Tough Talk For You and Your Customers
October 19th, 2016 // 2:19 pm @ Scott Manning
Last week, the feedback was incredible. So many Entrepreneurs taking this very seriously and understanding the power of just one ‘right’ customer, client, patient and the power of multiplication of being able to influence, motivate, encourage and attract more of these people.
There is nothing worse than customers, clients or patients who do not take responsibility for themselves, have negative attitudes or carry some level of arrogance.
Usually they all go hand in hand.
Here are some traits of amazing clients, patients, customers that you can never go wrong with…
Humility
Gratitude
Appreciation
Integrity
Desire
Ambition
Curiosity
Great people who will be honored to give you money and feel grateful for the opportunity to invest in your skills are not hard to come by when you do the necessary things to identify them and attract them.
And, not to make this too simplistic because there is very advanced psychology in this, so many smart people replied to be on the priority list; funny thing is the people who want to be involved are always already the best nicest most genuine people.
What you can be certain of is every group of people will always sort itself out into a pyramid of achievement.
You know the old 80/20 rule is really … 1/4/15/80 rule where the top 20 is fragmented even further.
Even when you gather up an amazing group of clients, customer, patients for yourself they will still organize them into categories of “good, better, best”. There are the ones that are most serious and take responsibility versus the ones that they themselves are no different than the type of customers they complain about having.
I have given you my litmus test many times: if a person is a complainer to begin with – run away; if they are a blamer – run away; if they want good customers, patients, clients but they are themselves not one – run away.
You have to be willing to turn away people who are not right for you. Then magical things will happen.
Either they will be upset and leave offended, which is a good thing because better find out now versus later when you have wasted a whole lot of energy, time, resources and emotion on them instead of directing it to someone else who deserved it.
Or…
They will buck up, fall in line, apologize for being a buffoon and willingly comply.
The problem is too many entrepreneurs and business owners pander to people. Pandering gets your problems, always. That I can promise you.
If you allow your customers to control you, you are going to lose on principle and on profits.
As I explained last week, all of this begins with how you attract people, the language you use, the experience they enter and the agreements you establish at the beginning. This is why I believe transparency is important.
I tell my clients: most people have a loser mentality. Plain and simple. If you do you will always lose. If you are willing to accept responsibility then we can help you.
For my doctors, as example, their patients’ responsibility is to be proactive and to invest in their health. Simple. Any patient who doesn’t do that is not the right patient and the only way to find out is to give them tough love and push them to a decision.
Some doctors love giving options and they love making the patient feel like it is okay to not move forward with their treatment.
Those same doctors complain about patients only doing what insurance pays for, complain that their patients don’t accept treatment and blame pretty much everything else.
But the problem isn’t the patient, it is the doctor and their mindset and their lack of fortitude.
These same people talk about how there are too many dentists, how they are a commodity these days and how there is no other way to win.
But the only thing that has made them a commodity is themselves. The only thing that has put fear and skepticism into the patients’ minds is them.
They do not understand that their patients are a product of their language, their mindset, their experience, their marketing and their messaging.
The questions to ask yourself this week are:
When and where do you let your customers off the hook?
When and where do you sabotage yourself with your language?
When and where are there places, times, events, interactions with your customers that you could be more deliberate and strategic at getting them to be responsible?
Just yesterday, I was talking with a long time friend and client with an extraordinary business built on a very disciplined approach that is highly profitable (he hasn’t earned less than $1,000,000 a year for more than 20 years), and he takes a year off from his business from time to time … a complete year off.
And we were going through this exact thing and he was giving me exact examples of how he dictates the terms to his customers and to everyone in his industry that no one believes is possible and yet he has been doing it. He charges and gets whatever fees he feels are necessary and he deserves. While everyone else has been saying it can’t be done – he has been getting rich.
It really is just a matter of what you decide you want to do. Then being so serious and committed to it that you actually hold yourself accountable and follow-through to bring it down to a level of specificity of what needs to be changed about your customer interaction on all levels to get you the results necessary to achieve your goals.
This, my friend, is fun stuff – the real deal – about building businesses and becoming a wealthy entrepreneur who is excited about and in control over what you do.
I will ask one last time, as I did last week, if you’d like to be on the priority list of serious entrepreneurs who want to master this skill email me back here, I’ve got a great list of amazing people and will make a few more openings available. This will not happen without you being very intentional and deliberate … let’s go to work on making it so.
Have a great week.
Category : Blog
