2006 Sportfishing Summit
Signature Sessions
Larry Steinmetz Discusses Prices and Profits
One of the primary tenets of business is competition. But can you compete in
business by raising your prices? Dr. Larry Steinmetz, president, High Yield
Management, Inc., and a former professor of Business Management at the University
of Colorado, emphatically says “yes!”
On Thursday, October 19, Dr. Steinmetz gave Summit attendees a new perspective
on competing in today’s marketplace—not by dropping prices to keep
up with the competition, but by raising yours to make a business thrive. Steinmetz
asserts that most people do not buy on price alone. There are several other
components a customer looks for when buying. One of these is service. “Service
is being willing to do for the customer what the customer wants you to do,
especially if your competition cannot or will not provide that service,” says
Steinmetz.
According to Steinmetz, delivery is key when it comes to selling at a premium
price. Steinmetz says that delivering on time—not early and not late—will
help you get the price you want from your customers. Giving the customer what
they want when they want it will ensure customer loyalty and those loyal customers
will be willing to pay a higher price to a business that can deliver.
Steinmetz says that there are three things one must learn to combat the fear
of raising prices above competitors. The first is, “If you don’t
ask for more money, you won’t get it.” Secondly, “A low price
makes a negative, derogatory, diminutive statement about a product or service.
A high price makes a positive, salutary statement about a product or service.” Finally, “don’t
think less of your customer for paying a premium price.” Steinmetz ended
his Summit session by saying, “remember, if anybody is going to cut your
price, it’s you. It’s a self-inflicted wound.”
For more on Dr. Steinmetz and his business techniques, visit High
Yield Management, Inc.
China as a Global Conglomerate
The rise of China as a global conglomerate is an issue that is on the minds
of most people doing business today. Ted Fishman, author of China, Inc.:
How the Rise of the Next Superpower Challenges America and the World,
spoke to Summit attendees on Friday, October 20, about the rapid growth of
this country that is building a workforce unlike any the world has ever seen.
Fishman
attributes the growth of an industrial China to several factors, including
the movement of the Chinese people from their traditional, rural homesteads
to the large cities where better-paying factory jobs are open to them, and
the development by the Chinese of a new type of workplace—a workplace
in which 20,000 new workers are put to work immediately with enough orders
to allow for entire mountains to be razed to create space for another 20,000
workers.
Fishman asserts that the Chinese economy is “a fast follower
and willing copier to create credible products,” and this allows people
around the world to afford copies of things they would not be able to afford
otherwise. Fishman talks about the willingness of the Chinese to do anything
and everything to compete in the global economy. “If you want a symbol
of the dynamism of this economy .. people are doing everything and anything
that people do in economies and doing it 85 million times over.”
For more
on Ted Fishman and his book, visit www.chinainc-book.com.
