Are Your Customers Ruining Your Business? 2 Secrets To Get Back on Track

Without customers you have no business. But sometimes customer demands, and how you respond to them, can mean you’ll soon be out of business. Here are two common traps and what to do about them.

Trap #1: Your customers want the best – and that means you!

Problem: You spend all of your time working IN the business instead of ON the business. It’s just like a job, only instead of one bosses, you have a bunch and you call them customers. And you’re losing out on one of the best parts of a business – business value that you can later cash in for serious money.

Do you give away your time on something that someone else could probably do better anyway?

When you’ve bootstrapped your company, putting your own money and hours of sleepless nights into it, it’s hard to turn it over to someone else. This is where entrepreneurs get trapped.

Solution: Take baby steps. Use the Sticky Note process outlined in Chapter 27 of “Smart Business Stupid Business” to design smart systems so that you can gradually begin to turn over tasks you’re not that great at anyway. But don’t just blindly handle over work, make sure there is a written system, employees or sub-contractors are trained on that system and there is quality control built into your business.

Trap #2: If you sell knowledge, watch out for an even bigger Entrepreneurial Time Trap: The Free Giveaway

Think of it this way. Let’s say you own a plumbing supply company. You have an inventory that you invested time and money into building. Someone comes in and says they need parts to hook up their new bathroom in their house. What would you do if they said they wanted to take the parts home and see how good they were? They wouldn’t ever pay you for those parts. All you were doing is giving away inventory to someone you don’t even know and hoping they liked your parts enough to come back and buy something else.

That’s a ridiculous question. Right? But, if you’re a professional who is paid for expertise, then you do the same thing every time you give a free consultation. You’ve devalued your time and your expertise.

Problem: As a service provider, your time is what you sell. Free consultations means you are giving away your precious time. Be careful of the ‘quick question,’ as you can easily get dragged into giving advice that isn’t well thought out, or you’ve just given away precious time.

Solution: If you do give away time, do it in a leveraged way. For example, set up a forum to answer questions or set aside an hour each week to take questions on an open conference line. Record it and let others listen in to your advice. Or charge for the ‘free consultation’ and refund 100% against their first purchase. That way only committed people will take up your time.

To take your business up a notch or ten, review Section Six: Make More Money, Pay Less Tax in “Smart Business, Stupid Business.” You’ll learn how to increase your personal ROI, turn ultimate systems into infinite income and build multiples streams of passive income from what you know.