What do you do when you discover your business priorities are not the same as your clients’ priorities? How you answer reflects the relevance of customer experience, success and client retention on your own business viability.
This pandemic exerts a profound impact on our businesses, including your clients’. Yet, some of my small business clients remain reluctant to better understand who their clients really are. Or why these clients do business with them, initially and subsequently. Consequently, their business’s survival has a week-to-week feel to it.
However, what about my clients who are ready and willing to do the work to become proactive and anticipatory of changing client priorities? Then their businesses become better positioned to attract and retain clients. Where do you fit into this scenario?
How are your clients’ priorities impacting your own business?
Prior to the pandemic, when business is steady, it is way too easy to maintain Yesterday Mindset. And your “what got us to where we are today” habits. If cash flows, there is no sense of urgency to change the business model, internal processes and hiring practices. Or determine whether established and documented models, processes and practices (you have these, don’t you?) are easily accessible to employees.
Because when cash flows the perception is that “things ain’t broke, so why fix them?”
Except now cash flow is impacted for virtually every business. My clients who are surviving and thriving do one thing differently than the clients who are going through pandemic mea culpa.
Healthy business clients have pre-pandemic processes focused on connecting their priorities to their clients’ priorities.
My struggling clients rarely engage with customers, other than when they are completing a project. However, my clients who maintain customer conversations even when there is nothing to sell, design or implement are best positioned for what’s next. They do not react to “what just happened.”
Becoming proactive and anticipatory of your clients’ priorities makes all the difference to business viability: yours and theirs. Because these conversations correlate with the financial picture, not just cash flow. Over time, these conversations, and the monthly financial report card, create prioritized business trends.
When you understand how clients’ priorities change, you are better able to anticipate how, when, where and why projects are cancelled or delayed. Thus, you are better able to scale your own operations. And not only reprioritize allocation of capacity. But also proactively acquire new clients as you focus on better serving your healthier clients. (Who usually are your better clients, by the way).
- Are you discovering that your business priorities are not the same as your clients’ priorities?
- If so, are you open to doing the work to pivot to better survive and serve them, moving forward?
If you answered yes to either one of these questions, click here and set up a complementary 30 minute discovery call. Determine the variables you currently overlook because you react instead of being proactive about client retention.
Planning your next team, corporate or association meeting? Searching for a one-on-one catalyst to get you unstuck? Engage me to present a One Millimeter Mindset ™ program! Delivered virtually or in-person. Contact me here.
Hello! I am a refreshingly extroverted STEM professional and left-brain thinker specializing in professional innovation, cross-functional leadership and client retention. I catalyze professionals to translate across communication and collaboration disconnects. Become more professionally visible, cross-functionally relevant and strategically valuable to your organizations. Better serve each other first so you better serve your clients together. One millimeter at a time. My One Millimeter Mindset™ virtual and in-person speaking programs leverage Voice of the Customer design methodology and storytelling to move individuals, teams, departments and organizations one millimeter beyond yesterday’s tools and today’s professional comfort zones My playbook of cross-functional collaboration, Do YOU Mean Business? is available on Amazon.com. Contact me here.
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