Are you doing too much

I spend a lot of time exhorting clients to excel – to delight the customer – to under-promise and over deliver!

But – guess what – that’s NOT always what the customer needs or wants!

As many of you may know, I have a monthly membership club, which was originally set up during 2020 – that year when many business owners were sitting at home, wondering when they might open their doors again.  I found there was an almost insatiable desire for support, for information, for new learning and so I stuffed my program FULL of content.

Now, though, people are busy.  And some of them don’t have time to consume all the content, attend live sessions, and participate.  So what happens – they decide to leave because they are “not getting value”.  I will be honest – I joined a membership group and I did exactly the same!  If people think they aren’t getting the “value” then they will leave!  And I had been trying to add even MORE content and features – with the predictable result.  People leave, and also, people don’t join, because they think “I won’t be able to do all that”.

It is one of the reasons that getting your head around your Value Proposition is so important.  And why – as I also stress to clients – you can’t just do it and leave it, you have to revisit it regularly, and also in the light of external events.  I had failed to see that people would have less time and therefore would feel they couldn’t fulfil their obligations.  Lesson 2 – people do feel they have obligations, even when there is no real need to attend sessions, or read the content, or watch the video! 

So what does all this have to do with you – as you are probably not running a membership site!

It really is that point above.  You need to know what your client needs and wants and deliver that – and sometimes – even though we really do want to delight our clients – we can overwhelm them.

This can be a particular problem in the sales phase.  It is actually possible to make your offering sound overwhelming – it might require the client to make changes, or it might inconvenience them, and what you think you are delivering is not really of value TO THEM.  

Take some time to think about your offerings and your value proposition.  Remember – you need to be offering to take away pain, not add to it!