Holding out on ’em 

I had a great call with a long-time client this week. Towards the end they told me all about how I was their favorite vendor and then asked me “What else do you do that you might be able to help us with?”.

Here I was riding a bit of a high from all the compliments when I realized the utter failure I’ve had if one of my best clients doesn’t know what services I offer.

It’s like having a bag of money with your name on it, but no one knows where to deliver it.

Like most of you, I didn’t get into this business with a passion for sales. In fact, sales is one of my least favorite parts about this business… The thought of it always conjures up a mental image of a used car salesman running you down across the parking lot.

No one wants to be like that, so we hold back. We put something on our website (and maybe post about it once on socials) and just assume everyone will know.

We’ve convinced ourselves any more would just be pushy and we don’t want to be sleazy.

But what we sometimes forget is our clients are business owners just like us. Every day, they wake up looking for solutions and opportunities to improve their business.

If we have a solution that could help them turn a buck into a buck-fifty or automate something that wastes 30 minutes of their day and we’re not beating down their door to tell them, then we’re not polite — we’re jerks.

Offering ways to help our clients achieve their goals is not a nuisance — it’s being proactive… It’s literally what they keep us around for.

We’ve already done the hard work of gaining our clients trust, we at risk of breaking that trust by holding out on them.

When was the last time you proactively reached out to a client with a solution you think could them?

If we genuinely want to be helpful, then we need to make sure our clients have every opportunity to benefit from the value we bring to the table.