By Guest Blogger Jeff Nischwitz, Think Again!™ Coaching
For years businesses
have been searching for what we considered to be the holy grail in business …
satisfied clients, and mountains of information, hundreds of books, and
thousands of hours of videos have been dedicated to providing the ideas,
tactics and strategies for achieving this objective. While all of these ideas are worthwhile, the
problem is that while we were sleeping the
target moved. Satisfied clients (or even clients that like us and our work) are
no longer good enough; and perhaps were never good enough. In today’s business
environment the only “good” client, is a client that loves us and our products
or services. Today’s business truth is that if we only have satisfied clients
or clients that merely like us, then we’re losing the game.
“In the beginning” (of business
thought) the concept of creating satisfied clients made sense because the bar
was artificially low due to limited competition, which allowed for easier
differentiation. As a result, businesses could just do the bare minimum (and
achieve satisfied clients) and rely upon their other differentiators to create
and sustain their revenue models. But as competition improved and increased,
the prior differentiators became less and less real or valuable. We all started
looking alike, which meant that merely satisfying a client was not enough to
differentiate our business or to provide a strong foundation for sustainability
(let alone growth).
What’s “wrong” with merely satisfied
clients? First, satisfied clients “fire” us (often without warning) and leave
us wondering “what did we do wrong?” In truth, we often didn’t do anything
“wrong,” but we did fail to understand their needs and deliver the type of
value and experience that makes us memorable and indispensable. The problem is
that because these clients are only satisfied, they are likely to move to one of
your competitors who happen along with a better price or which talks about a
great client experience. In fact, it’s often the case that merely satisfied
clients leave us, while clients that are unhappy or even dissatisfied choose to
stay and make our lives miserable, distracting us from our good clients.
Second,
satisfied clients are silent – they don’t talk about us with anyone. While we
could fashion a story that makes this sound not too bad (after all, it could be
worse – they could be proactively complaining about us), a silent client is a
hurtful client. This is especially true when they’re silent (or neutral) when
our business or our industry comes up in a conversation. Imagine that a group
of business owners are talking at a business event and you or your business
comes up in the conversation. The good news is that one of our existing clients
is a part of this conversation. The bad news is that this client is only
satisfied and responds with a neutral and non-committal statement (e.g.,
“They’re okay,” “They’re pretty good,” “They do a nice job,” etc.) While not
negative, these neutral (at best) comments are the kiss of death for our
business because not only was the opportunity lost to have a raving fan
endorsing you in the conversation, but the neutral response is heard by most
people as a quiet complaint.
Being
“okay” is not good enough and certainly will not differentiate you or your
business. Instead, we must commit ourselves and our teams (in words and
actions) to delivering a client experience and exceeding expectations so that
our clients actually love us and are “Wowed” by us (which is usually more about
the experience than our actual products and services). Clients that love us
will pay for our value (often significantly more than the price they could get
with our competitors). Clients that love us will talk about us (when asked and
especially when not asked) and endorse us to other potential clients. What we
call Raving Fans! Clients that love us will also usually stick with us even
when we make a mistake or drop the ball because their prior experience (that
created the “love”) built up a reserve of good will with the client. Most
important, clients that love us will help us grow our business beyond surviving
to thriving.
The
bar has been raised on the client experience and whether spoken or not, our
clients and potential clients are making it clear that they expect to be more
than just satisfied. While the bar has been raised by clients, we must continue
to raise our own internal bars so that we continue to focus our efforts, energy
and tactics on wowing clients and building the “love.” Like so many aspects of business life in our
culture, the game and the rules have changed and we must change as well.
Otherwise, we’ll all wake up to find that our clients and our business have
disappeared … while we were sleeping.
Jeff Nischwitz is a speaker with The Expert Speakers. He can be reached at jeff@thinkagaincoaching.com.
Jeff Nischwitz is a speaker with The Expert Speakers. He can be reached at jeff@thinkagaincoaching.com.
