In our quest to be industry leaders, we can sometimes lose sight of the most important people in business – our customers.
Seth Godin sums it up well
I was listening to a Seth Godin audio this morning and he said something profound: It’s not how many products you can sell to your clients, it’s how many products you can make for them. With the simple addition of a couple of words, his initial statement completely changes.
It’s about our clients, not us
Being in business, it’s sometimes tricky to remember that it’s not actually about us, but our clients, the people who buy what we sell.
That’s why we got into business in the first place, to solve our customers’ problems, and to answer questions they didn’t even know they had.
Sometimes, in the fight to keep up with competitors, grow our businesses, stand out from the crowd or meet our bottom lines, we may lose sight of our customers, or forget about them altogether.
The dangers
When we are only in business for ourselves, we stop listening to outside forces and forget that it’s our customers who got us to where we’re at, and who can send us back to square one if we don’t pay attention to them.
People sense when we we’re only after the sale, the competitive edge or the desire to be the next innovator. People sense when we can or can’t be trusted.
People sense when we view them as someone to serve us rather than the other way around.
People sense, within three seconds, whether we are someone who is going to help them. Or not.
Stay focused
To stay focused on our customers and not on our own agendas, we need to remind ourselves every day what we are doing for them.
We owe it to our customers to consistently ask the question, “What problem can I help you with today?”
How do you stay focused on your customers?