How To Serve Your Customers On Your Own Terms
October 5th, 2016 // 10:21 am @ Scott Manning
To be very blunt, most businesses do not do enough to earn the business they get from their customers. I talk to so many entrepreneurs who have a giant chip on their shoulder who believe they should be doing better than they are, or their customers are the big problem, or people complain about their prices, or even sillier they complain about their own prices being too cheap.
We’ve covered all of these points before:
You picked your customers.
You picked your prices.
You picked how much you are able to earn and be paid based on the structure of your business and how you bring those two pillars of success together.
No business deserves the patronage from their customers just because they exist. For the most part, every customer, client, patient was doing just fine before you – at the very least they were getting by – so you do have to create space in their life for yourself.
You don’t do that by forcing your way in – you do it by earning your way in – and that is the key to all relationships.
When we talked last week about what happens when you grow through the wrong type of customers or your sabotage yourself with the wrong type of pricing and profit structure you inhibit your ability to have healthy profitable growth often without even knowing it.
We have built our company on many principles. Most have no principles guiding their growth just random actions and accidental successes they hope into to.
For our service to our clients, we have started from the beginning always wanting to adhere to three things…
1. We want to never question the ‘investment’ for anything that is good for our clients, therefore we want our fees based on the value that we provide so that we can always say “Yes” to the needs of the client. This is about never making the relationship about money but about a genuine partnership.
You can’t do that when you commoditize your pricing and your service.
2. We want to lead by example and therefore expect our clients to always be the very best in mindset and ambition. We can only do serious things for serious people and if we want to win more than they do, it is not going to work. So we proliferate positivity, prosperity and expectations of greatness and all that is possible.
We accept only these type of people into our life.
3. We hold clients to a standard of self-responsibility. Every business owner is ultimately responsible for their own success. Their attitude will always dictate their results. Taking responsibility for others is a losing game. We practice what we preach in all ways and we expect our clients to do the same.
Every action taken, every decision made, every agreement established in our business is first grounded on these things.
There are much deeper characteristics of clients we look for and ways we respond when someone proves to be of a loser mentality.
You can’t let customers get away with behaving badly, it will never end well.
They say hire slow and fire fast. This is not just about employees, this is about customers. When you can build a company where you can engage people on your own terms, you build a level of respect and appreciation.
The bottom line is: you want to be in a category of one. No one can do or will do what you are for your clients, customers, patients … and you have to make that known but along with that, you will see the more genuine and serious you are with the people you serve the more grateful and appreciative they will be.
And that is the only way to win long term.
Next week, something very special. Stay tuned.
Category : Blog
