Talk to your competitors. You may have formal networking events, trade associations. Now, I'm not suggesting you violate antitrust, those of you in countries that have severe antitrust or strict antitrust regulation, you don't necessarily want to say, Well, if you charge this, I'll charge this too. But I do think it's fine to ask people, how they sell their services, who their clients are, what they typically do. I know I always do. And you can always ask them, Hey, what's the rate card?
If I were to go to your website and find out what their prices are, you do need to know the competitive landscape. And this doesn't have to be cutthroat. I am very good friends. With a number of public speaking trainers and media trainers all over the world. There's plenty of business for those of us who are doing it really well. And we don't have to trash each other or backstab.
Anything like that, in so many industries, there is a friendly, good natured way of sharing information, helping each other sometimes helping newbies get in. So, my recommendation is find out if there are any networking opportunities where people already meet. If not, then reach out to people. Don't just say, hey, I want to come and pick your brain for free and have you trained me for free? That doesn't work well, but there's nothing wrong with following someone on Twitter, Facebook, writing back occasionally only interesting posts. I liked the way he did this brilliant insight.
People are suckers including me for any flattery, so build relationship a few times and then say, Hey, I'm going to be in your neighborhood. Next Tuesday morning, can I buy a cup of coffee and unless someone is just truly world famous and has demand backed up for the next two years Chances are that person will say, hey, sure, if they're in town, you have nothing to lose by trying that. So my recommendation is, occasionally don't spend all your time doing this. You need to spend time on your customers, but occasionally you'd need to talk to your actual competitors to find out what is it they're doing. You may be thinking they're doing something they were doing 10 years ago and are doing anymore. You've got to be up on the competitive landscape.