Customers Impact On Business

Hey, it's Gordon D’Silva again on another Myth Buster. And today we are busting the myth that getting more clients is the best way to increase your income. So a lot of businesses I talked to, in fact, by far the majority. And I pretty calls myself as one of those, although less now than I used to be.

And the thinking is, the myth is, I need more clients. I need more customers to improve my business income. And it is a myth that that's the only way to improve your business income is getting new customers, new clients. Because I have demonstrated a couple of times in my career as a business owner and as a consultant to business owners that that is anything but true.

customers impact on business

Let me give you a personal example. Some years ago, now it's pretty about 20 years ago. I learnt some new techniques on running my business differently. And it was led by some great mentors of mine. One of them was Steve Pipe and another one was Mark Wickersham.

And they led a team. I think it was also Shane and Lucas as well, and they led a team at AVN. And one of the things they encouraged us to do was to grade our clients, you know, from those who really enjoy working with us. Who we enjoy working with and who get the most value from our business.

To those who really don't care who they get their services from, they want the cheapest service. And they don't give us information on time, but they're most demanding when they do give us information to one of the information back. And we graded our clients and we had some, A, B, the C's and D's. And one of the challenges was to sort of reeducate or sack or recharge the declines.

customers impact on business

And we went on that process and we were recommended to do that every year. And we have done it religiously every year. And a few years ago, probably about five or six years ago. I can't remember exactly when we did this exercise. And you know what, I only had A and B clients in my list. And it was so, and well I suppose it wasn't a surprise because we haven't had declines for a long time cause we look at who we take on as clients very carefully.

Sometimes we get a wrong and we take on a client who's not right for us. And that relationship ends amicably but quickly. And what I have noticed is that the quality of our client list was getting better and better and better, and our earnings had followed suit. And so now, we're not so much looking for lots of new clients.

customers impact on business

We're looking for the clients who really value what we've done. We look at clients who really value the advice they get from us, the input they get from us to help them grow their business. We're looking for clients who want us to help them grow their business. We are looking for clients who don't have a financial director, but want to understand the numbers because they realize their numbers are the source of their business future.

We're looking for business owners who are ambitious and want to grow their business, want to grow their income and want help along the way. The ones support along the way is this is really lonely, and so what we've done over the years is improve the quality of our business clients. And so them, I've demonstrated mindful myself that it is possible to grow a business without growing the number of clients.

And in fact, when you have too many clients you're running from pillar to post. You've got no time to service them properly. You know, and our clients, for example now get responses within 24 hours, often within the same hour. We’re able to jump on it because we've created the space and the time to look and how we operate our business and how we can help them.

customers impact on business

They have access to me virtually anytime very quickly because I know that when they all struggling, when they're in pain, when they've got a worrying lesson from the revenue, or when they've got a problem with a bad debt or with a cashflow problem, they want to speak to someone and I want to make myself available to help them out.

And I've got to create that space. If I had so many clients that I was busy, yes, I could probably do it cheaper, but I wouldn't be able to service those clients. I wouldn't be able to give them the advice and support that they wanted at that precise moment. And that to me is really important. That's why we've grown our business.

That's why we've won multiple awards is because we do this stuff because we care so much about our clients and our clients care about us. So please don't think that the only way to grow your business is to grow your clients. And in fact, I have come across so many experiences recently. I've had a chance to buy probably a few hundred thousand pounds worth of goods and services in the last year for various properties and stuff.

And for a project I was working on. And I'm amazed at the different levels of service that you get from businesses who are looking for my business, but they just don't service it. Either they don't quote properly or they don't pitch it properly, or they don't care, or they demonstrate that they don't care and how they treat me.

customers impact on business

And it is in this day and age, which is supposedly so competitive. They're so busy looking for the next client. They don't look at the ones they've got. And hence they lose out on all the extra business, the ongoing business that they otherwise could get. So hopefully I've busted that myth.

You tell me. Have I busted that myth? That the only way to grow a business is to get more clients or have I not? If I have, let me know in the chat. If I haven't, let me know as well.

Comment below and let's keep this conversation going. This is Gordon D’Silva wishing you all the best. Take care.

Business Myths “Busted” #03