April 7, 2025

Expected vs Bizarre

Paradoxically, it is both EXPECTED and BIZARRE to me that the vast majority of service providers do not know what value they provide to their clients.

On the one hand...

It’s EXPECTED because I hear all the time from service providers that they don’t know what results they have delivered to their clients.

And on the other hand...

It’s BIZARRE because I don’t understand why more clients don’t demand results from their service providers.

I don’t know what’s going on here but I have a sneaking suspicion that it has something to do with decorum.

Maybe clients imagine that it would be impolite to be so direct as to ask for what they really want.

So instead, they beat around the bush and ask for something that they think might lead to what they really want.

For example...

Maybe what they want is to dominate their market but admitting this - even to themselves - creates cognitive dissonance.

To sidestep the cognitive dissonance, they self-prescribe something that they think will lead to their desired result, like hiring a positioning expert or a fractional CTO or a marketing consultant.

And then the positioning expert or the fractional CTO or the marketing consultant do what they are asked to do without ever knowing what the ultimate goal is.

So when they’re done, they have no way of knowing whether they’ve achieved the desired outcome or not.

Why?

Because they never knew what the desired outcome was in the first place.

Happens all the time.

So weird, right?

Here’s the thing...

If you don’t know what your client is hoping to achieve, then the odds of helping them achieve it are like hitting a three-point shot with a blindfold on.

Not impossible, but highly unlikely.

What do you do about this?

Simple.

Don’t work with anyone until you find out what they really want.

Yours,

—J

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