The Most Common Sense Principles That Are The Most Uncommon
August 11th, 2021 // 10:16 am @ Scott Manning
Over the past couple weeks, we have talked about Olympians’ mindset and discipline as it relates to your approach to winning and success.
You won’t find anyone who achieves even the most modest level of success in their chosen field who does not have a “success system” that they have customized and built to suit themselves.
There was that famous saying about “success leaving clues” meaning that it’s not hard to see ‘how’ to be successful if you just observe what other people who are do.
And by the way ‘do’ is one of the secrets. These days so many do so little it’s no wonder why things are the way they are.
The big question is not about them, but about you…
What are you deliberately, methodically, intentionally, purposefully doing?
What is your success system? How do you ensure you follow it?
This loops us back to where we began just before the Olympics a few weeks ago.
We were talking about extraordinary businesses and the differences in them versus other average ordinary businesses.
I outlined for you a very specific success system around the biggest differentiating factors of businesses that have for themselves and their customers created a category of one – a “place” – for their customers to belong to and for their business to exist in.
They’ve created a world all their own and there is nothing more powerful in business than this… attracting customers to bring into it your world.
We talked about everything from proprietary products and services, features and benefits to experiences and vocabulary, rules of engagement, principles of your business, and a unified shared purpose that your customers can rally around and believe in.
We talked about belonging and relationship as I reminded you that one of the keys to all of this is knowing who you want as a customer and being specifically for this person (and by default you aren’t for someone else which is not just okay but a prerequisite to your existence).
Your business building work was to assess how well you are doing at conveying and bringing to life these principles to your customer through your experience and then take it to the next level as one of your greatest differentiating factors.
Today, I want to pick up where we left off and bring to light three things that almost every business “out there” does an absolutely terrible job of and that you, us “in here” as real entrepreneurs do a much better job of. You really have to capitalize on these advanced strategies in order to maximize growth as they are your greatest opportunities for leverage.
It really comes down to businesses who rely on volume and take for granted each individual customer versus businesses who rely on value and truly appreciate each individual customer.
My friend and mentor Dan Kennedy said it best, “most businesses think the purpose of getting a customer is to make a sale, we believe the purpose of making a sale is to get a customer.”
This means the value is in the customer, not the sale; the relationship, not the transaction.
Here are the three big opportunities most businesses mess up…
First and foremost, they don’t capture the customer contact information as early in the process as possible and even when they do, they do nothing with it.
These days most businesses rely on social media as their communication source. They consider their customer contacts to be facebook fans instead of hard data of name, address, email, phone number.
This is incredibly basic but think about the last time you went to any store or restaurant and they did anything other than give you an option to input your phone number or email as you swipe your credit card.
Even the best restaurants and stores and some that I mentioned a few weeks ago they still don’t proactively capture the information of the customers who give them money and those that do, they do nothing with it.
Of course, online, nearly every site hounds you until you enter an email and then floods your inbox with stock emails until you unsubscribe. It’s not an experience nor personalized nor meaningful.
No one communicates. No one nurtures the relationship. You might get a “Thank You” or a generic newsletters but that’s the best case scenario.
There is no relationship building.
The second is the opposite of this and that’s the backend. There is no follow-up. Most businesses it is nearly impossible to do business with them. They think follow-up is an automated email. That’s what they think follow-up is. And that’s if you are lucky.
Most people, after a conversation whether online or in person, whether you bought something or just inquired, there is zero next steps.
There are more dollars and value available on the backend then there is the first time around, and yet very little is done to cultivate it.
I’m going to go deep into both of these and close the gaps in the middle in the next couple weeks.
The third concept, and of course there are many more, is that very few people within a business at any level get the point of the business. They don’t embody the core brand or its principles and they don’t embody the objectives of the business in the first place.
Forget even actually trying to sell something. That’s way over their heads. They count “likes” as success.
I, you, smart businesses count one thing, the one inarguable not subjective thing that tells the tale of how well we are doing, the main point of the whole deal, that is of course the dollars!
It’s just crazy to me how many employees and even executives and leadership who are going around doing everything but selling their business to their customer and helping facilitate customers giving you money.
Most businesses could do so much better just by getting out of the way and not sabotaging the dollars from flowing in, that would be a basic first step forget about actually doing anything proactive to orchestrate actually making money!
Everywhere you look around you see people in the way of progress, commerce, and customer service. The fact is it’s easy to get by when money is flowing so easily and readily.
So why does all of this happen? It seems so obvious.
One of my best business buddies Davy Tyburski says, “common sense doesn’t mean common practice.” And that’s the truth.
It’s also about doing what’s easy instead of doing what’s right. Doing what’s cheap instead of doing what’s best.
The principles on which you base your decisions will determine everything.
Next week, I’m going to tell you the five big reasons why businesses get dumber and how to avoid each one. We’ll do that after we apply these three smart common-sense principles to your business.
Capture your customer contact information and then use it to authentically communicate to build relationships, to enhance the experience, and for the obvious reason of turning prospects into customers and customers into more valuable customers.
Follow-up and follow-through with everything, every person, and every opportunity that’s worthy of it. Don’t just catch the easy stuff because the real relationships, the real profit is in the more difficult follow-up.
Finally, everyone (literally every single person) in your business must know what the main objective is and know how to look out for the company while taking care of the customer.
This might be the most vital difference in the essence of a great business and a good business; an extraordinary one and an ordinary one.
In the meantime, I’ll leave you with this question…
Where are you and your team in the way of the dollars, where are you cutting corners by taking shortcuts on relationships, and where is common sense not common practice?
There you go, lots of profitable work to do. See you next week.
Category : Blog