Discipline makes Daring possible.

Musings from The Disappearing Boss on People, Process and Responsible Autonomy for small-business employers.

Category: Customer Experience OurScore

Transformation
October 23, 2019

Transformation

Reflection is an excellent start for clarifying who your ‘ideal clients’ are.   By getting under your own skin to discover your values and preferred behaviours, you’ll uncover some of the values and preferred behaviours of the clients you like to work with, and who like to work with you.

This enables you to take the next step – putting yourself in your client’s shoes and seeing what you do from their perspective.

This will move your thinking from ‘features’ (“we produce accurate accounting information”), to ‘benefits’ (“we make sure you have the information you need to run your business well”).

If you already have clients who love you, you can even ask them why they do, and this will uncover benefits you didn’t even know you delivered (“you listen to me”,”you really get to know me and my business”, “you find me suppliers I can trust”).

The next step is to get to the core of the relationship you create with your clients over time, and for that there is one key question:

Who do you help them to become?

Because all business is about transformation – even accountancy.

Reflection
October 22, 2019

Reflection

Whoever you want as a client, to serve them well, you need to understand them.   Empathy is essential.

That’s always hard.  Because they are not you.  They don’t know what you know, don’t believe what you believe, don’t want what you want.

But you can get a start, by looking at yourself first.  What do you know?  What do you believe?  What do you want?  Are you the only one?

Then test what you’ve found with real clients.  They’ll soon show you where your assumptions are wrong.

Exceptions
February 22, 2019

Exceptions

Exceptions are where it pays to treat everyone the same. By which of course I don’t mean “computer says no”.

Much better to have a ‘golden rule’ to fall back on that enables anyone on your team to deal with the unexpected in a way that shows you absolutely stand by the promise that you make – even if the exception in question isn’t actually a customer.

Standardisation enables brilliant exception-handling, because it takes care of the routine and so frees people up to be human.

Handling exceptions brilliantly, as a human being, creates fans.

Process
January 30, 2019

Process

What springs to mind when I use the word ‘process’ in conversation with people is something boring and robotic – … Read More “Process”

Not doing it yourself
December 12, 2018

Not doing it yourself

Small business owners like us can easily become control freaks.

Not because we need to be in control of other people, but because we care about making sure our clients get the experience they deserve, the one we promised them.

Sometimes we think its easier to do it ourselves rather than delegate the job to someone else, because we’re under pressure and properly getting someone else into a position where they can do it as well as (or better) than we could takes time, energy and intellectual effort.

So we take the easy route (again) and do it ourselves ‘because it’s quicker’.

That’s a trap.

It’s much better to take the hit of time and energy now, because this will make growth easier in the long run.

More importantly, doing everything ourselves means we never make the space to dream up new, better ways of delighting the people we serve, to dare more, give more and strengthen the bonds we have with them. That’s what really builds a business that will outlast us.

If you need more convincing, work through the exercise illustrated above, and work out the true opportunity cost of doing everything yourself – not just in monetary terms, but also in terms of your own fulfilment.

Why do it yourself if someone else can do it better and more joyfully?

Tell your clients’ stories
November 28, 2018

Tell your clients’ stories

If your service is at all complex, stories make it much easier to explain your value.

So, collect as many mini-stories as you can about how you’ve worked to help your clients, and make sure everyone knows how and where to tell them.

Download our free e-book on collecting client stories to find out how.

I’d love to share some of your stories – let me know how you get on.

Don’t let the wrong one in
November 27, 2018

Don’t let the wrong one in

Your time is valuable.

Your prospect’s time is even more valuable.

So if you’re not right for them you need to let them know as soon as possible.

Put together 3 questions that will tell you whether or not your business is right for them.

Then ask them as early as possible.

Download our free e-book on qualifying out to find out how.

Let me know how you get on.

The Promise
November 16, 2018

The Promise

Every great business is founded on a promise.

Not to shareholders.

Not to staff.

To prospects and customers.

The promise of a change that’s yearned for, that’s worth more than the money in my pocket.

A promise you do your utmost to keep.

All businesses have such a promise, it shows, but it isn’t always articulated explicitly.

Making it explicit, and sharing it with your team is the first step in building a framework that enables them to deliver it on your behalf.

The first (and last) rule of your enabling framework:

If in doubt, remember the promise, then do what it takes to deliver that.

Reverse engineering
November 6, 2018

Reverse engineering

In his new book, Seth Godin talks about the lock and the key. The lock is your ideal client, and the key is your offer – the promise you are making to those people.

Of course, the ideal way to start a business is to identify the locks you want, then build a key to fit, but most of us don’t do that – we make our key, then run around trying as many locks as we can to see if we can find a match.

That’s a terrible way to build a business – looking for ‘anyone’ and ‘everyone’ that might conceivably be interested in what we offer, and as a result finding that the only thing we can compete on is price.

The good news though, is that even if you haven’t thought about which locks you really want, you can use the key you’ve already made to reverse engineer what they look like, so you can systematically help them to find you.

Because people don’t really buy what you do, they buy the feeling you give them through your unique way of doing it.