February 11, 2018
Don’t forget the clients
When you first got on this mailing list, you received a message from me that closed with this request:
“Please hit the REPLY button in your email client right now and give me a 1-sentence summary of what success would look like for your business.”
Percentage-wise, I hardly ever get a response to this question. Even so... I’ve received well over a hundred replies.
Guess what they all have in common?
They’re all “me focused”.
Things like like:
- “To be free of the rat race”
- “To only work on projects I’m passionate about”
- “To have the freedom to work from wherever I want”
- “To replace my 9-5 income”
- “To make money while I sleep”
- “To support myself working one day per week”
Me, me, me, me, me, me.
Notice what’s missing?
THE CLIENTS!
These definitions of success are perfectly reasonable, but they are thoroughly self-centered.
Perhaps the way I asked the question - and the general definition of the word “success” - encourages these sorts of egocentric responses.
But...
Imagine defining your success in terms of the satisfaction you provide to your clients.
For example:
- “To receive a 100% satisfaction rating from my clients”
- “For clients to spontaneously provide me with glowing testimonials”
- “To deliver 10x ROI on every client engagement”
- “For my clients to cite my intervention as the pivotal turning point for their business”
- “To have so many client referrals that I don’t need a website”
- “For clients to call my work ’life changing’”
I’m sure you can imagine that if you reached any of these “you focused” client-centric goals, you’d be extremely successful financially.
I’m sure that you can also imagine that if you defined your success in one of these client-centric ways, it would provide you with quite a bit of strategic direction.
For example, if your definition of success is to deliver 100% client satisfaction, you would automatically begin each sales call by attempting to determine exactly what you could do to satisfy the prospect sitting in front of you. And by extension, you would turn down prospects who you believed you could not satisfy.
Money is a side effect, not a goal.
Delight your clients and the money will follow.
Yours,
—J
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