Make Your Services Irreplaceable

During my tenure here at LevelTen, it's been amazing to see the business model evolve. A few years back we would take any project we could get our hands on; not because they were great projects but because we needed to make payroll. Thank goodness, for the sake of our clients, those days have passed and as a company we are far more selective in our approach to which project we decide to tackle. Several things have happened to us over the past couple of years that have helped to cultivate this evolution. For example, as a company we have positioned ourselves so that we only engage in projects that begin with a fully developed strategy. This change has allowed us to charge more for our product and at the same time focus on clients who have success as their primary objective. In addition, I have noticed some great examples in Geoffrey James blog article How to be a Strategic Vendor, that relate to how we now sell our services. Geoffrey's first point is, Control a de-facto monopoly. Sell the customer a product that no other company can provide but which the customer absolutely needs to be successful. While other companies can provide our services, our proven success time and time again is what gives us an advantage. Second, Command a high cost of replacement. Sell the customer a product that would cost them a big wad of dough if they tried to go elsewhere Commanding higher rates for our expertise has moved us into the arena with some of the elite developers in our industry; the difference between us and them is that as a boutique shop we can often complete the same enterprise class solutions at a lower cost and on shorter timelines than our competition. Finally, Offer a best-in-class product. Sell the customer a product that's significantly superior to the competitions, making a change-over into a highly unattractive option. This is where our client's success through our services really shines; everyone has different reasons for their particular product but it's the best in class results we deliver that make the difference. In the end it's not about how many projects we land or how many dollars our clients spend with LevelTen; it's about what type of results we deliver for our clients. If we continue to focus on the results, the clients will come and they'll bring their friends along for the ride.