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You are here: Home / Customer Experience, Success, Loyalty, Retention / Targeting Hit or Miss Storytelling Yields Hit or Miss Clients

Targeting Hit or Miss Storytelling Yields Hit or Miss Clients

June 30, 2020 by Babette Ten Haken Leave a Comment

hit or miss storytellingWhy rely on a hit or miss storytelling strategy to acquire and retain clients? Stories which, at least your clients know, are generic stories.

Serving nothing more substantial than an inside-out marketing and sales purpose, via a pre-packaged library. So you do not have to think about a thing! Just select the next story and tell it to as many clients as you can. The story will hit some client needs and miss some client needs. So what? Just select the next story and move on.

Hit or miss stories come across as just that: part of a making-your-numbers-game. Stories you are not invested in, purposefully, professionally, emotionally. Consider that you are not fooling new or existing clients with stories which do not precisely target the deliverables they seek from you.

Ever wonder why high-level, strategic customers remain unimpressed by use- and business-cases you leverage as “stories?” 

It just could be you rely a hit or miss storytelling strategy to do your work for you.

Instead of continuously winning the types of clients which bring out the best in you (and vice versa), you have a “hit some targets, miss some targets” track record.

  • Now let’s face it. If you are selling or engineering or managing a product the market is absolutely demanding (think toilet paper), then you probably do not need to tell stories at all. Demand easily outpaces supply. Then, the only story you tell is why you cannot get your product to that client, at all.
  • And, if you are selling or engineering or managing a product, service, or system which offers a simple solution to a simple problem, you are easily caught in the Business Bermuda Triangle. “Delivered on time, at a sufficient quality level, at the lowest price.” While your stories justify product quality, perhaps the better target is on-time quality delivery via your quality supply chain. Rather than being backed into the corner on price.
  • However, if you sell, engineer, or manage complex solutions for complex problems, then hit or miss stories are not credible to clients. Because creating the initial and managing the enduring client relationship becomes mission-critical to client success and retention. That is your client’s target.
Strategic clients have zero tolerance for hit or miss stories. Because, once they become co-invested with you, they expect you to hit all the marks. Consistently. Day in and day out. It’s up to you to identify just what all those marks are: for you both.

Isn’t it time to move one millimeter forward beyond what is professionally comfortable? Then stop targeting hit or miss clients the way you learned to “Yesterday.” And stop telling Today’s hit or miss stories which stop short of connecting your business needs to your clients’, over the long haul.

Strategic clients are neither acquired nor retained by a hit or miss storytelling strategy. They target professionals committed to helping them make a difference, together. So your clients can better serve their own client base. Is the professional they are looking for you?

Then, let’s  take the next step one millimeter step forward. So everyone gets to where they need to go. Together.
  • Planning your next team, corporate or association meeting? Engage me to present one of my One Millimeter Mindset ™ speaking programs, workshops or mastermind groups. Delivered virtually or in-person. Contact me here.

My One Millimeter Mindset™  virtual and in-person keynotes, workshops, coaching and mastermind programs translate across strategic communication and collaboration disconnects between people and professional disciplines. Build trust. Retain employees and clients. Optimize strategic business and human capital value in your organizations. Get everyone to where they need to go. Together. One millimeter at a time.  My playbook of communication tools and methods, Do YOU Mean Business? is available on Amazon.com.

Image source: iStock / Getty Images.

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Filed Under: Customer Experience, Success, Loyalty, Retention, Professional Development Tagged With: client experience, cross-functional leadership keynote speaker, customer experience, HR storytelling keynote speaker, human capital strategy keynote speaker, One Millimeter Mindset™ storytelling programs, project management keynote speaker, Quality keynote speaker, sales, STEM STorytelling keynote speaker

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