Good, Better, Best Pricing with Estimate

| April 14, 2009

Good, Better, Best Pricing Is A Great Way To Upsell Customers

Gas Pumps :: EstiMate Sign Pricing Software BlogOne really cool trick with EstiMate is to offer good, better, best pricing scenarios to your customers.  If you couple good, better, best pricing with decoy marketing you can usually capture more dollars for your work.

EstiMate makes good, better, best pricing very easy to do. In a nutshell, what you’re doing is presenting three levels of pricing to your customer — the “good” level is, essentially, what they came for. The “better” level can be used more as a stepping stone to the “best” level, which is what you want to sell them.

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A Total Visual Breath Of Fresh Air

| April 10, 2009

Andy Mangold Logo :: EstiMate Sign Pricing Software Blog

The other day I was trying to learn as much as I could about web typography, and while I was googling around, I came across a fabulous website by Andy Mangold.

After recovering my breath, I started swimming around in a world of some of the best design I’ve seen in a very long time. Now, I’m different from most. A lot of people really like fancy design and “gingerbread,” but as a sign maker I’ve always been an enormous fan of cleanliness and clarity. Andy’s managed to achieve both, with some serious style.

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What’s The Highest And Best Use Of Your Time?

| March 27, 2009

Some years back I was speaking with my accountant about burnout and how grateful I was to do some monotonous work now and again because it didn’t have to engage my brain.  The equivalent when I was making signs was those nice long afternoons when the phone wasn’t ringing, but I had plenty of work, and I just had to assemble 10 banners or something while watching TV or listening to good music.  You know, “brain dead” work that kept me happy and busy but didn’t require too much real thought.

I said to my accountant, “I feel guilty because I feel like I should be doing more valuable work, but sometimes I just need downtime.”

And she replied, “well, what’s the highest and best use of your time?”

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Win A Free Copy Of EstiMate Enterprise!

| March 24, 2009

EstiMate Software has partnered up with J.D. Iles at the Signs Never Sleep blog to give away a free copy of the EstiMate Enterprise Edition – a $699 value – in mid-April.

To enter the contest, hop over to J.D.’s blog post about the contest and add a comment to the post (that’s how to enter). He will then randomly select a winner sometime after 4-13-09 when the contest closes, and we’ll contact the winner with download and unlock instructions.

Good luck! I look forward to welcoming the winner aboard!

What’s Holding You Back From Success?

| March 17, 2009

I’m Going To Be Your Jacob Marley Today

The other day I got into a long online discussion with some folks about prosperity and success in business.  During the conversation it became evident that a few of the participants thought that succeeding in business and earning more than they needed in order to “get by” was the equivalent of cheating the customer.

I was, as usual (you all know me by now ;-) , trying to point out how exciting it can be to make enough money to retire, to have what we want in life, to work the hours we choose to work, and as a result to have all the time to do what we want to and have the life we always dreamed of having.

What I didn’t count on was that my ideas would fall on deaf ears.  And I learned a lot in the process.

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The Difference Between Idea And Action = Infinity

| March 5, 2009

Jennifer and I recently hung a cork board on the wall to start our very own dream board (a dream board is where you put up images, writing, drawings, etc of all the things you want to do or have, to look at every day – a pretty cool visualization tool).

Well.

After a day or so it was still empty and eventually she printed out all the specs of the car she wants and tacked it up on the board.

Damn.  She beat me to it.

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How “Signs Never Sleep” Educates Sign Buyers

| February 28, 2009

How "Signs Never Sleep" Educates Sign Buyers - EstiMate Sign Pricing Software Blog

Finally! Signs Getting The Attention They Deserve.

We need to tip our collective hat to J.D. Iles, author of the Signs Never Sleep online sign magazine and owner of Lincoln Sign Company, for giving sign buyers some insight into the enormous possibilities available to their businesses when choosing sign work.  There’s also serious inspiration for those of us who want to stretch our boundaries in our work.

We’ve all wanted to sell higher end work, to sell our customers something better than the slapped together sign riddled with nephew art, and now there is a super resource to direct them to in Signs Never Sleep.

There’s funny stuff like the zombie signs, drop dead gorgeous work like René Giroux’s dimensional signs, and really intriguing and unique work such as the copper signs from the Copper Sign Shop in Sonoma County.

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Over-Deliver And Stand Above The Crowd

| February 24, 2009

This morning I read an article by Rich on the Working Smarter Blog over at SmartDraw.com titled “Winners Over-Deliver – Are you a Winner?” that really got me thinking about my experiences in the sign business and how this was true for me. Also, how it has translated into my experiences with EstiMate.

Always Go The Extra Mile

I always tried to go the extra mile with sign customers.  For example, I had a guarantee on all my work, and one horrible day I got a call from a customer that her 4×6 Painted and metallic vinyled sign was falling apart (that I had just installed two months before).  This was early in my sign career, and clearly I had a lot to learn.

What the hell happened?

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