I’ve had a long-time love affair with cars. Some of you might appreciate that “addiction.” I just love really nice cars: Mercedes-Benz, Lexus, Audi, BMW, Porsche, etc. Name a luxury car, and I have probably wanted one (and in a few cases have owned one).
My addiction has been tempered by marriage, house payments, Catholic-school education, 529 plans, braces, Boy Scouts, IRAs, tithing, etc. For those of you familiar with my 7 F’s of True Success model, it’s these obligations—finances, family, faith and fitness—that take up my time, money and energy, leaving very little time for fun things like fancy cars.
I guess the reality is that I used to have a car addiction. What I’ve come to love more than “soft Corinthian leather” is not having a car payment and being debt-free. These days, if someone asks me what my favorite car is, I probably would reply: “paid for.”
That was before someone hit my 10-year-old Volvo SUV, and I spent two weeks driving a brand-new rental car while my own car was being repaired.
Over the years, I’ve enjoyed driving my Volvo. Not for a minute did I long for a newer car. But once I got behind the wheel of a brand-new vehicle, I suddenly learned that I had been missing something—lots of something’s, in fact. The newer cars have tons of cool things that my decade-old Volvo does not have.
When I got my Volvo back from the repair shop, I discovered that the trusty car I loved just a few weeks before was now an “ol’ clunker.” I missed all the bells and whistles of the new car, and that left me feeling unhappy and discontented.
This takes us to today’s coaching moment.
What do you offer more of these days to your customers? What do you have that is of higher quality? How do you make your customers’ jobs easier? How is your product or service less expensive and more reliable?
In short, how have you changed how you do business during the last several years? Maybe it’s time to sit down with your current customers and talk about what new stuff you are offering and how it’s better for them.
Maybe it’s just as important to think about who you did not sell to in the last three, five or seven years. These people likely didn’t stop buying—they just stopped buying from you.
Go see ‘em. (Don’t call, email or text.) Sit down with them and ask how they are doing. Talk about how you can better help them today.
Maybe they will go from being perfectly comfortable and happy (like I was before the accident) to feeling like they are missing out by not having the latest and greatest thing from you.
I was unhappy and didn’t know it! Maybe the same is true of your customers—current and past.