So how do you know how your business is doing? Well, you could measure a bunch of different things and come up with numbers. Compare numbers: this month’s sales this year versus this month’s sales last year and that sort of thing. That’s a financial way of of of measuring things and finding out how you doing.
I have another suggestion for you. Ask. Ask your current clients how you’re doing, what kinds of things they want. What kind of things about you and your business make them happy. What kinds of things would they want instead. Is it something you do? That you don’t do? Can you offer them another service? Can you offer them a recommendation to somebody else who does that type of service? You need to find out.
There are a few different ways to do this. One of the ways that we work with our clients – actually our clients clients – is to create surveys and polls that they can ask their their clients and then we quantify the different results and find out what people are saying. That’s one way to do it if you have a large number of clients or if you are deathly afraid of of meeting people face to face.
One of the things that I recommend – and again, you’ll find that the cost of this sounds like it might be prohibitive. But it’s actually, if you break it down to different categories and the cost of this type of thing spreads over different things like marketing, customer service – This would be customer research. What am I talking about? I’m actually talking about meeting with your clients
Take them out to dinner. Take them for round of golf or handball or racquetball or whatever. Take them to a sporting event. Talk with them. Let them know upfront that this is going to be kind of a business meeting but it’s going to be a fun business meeting and just ask them a bunch of questions. You want to compare those questions ahead of time: things like What are we doing that’s right? What are we doing that’s wrong? What would you like to see us do? What kind of products and services you think we should be able to offer that you’d like to purchase? These sorts of questions are what you really need to talk with your customers about.
Don’t just take your best buddy who’s a client and say Come on we’re going to talk about this and have a couple beers. That’s good. Talk to them, but you also need to look at your records and find somebody who isn’t necessarily buying from you all the time. Call him up say let’s meet. I want to ask you a few questions. Let’s go out for lunch or meet for breakfast or play a round of golf. I want to be able to ask you questions.
So you want to again not just pick your favorites of all your clients but you want to so select a range of them; some of what you consider your best clients, some of what you might consider the worst clients and some that are right in the middle. Because we all have a bell curve. There’s the great clients, there’s most of everybody else and there’s the terrible clients. So what you want to do is ask the same questions the same series of questions which is why you want to write them out. We’ve put them on a little 3 by 5 card or just type them into your phone so you can flip through and ask. And you want to you want to find out what these people’s ideas are and and find out what their suggestions are. Even if you ask people within your company. They’ve got a limited sight. They’re inside. They’re looking out what you want is a bunch of different views from people who are outside looking in.
Now some of the answers that you get are going to be totally ridiculous. They’re not going to be something that you want to do but every once in a while you’ll get an idea, a nugget of information and you think, Wow we could really run to the bank with this and and that’s what you want. OK that’s why you’re asking people what they think about your business.
So what do you think about our business? Why don’t you leave a comment in the space below. Thanks!
