Reuben Swartz | Things I Learned Selling Services

I originally started consulting because I was really good at helping companies solve certain kinds of problems that they had trouble solving themselves. Like a lot of people who start consulting companies, I didn't put nearly as much thought into growing my own business as I did helping my customers grow theirs. So, I had to learn things the hard way, like:

• Thinking about technical problems, business problems, and growing a business

• Selling for engineers

• Why narrow and deep is better than broad and shallow

• How not to write proposals (and presentations)

• Automating the right things

• Getting beyond commoditization (and more than tripling my rates)

• Growing beyond feast-or-famine

Reuben Swartz, Founder of Mimiran, spent more than a decade helping companies like GE, Dell, Nike, and others sell better. With more irony than an Alanis Morissette song, he was pretty terrible at selling his own services, relying on word-of-mouth. With the arrival of his twins, he started building the software he wished he'd had to help services companies sell. (Check that out at mimiran.com (http://mimiran.com/).) Reuben has presented well-received talks on pricing and proposals to the group and he is a finalist for the Austin Chamber of Commerce Innovation Award. If your business involves services, don't miss this one.