterans alike.

(Belfort shares a lot of content for free on his YouTube channel, but if you want an all-inclusive reference, then his book, "Way Of The Wolf", is your best value-for-money option. His online courses are much pricier, but they do provide very helpful demonstrations of tonal patterns and other key tactics).

While Belfort's approach is a great place to begin, it's obviously not the last word on making sales and negotiating agreements. Two additional resources that I strongly recommend are "Never Split The Difference" (by Chris Voss) and "Start With No" (by Jim Camp).

Both Voss and Camp advocate a philosophy that, at first glance, is almost offensively contrarian: the entire win-win approach to negotiation ("find middle ground", "deal in good faith", "protect relationships") is bullshit. In short, win-win is for losers.

It sounds extreme, but it makes more sense when you probe below the deliberately provocative surface. Voss and Camp don't abhor win-win outcomes. Rather, they warn against a win-win mindset that presumes concessions and compromises where none may be necessary or desirable.

The first, and most obvious, problem with the win-win approach is that it leaves you incredibly vulnerable to negotiators who focus exclusively on their own best interests to the potential detriment of your own. Some might be maliciously exploitative, but many will simply not concern themselves with your interests because that's not their responsibility. It's yours.

Not only will a win-win mindset compromise your own best interests, it can also harm your clients and industry partners. A deal based on concessions and compromises is harder to fulfill because you're doing more for less. At best, it's risky. At worst, it's unsustainable. In extreme cases, it might mean running at a loss due to poorly conceived promises, and going out of business doesn't benefit anyone.

The alternative is simple: get fair value for the solutions you provide. Don't allow yourself to be manipulated into one-sided agreements by ruthless sharks or your own misplaced sense of fairness.

That's easier said than done, but both Voss and Camp get into plenty of highly actionable tactics that you can apply immediately. These are essential resources for anyone who has ever felt frustrated at not getting what they know they are worth, especially when dealing with people who appear to have all the leverage.