I proceeded to ask the hot dog vendor why his hot dogs were $4,50 when I could buy one across the street for less money, to which he replied “Mine are better.”  Great! I’d be willing to pay a premium price for a premium product.  But I wanted to ensure that I was getting the best value for my money. I asked him why his hot dogs were better, to which he replied “They just are. You can go across the street if you don’t believe me.”  Now, having purchased a hot dog in from this vendor in the past, I knew that his hot dogs were no different than the hot dogs across the street because I’d made the mistake of purchasing a hot dog from him before without asking his price, assuming that he was competitive.

True story. This actually just happened to me, and I thought of a very very good point about how to operate a business.

You can make your customers pay more.

Now, you can go about this in a few different ways.  You can be ignorant to your competitive market and charge what you think is appropriate and think your product is the best. This will work once, it might work twice, and you will make more money on those sales. But as soon as your customer figures out that they can get a comparable product at a cheaper price, they’ll leave you for the competition.

You can ascribe a distinct benefit to your product. Had my first hot dog vendor said “My hot dogs are made locally” or “My hot dogs are organic” or even “My hot dogs have premium condiments”, I would have bought the more expensive product rather than crossing the street.

You can build a relationship with your clients and have them buy into your brand proposition. As soon as I crossed the street, the cheaper hot dog vendor captivated me with the story of her hot dog stand. She’s been there for over 20 years. She’s never raised her price. She even mentioned that she had never seen me and asked if I was new to the neighbourhood. I almost want to go back and buy more hot dogs just to chat her up.

If all else fails, and you just want a quick buck, you can just charge more and hope that your customers don’t figure out that they’ve been duped or you can be better and create longer, sustainable profits.

It looks like Twitter may be allowing multi-user support on corporate accounts as evidenced by Intuit‘s TurboTax account.

Note that under the tweet, it states “1 hour via web by TTaxChels“, one of their employees.  Prior to this point they’ve been using CoTweet and other methods but it would appear that individuals are now able to post under their own name.

New Feature?

These sorts of features could help Twitter move towards a Business friendly business model by adding such extra features for a fee. Other things that would be useful in the realm of business and could be coming soon:

• Long term archiving
• Tweet audit trail
• Assignment of tweets to specific users
• Tweet importance ratings
• Automatic searches and trending on company selected topics

Twitter could create a very effective and desirable revenue stream with these types of features.

Update (10:17pm EST February 24th)

It would seem that while Intuit’s Chelsea can neither confirm nor deny that Twitter has incorporated new features, Twitter is definitely working with large brands to ensure that their corporate Twitter experience is improved.

The friction that can be created when creating change in your environment can range from mild encounters with those who would rather continue on the path of least resistance to serious emotional breakdowns with those involved.

But positive change in your environment is likely critical to your continued success both as a person and for the company you work for. Whether you need to fix something, want to create a competitive advantage, or just need to remain current, the stress that you create, both on yourself and with your colleagues is necessary. That being said, it doesn’t have to be so hard.

Here are 5 tips that have helped me achieve change in my environment:

Provide a Purpose with Passion

When Martin Luther King Jr. stood on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial and addressed hundreds of thousands of people, he didn’t say “I have a great plan.”  The strongest and most successful leaders of change have empowered people to see their vision, the outcome of their proposed change, and the benefits that stem from it. By providing purpose, people will buy into the change because of the outcome.

Pick your advocates

Just as two heads are better than one, two advocates are better than none. Find those who support your message of change and enable them to spread that message.  The effect can be viral. I’ve had great ideas take off at such a pace that those advocates were crucial in ensuring that the vision of change was managed and didn’t result in disaster. If you can’t find advocates, and no one wants to support your change, see the next point!

Understand the objections

Most of the time, people’s objections are founded in ignorance in the truest sense of the word. People just don’t know what they don’t know. It’s not their fault. Your opportunity is to enlighten them and provide them with the information that is driving your opinion.  I have even, at times, recognized that objections to change that I was implementing were founded in knowledge that I wasn’t equipped with, changing my perspective. Recognizing that objections can be overcome through open dialogue, trust and understanding is critical to the success of change.

Pick a time for change

While I completely disagree with the adage “Don’t fix it if it’s not broken.”, I think it really is important to point out that timing is everything. You can have the most desirable change in the world but if no one supports it, no one is ready for it, and you can’t find an advocate, then it just won’t happen.  No matter how hard you might try, you may not be the catalyst to change. But just because change isn’t now, doesn’t mean it won’t happen. Be ready when the time is right.

Start Early

When I was young, my parents and I would go to my aunt and uncle’s house for dinner on a weekly basis.  We would spend 4 hours there and mom would say “We’re leaving.” and I would argue that I hadn’t had enough time to play. My parents very quickly adapted to this. They would give me a departure time when we arrived, tell me an hour before we left that we were leaving in an hour, and then 30 minutes before, and 15, until it came time to leave and I had no objections. I had no objections because I’d been advised of the change early in the process and was kept aware of the change throughout.  The process is much of the same in a business environment. Start early, give people nuggets of your change in very small increments, keep them along for the ride.  80 small incremental changes will go over much better than 1 big change.

Good luck implementing your future changes!

Any other suggestions of things you’ve found to be helpful in supporting change within your environment?