It’s a fight to get business.
Finding great clients, customers, and users can be tough. While finding them is the first step, it’s not necessarily the most important part of building a thriving business.
Keeping them is the most important function of creating a thriving business.
If you want to build a successful service business, refocus your energy.
Refocus your energy to keeping business.
This is especially important in the earliest days of your business. When you’re first starting out, your best new business is repeat business.
Finding new ways to service your current clients is a smart move.
It’s tempting to build your business as big as you can as quickly as you can, but that approach will leave you vulnerable to losing key clients. I’ve learned this first hand.
One of my toughest weeks in business was when I lost three of my four clients in 5 days. These were large accounts for that small business. The losses hurt. And I lost them because I didn’t have the processes or people in place to take unbelievable care of the clients I had.
I was simply too busy chasing new business.
Ask yourself this one question every week.
Before I share the question I ask myself at the beginning of every week, you deserve a disclaimer. Here it is: I’m not perfect at answering this question.
The answer isn’t always easy to pin down, and it’s definitely not always the easiest to execute on.
I’ve failed on the execution aspect more than I’d like to admit. But business is a constant quest to get things right and fix what’s broken.
Ok, here’s the question to ask yourself every week.
What does unbelievable care look like?
The answers you come up with will grow your business in ways that you could only imagine.
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Photo: Flickr/Didriks