There is one thing that every business owner should be doing on a daily basis that you aren’t.
Maybe you feel like you don’t have the time but avoiding this duty is for sure the cause of launches gone wrong, slow months and not reaching your annual revenue goals. So I’d say it's kinda important, eh?
What is this daily duty that you’ve been avoiding like the plague?
Talking to your customers.
Yes, it’s not sexy. 
And no, you can’t really automate it, at least not well.
But this is THE THING.
Talking to your customers is the key to your businesses success and, as life often goes, there are no shortcuts.
You can’t sell something to people if you don’t serve them. And you can’t serve your people if you don’t know what they want, what their hopes and dreams are, what they are struggling with the most and what they wish you would create because it would solve that problem for them.
If you don’t care enough about your people to talk to them every single day, then you don’t care about your bottom line either. That’s how this whole business game works, friend.
If you’ve had a failed launch recently, if the last few months have been super slow and if you are nowhere near reaching your revenue goals that you set at the beginning of 2015, it’s most likely because you have no idea what the hell your customers want and need from you.
How do you solve this problem of low revenue and failed launches?
By starting to talk to them, today. And everyday thereafter.
Ask yourself:
- Do you read and respond to your customer’s emails? All of them?
- Are you listening to the chatter on social media about your product? (hint: search the name of your product or a keyword related to your service on Twitter and find out what folks are saying … I learned that trick from my friend Donna Cravotta)
- Do you randomly check in with your clients just to see how they are doing and if there is anything you can help them with?
- Do you conduct exit interviews with your clients once the work you do for them is completed? Even the ones who maybe you didn’t do your best work for?
- And if you do all of the above, are you open to really hearing their feedback? And do you implement their advice? Immediately?
- Do you make time to meet with clients at conferences or when their in town or just for coffee on a random Fall day?
Listening to what your customers have to say is the most valuable thing you can do as a CEO.
In fact, it is so valuable and will drive so much revenue in your business if you implement what you are hearing, that it’s worth it to hire someone else to deliver your services, just so you can focus on listening to your customers. Yeah, it is THAT serious.
Your customers are the key. They can unlock all of your dreams.
If you want to be uber successful and have all of your wildest dreams come true, focus on making someone else’s wildest dreams come true first.
(^ This is a paraphrase of a really great quote by a really smart man but I can’t find the quote or remember the guy’s name so you’ll have to take my word for it.)
Talk to your customers. Email them and ask them what they think of your services so far. Ask them how you can improve. Ask them what they are struggling with. Ask them what their plans are. Find out what their dreaming about. And then find a way to make that dream come true.
Have you been talking to your customers? What are your best methods for reaching out to customers and getting their feedback?
