Gary recently sent  me an article by Seth Grodin on pricing power in business.  The key to pricing power, according to him, is to be “irreplaceable.”  To be seen as essential to our customers, to be seen as being so important to our customers that the last thing they want is to be without us on their team.

Well, doesn’t that sound great.  And wouldn’t it be great to be irreplaceable?  The first thing that came to mind when I read it was the emphasis on the term “to be seen.”  It occurred to me that our own perspective of the value of our service, however hard we work, however completely we do our job, it is only the boss’s perspective–our property owner clients,  that matters.

Seth went on to say that “…the realization of what it takes to create value might break your heart, because it means you have to specialize, take risks, create art, leave a positive impact and adopt generosity in all you do.  It means you have to develop extraordinary expertise and that you are almost always hanging way out of the boat, about to fall out.”

So to be of value to our clients then we can’t go to our comfort zone.  Maybe swimming lessons will be on the lunch & learn agenda for SCM for 2011.