customers impact on business

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.

Goodbye

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small business mentors

small business mentors

Hi, it's Gordon D'Silva. And today we're going to talk about another of the Myth Busters.
And today's myth-busting is going to be on the thought, the myth that the, “because I can do it, I should do it.”

Hi, my name is Gordon D’Silva. And on this myth buster, I want to talk about this phrase. That I often hear and you probably do as well. You have probably come out in and across other people who feel the same way. Is that, because they can do a task. They believe they should.
Now the task can come in in many forms. The one I come across it most because of my numbers bias, is that the one of, well I can do my own books, so I should. Now, clearly as an accountant, I can do my own book, but I haven't done for over 30 years. Maybe even 40 as time pass by so quickly, doesn't it?

small business mentors

And so my thought is just because I can, I should. Of course not, I've got much better things to do with my time. Much more important things my business needs me to do. Lots more important things might clients need me to do than do my own books. And the time I could be spending on doing my own books. I could be doing other things. For example, I could be recording a video on myth-busting in the business arena.

All right. Go figure. So let me give you a couple of other examples I've come across in my career. I wasn't always a business owner. I used to be an employee. I used to… I was a trainee accountant at one time. God help us.

That was a long time ago. And what I remember profoundly from that day, and this was quite a large organization, it had something like 12 or 14. I think it was 14 partners at the time. So, 14 people at the top and probably a hundred other accountants and admin staff below them. But the partners used to open their own post.

small business mentors

Can you believe it? How could that possibly make sense? You know, what did they think was going to happen to their posts? And it is really strange. This is in the days when a lot of things that arrived by post. Now, of course, it arrives by email and it goes into their email box. The mentality would be that, I should open my own email.

Yeah. It's the same sort of thing. And just because you can doesn't mean you should. You should be looking at the value of your time and the opportunity costs you're giving up by doing these tasks that other people could do equally well. That may take longer. And I'll talk to you about the numbers on that in a second.

That may take longer, but nevertheless, it frees you up. It not only frees your time up, it frees your mind up from having to do that task. Now if it's a somewhat difficult task or it's not a difficult task, but let's take post, for example, with every piece of posts you've got to make a decision.

What should I do with it? Should I answer it now, or should I do it later? Most of the time, interesting enough, they would do it later. Hence, wasting even more time. So yeah, that was a decision. You've probably come across this phrase called "decision fatigue" and so we could easily get tired more quickly than we should by making small, crazy decisions that don't need us to make them.

And so my thought on the numbers that I promised you I'd talk to you about the numbers briefly is that, take for example me, right? I may value my time at 500 pounds per hour, $700 per hour for argument's sake.

small business mentors

Okay, and I could employ someone to look at my post/email who I would pay £20 per hour. Okay. Now just say they took three times as long to do the task than I would, that's not unreasonable. I would do things pretty quickly. I am known for my speed, but they would take the three times as long. That is still £60 pounds per equivalent to do the same task.

Now, clearly if I'm valuing my time at five or six or £700 per hour, surely it's worth me hiring someone even though they take three times as long and costs £20 an hour to do that work.
Right now, if you've never looked at the value you have for yourself, then that's probably one of the reasons you keep doing the things that you've always done. And my challenge for you in this myth buster is to look at what you're doing. Value your time, and just go. And what?

And just think, if somebody took three times as long to do it and I paid them X, would it be worth them doing it to leave me free to do things that they couldn't do? For example videos, for example promotional mails, for example reaching out to potential client or clients. And showing them how much they mean to you. All of these things I was far more than just the bland task of doing your own books or open your read own emails or typing your own letters.
All of those things reasonably pointless with technology as it is today. With the potential for virtual assistants it is today. With just the challenges businesses have to get everything done.

small business mentors

So there it is. Is that Myth Busted? "Just because I can, I should."
I think I busted it. Do you agree with me?

Comment below if you do or if you don't. And let's keep the conversation going. This is Gordon D'Silva wishing you well. Stop doing it and do something more important.

Take care.

Goodbye.

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