Clarity Over Certainty

How many times have you explained what you want from your team only to end up with the wrong result? If you are like most people, you have an image in your head of what is supposed to happen in your organization. It has to go beyond the image, though. You will need to serve a specific customer demographic, solve a specific problem, and accomplish specific outcomes in order to make the image of success in your mind come true. Far too often, we spend our time certain that our product or our service is the greatest thing ever to hit the market. That certainty about being right is what creates the downfall of many a company. It isn't certainty about our products or services that we need. It is clarity about the purpose of our business that creates success.

To accomplish this, we have to become crystal clear on three critical factors that will guide our organization moving forward. Without these, your people will work, but not in a unified direction and not with the outcomes and service you hoped for. So, let's stop hoping for success and simply map out a plan for its achievement. 

Your Customer Demographic - You need to know the demographics and psychographics of the customer you want to serve. This means you need to know their back story. What drives them forward? What irritates them? What inspires them? What are they into? When you can get clarity on who they are and why they are who they are, it will guide you in connecting with them. 

What Keeps Your Customer Up At Night? Next, you will identify the primary problem your customers face and create a plan to guide them from where they are to where they want to be. Your key demographic will be moving in the same direction and will have a problem that really bothers them. This problem keeps them up at night, makes them irritable during the day, and won't stop bugging them until it gets resolved. It is a part of their story that needs to go away. What is it that your product/service provides that will give them the relief they want and need?

What does success look like for your business and for your customer's business? We have to be clear that our success is dependent upon creating success for the customer. The customer doesn't care about who you are or why you went into business. They care about whether or not you can help them overcome an obstacle and achieve an objective. This means you need to tie your overarching objective directly to serving enough customers who share a problem you are great at solving. If we can serve "X" number of clients by a specific date, helping them achieve their desired outcome, resulting in our financial success, then we have created a measurable success metric. 

There are far too many people in business for themselves! We should be in business to serve a customer and solve a problem. When we are, people rally behind us and strive to help us succeed. When we are in business for our own success, we often find people fighting against us. I believe the fundamental difference is our focus on the customer versus our focus on ourselves. In every great story, the hero fo the story is focused on saving others or serving others, while the villain is focused on serving themselves. Get clarity on these three areas for your business, and you will be the hero of your own story!

Become the leader others want to follow!

Jody Holland, M.S. Psychology
P.S. Check out our online courses at: https://www.jodyholland.com/coursesoffered