Running Out the Clock

Competitive-Based Pricing

Product (or service) pricing is arrived at by considering many factors. One way to approach the problem is to be guided by what your competitors are charging. Simply, if you are charging more than your competitors for what your prospective customers consider a comparable product, you will lose sales. Conversely, if you are charging less than your competitors, you will win sales.

Sales Organizations

Most sales organizations subdivide the market, assigning representatives to target customers by geography, industry, or company size. Further, a sales team may task some people to work with specific customers or prospects (‘named accounts‘) and other people to work with everyone else. You should know how your organization’s sales force is assigned.

Running Out the Clock

This sports metaphor refers to the practice of shifting to low-risk, defensive, and time-consuming activities as a tactic to preserve a desirable position until the window of opportunity to unsettle matters passes. Basically, the goal is to keep what you have until the chance of losing it is over. In sports, a team that is ahead might slow the pace of play or assume a defensive posture to hold on to the lead until the game is over. Regarding personal or corporate conduct, it may be prudent to do little while exposed and wait for a better time to act boldly.

Project Scheduling

Project scheduling is a rich field, but in a nutshell: projects consist of activities that consume resources and have associated costs. An activity can be almost anything, although typically, someone does something. Resources are often people’s labor, though they can also be machines, facilities, etc. The start of one activity may depend on the completion of one or more other activities. Given that everything can’t happen at once, a project winds up being a succession of activities that consume time, resources, and money.

Communicating a Decision

Should you need to announce a decision to a team or organization, you have several options: * Tell each person individually, in private. * Tell everyone at the same time. * Tell some people, charging them to tell others. * Tell only those who need to know. The point is not which method is best or that this is an exhaustive list. The point is to have a method and be transparent and consistent (as appropriate) about how communications are made.